Meet the Scottish Farmers from the Documentary Donald Trump ‘Doesn’t Want You to See’

Jeff J Mitchell/Getty In this April 2012 photo, Michael Forbes stands beside his shed, near Donald Trump's golf course on the Menie estate in Aberdeen, Scotland.

President Donald Trump may be a “stable genius” to his supporters and “blatantly cheating” to his opponents, but he will only ever be known as one thing to Scottish farmer Michael Forbes: “the New York clown.”

A key figure in newly released documentary You’ve Been Trumped Too — a follow-up to 2011's You’ve Been Trumped — Forbes, 68, had his life turned upside down by the Scottish government's decision to green-light the Trump International Golf Links in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire, in November 2008.

Touted as the "world's greatest golf resort" by a pre-White House Trump, the development was expected to invest over $1 billion into the sleepy coastal region, creating 6,000 jobs at two new championship golf courses and a 450-bedroom luxury hotel, alongside constructing close to 1,500 vacation and residential homes.

But for Forbes and his mother Molly, 96, the project led only to a long, bitter struggle as Trump tried to wrench their land away via eminent domain following their refusal to sell for a cut-price figure, according to the new documentary.

Trump International, the documentary claims, also cut off the family's water supply — for five years. (The company has called those claims “defamatory” and “untrue.”)

"They decided to build a road and they dug up all the pipe and we had no water,” Forbes tells PEOPLE from his 23-acre farm, which is now surrounded on all sides by Trump-owned land. His mother has reportedly since moved into a care facility.

Aside from a boutique hotel with 21 rooms, neither the promised luxury hotel nor any of the 1,500 homes have so far been built.

"I couldn't understand why, but we were only getting water when it was raining. And then the water was all filthy and black and all sort of funny colors," Forbes says.

Molly Forbes collects water from a stream

“What was happening was we were getting the water that was the runoff off the road — it was going into our well. Now that I think about it, it could have killed us," Forbes says. "It was poisonous.”

This was particularly difficult for Molly, then in her late 80s, who was forced to dip tin cans into a nearby stream to draw water for her plants and hens.

"That's what she lived in for five years,” says Forbes, claiming the dirty water also devastated the family’s central heating systems — something that’s critical during Scotland’s notoriously harsh winters.

"She wasn't drinking it. She was buying water for drinking and I was carrying water from where I worked too,” Molly's son says. “But it was very hard.”

This situation continued until Forbes took matters into his own hands: The documentary shows him driving a mini-digger onto Trump's land to lay a new pipe himself. “It's been fine ever since,” he says.

In a previous statement to PEOPLE, Trump International insisted it "has never, and would never, conduct the type of activity claimed by Molly Forbes. These allegations are highly offensive, defamatory and categorically untrue."

The company has acknowledged a "clay pipe was unintentionally disrupted by our lead contractor” but said it was repaired immediately and that Forbes was “the joint owner of an antiquated, make-shift ‘well’ located on Trump land, the maintenance and operation of which is not the responsibility of the company.”

Trump himself previously derided Forbes as living in a "pigsty" and called him "an embarrassment to Scotland."

Documentary filmmaker Anthony Baxter (right) with President Donald Trump

While the documentary primarily covers the period from 2011 to 2016 the after-effects of the Trump development continue to this day.

"There's a sort of tension there that's tangible," says director Anthony Baxter. "You just don't really know what's going to happen next."

This has only increased since the Aberdeenshire council approved Trump International's plans to build a second golf course and 550 homes at the resort in September 2019.

Branded The Trump Estate, the plans feature cottages, shops, food outlets and million-dollar homes. The new 18-hole course will also be named MacLeod, in honor of Trump's mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who was raised on the Scottish island of Lewis.

"Everybody is waiting to see what the blazes they are going to do next," says local David Milne, whose home is singled out for demolition because Trump doesn't like its appearance, according to the documentary.

Toward the end of the film, Trump points at Milne's house and says about the commotion its demolition would cause: "Who cares? You know what, who cares?"

Since Trump became president, his company's involvement in Aberdeenshire has changed, locals say — for now, at least.

"They've been leaving us alone pretty much since he took office in 2016," says Milne, who is one of many in the area flying a Mexican flag from his garden in protest. "We're now basically just waiting to see what happens in the next U.S. election."

As for Michael Forbes: You’ve Been Trumped Too follows him as he attends the 2016 Republican National Convention and tries to alert people to his dealings with Trump. Despite meeting “lots of really nice folk,” he hit something of a brick wall.

The same could also be said for the documentary itself, which was originally intended to be released ahead of the 2016 election — only for the distributor to get cold feet after Trump International threatened legal action.

The previous Trump International statement obtained by PEOPLE, in 2016, stated that the company would “pursue legal action against those who have propagated these highly defamatory claims” in Baxter’s film.

Thanks to British distributor Journeyman Pictures, that changed earlier this year. (A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization did not respond to PEOPLE's request for comment about the release of the documentary or Forbes latest quotes.)

Now, the doc re-branded as "The Film He Doesn’t Want You to See" and "The Film Donald Trump Tried to Shut Down" is available iTunes, Amazon, GooglePlay, Journeyman VOD and Vimeo.

“I was mending fishing nets minding my own business and then all these cars came from nowhere. I said to myself, 'What the hell is going on here?' " Forbes recalls of his first — and so far only — meeting with Trump on a Balmedie beach around 15 years ago.

"He came up and he shook my hand but then all he spoke about was money and Trump. That's all he talked about," Forbes says. "I said to myself 'Who the hell is this?!' "

Trump, Forbes says, "was only interested in himself. He's just a selfish, spoiled brat."

"You know, he is supposed to be the greatest deal-maker in the world," the farmer says. "He couldn't deal a pack of cards. I sussed him out in 10 seconds."