In 2006, future U.S. President Donald Trump purchased the Menie Estate a few miles north of Aberdeen, Scotland. He planned to develop the property, part of which sits on sand dunes overlooking the North Sea, by building two golf courses, a hotel and other luxury amenities.
In July 2025, Trump returned to the Aberdeenshire resort to open the second of the two golf courses. Around the same time, posts appeared on Facebook telling the story of Molly Forbes, a "little frail 92-year-old Scottish widow" who supposedly refused to sell her neighboring farmhouse to Trump. The businessman purportedly retaliated by ordering "loud machinery to work through the day and night and weekends," shining floodlights onto her property at all hours of the day and cutting both power and water to the Forbes residence. But despite the alleged retaliatory measures, according to the posts, Forbes never sold, "right up to her death four years later, aged 96."
Snopes found that the story was a mixture of true and false information. The British press widely reported the events, and journalist Anthony Baxter created multiple documentaries detailing the situation. However, while the posts were based on real events, there was no evidence supporting some of their claims.
When Trump bought the estate in 2006, his plans involved buying out some of the neighboring residents, including Michael Forbes. (Forbes' mother, Molly Forbes, lived on his property). But the Forbeses and several other neighbors refused to sell. Among other things, they were concerned that the golf course would damage the ecosystem of the sand dunes, which are deemed a Site of Special Scientific Interest by the Scottish government.
An Aberdeenshire council committee initially denied Trump's golf course plan, but the Scottish government intervened and approved it in 2008 on the grounds that the economic benefits outweighed the environmental harm. Trump's team then intensified its attempts to get neighbors to sell.
Trump reportedly asked the Aberdeenshire Council to consider a "compulsory purchase" of the land, which allows some entities to buy land without the owner agreeing to sell, as long as the purchase is considered within the public interest. According to the BBC, Molly Forbes brought legal action against Trump to stop such a purchase, which led the future president to call the property "slumlike" and "a pigsty." (The Guardian reported that, in the end, no compulsory purchase orders were ever issued).
In 2010, Michael and Molly Forbes' water was shut off after workers building a road on the golf course broke a pipe. Baxter, who was working on his first film about the situation, went to the golf course and informed a groundskeeper, who admitted the workers had broken a pipe. Later that day, Baxter and his producer were arrested on charges of "breach of peace." (The footage caused an outcry and the charges were dropped.)
However, the Forbeses' water problems continued because the broken pipe was on Trump's land and the resort never completely repaired it. According to The Guardian, Molly Forbes was without a reliable source of water for more than five years, during which time she relied on buckets from a nearby well and bottled water. In 2016, Michael Forbes repaired the pipe himself.
The first of the two golf course opened in 2012, and the second is scheduled to open in August 2025, according to The New York Times. The Scottish government delisted the dunes as a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 2020 because of the construction. Michael Forbes has no intention to sell his farmhouse, and Molly Forbes died at the age of 96 in 2021.
In sum, the story about Molly Forbes is true, albeit exaggerated.
Molly Forbes did not own the farmhouse — that was her son — but the Forbeses did refuse to sell the property to Trump. In 2010, workers did break the Forbeses' water pipe, which remained broken for more than five years.
However, the other aspects of the stories were not true. Snopes reviewed both of Baxter's documentaries on the topic, "You've Been Trumped" and "You've Been Trumped Too." Neither contained footage showing 24/7 floodlights or neighbors having their power cut. (The earliest reference to floodlights Snopes could find was from a 2016 article in The Telegraph.)
Finally, it's not clear how intrusive the construction schedule was. The documentaries do show significant construction work (in fact, one scene shows Trump's workers constructing earthen mounds to block the view of nearby houses from the golf course). However, whether that construction ran "through the day and night and weekends" as claimed by the social media posts is unknown.