Donald Trump bans Irn-Bru from Turnberry
The supposed billionaire and supposed President of the United States bans Scotland’s favourite soft drink from his Turnberry Hotel
If you weren’t convinced Donald Trump was a monster, his latest attack on civil liberties proves it: he’s banned Irn-Bru from his luxury golf resort in Turnberry.
The reasons Trump’s employees at the Ayrshire hotel gave for not serving Scotland’s favourite fizzy drink was that its luminous orange colouring was impossible to remove from the carpets of the hotel, which has recently been refurbished to the tune of £200 million.
“We can’t have it staining when to replace the ballroom carpet would be £500,000 alone,” Turnberry’s general manager, Ralph Porciani, told the Daily Record. “We have villas here with Irn-Bru stains in the carpets which I can’t let.” We’d have though Donald Trump would be an expert at removing stubborn stains, and to be honest, he knows a bit about luminous orange as well, so we can't really see what his problem is.
Is this simple bias from Trump? We know his prefered brand of soft drink is Coca-Cola – he reportedly has a button on his desk for when he fancies a Diet Coke break – and it hasn’t been banned, despite its stains being a bugger to remove also. Maybe the fact that Scotland is one of the few territories in the world where Coke isn’t the market leader has him perturbed? Or maybe he's just not a fan of the Bru's new reduced-sugar recipe?
Whatever his beef with Irn-Bru, if Scotland didn’t already have enough reasons to protest his visit to the UK this summer, which includes a sit down with the Queen at Balmoral on 13 July, we have one now. Let the placard making begin. If you're looking for inspiration, let Janey Godley be your guide.
Scroll on for a look back at the complicated and surprisingly shouty history of soft drinks, and let us know where this gross injustice ranks among Trump's antics over on Twitter