The coming weeks have been branded a “MAGA British summer” as both Donald Trump and JD Vance visit the UK – much to Ellen Degeneres’s dismay.
Trump is currently in Scotland playing golf and hosting meetings with European and British leaders, while JD Vance is set to visit the Cotswolds with his family next month.
Vance’s trip follows US talk show host Ellen DeGeneres’s move to the Cotswolds with her wife Portia de Rossi in November last year.
DeGeneres has already made it clear Trump’s election was the reason for the couple’s move away from California.
She said: “We got here the day before the election and woke up to lots of texts from our friends with crying emojis and I was like, ‘He got in’ and we’re like ‘we’re staying then’.”
Now, DeGeneres is said to be planning a two-week holiday away from her adopted home for when Vance visits the area in August.
It was revealed last week that the couple are selling one of their two homes in the Cotswolds for £22.5million, which amounts to £7.5million more than she paid for it.
The Cotswolds is a popular destination for British celebrities as well, with names including the Beckham family and Kate Moss snapping up homes in the hills.
US politicians visiting the UK and Ireland for personal reasons is not new, but this year has been branded by one Republican as a “Maga British summer” to The Times.
The Vance family visited London before the 2024 election, when George Osborne gave them a personal tour of the British Museum – where he is chairman.
In 2023, Joe Biden visited Ireland, barely acknowledging the UK.
Then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was forced to make the trip to Northern Ireland to meet Biden at the airport.
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Instead, the main reason for the trip was for Catholic Biden and his son to address tens of thousands of people in his ancestral home of County Mayo.
While in 2011, Barack Obama visited his “ancestral home” in Moneygall, Ireland.
In recent days, Trump has been in Scotland visiting his Turnberry golf course in Ayrshire.
During this time, he has held meetings with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, and he is set to meet Sir Keir Starmer and Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney on Monday.
When he touched down at Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Ayrshire on Friday, Trump told Europe it needed to “get your act together” over illegal immigration, which he branded a “horrible invasion” which is “killing Europe”.
But his visit has more personal connections as well.
In 2008, when he was in the middle of a planning dispute over his golf course in Ayrshire, Trump himself discussed his personal connections with the area thanks to his Gaelic-speaking mother, who came from the village of Tong in the Outer Hebrides.
“If it weren’t for my mother, would I have walked away from this site? I think probably I would have, yes,” Trump revealed.
“The reason I got involved was because of the feeling I have for Scotland.”