Cornish hotel owner predicts Donald Trump will win Presidential election
John Mappin scooped £100k in a bet last time Trump won
Four years ago the world looked on in surprise as Donald Trump was elected President of the USA.
However there was one man in Cornwall who was not surprised at all – in fact John Mappin was so sure that he scooped £100,000 after betting that Mr Trump would triumph.
And so, with the next presidential election set to take place in just a few weeks’ time, who better to go and visit and ask whether President Trump will return on November 3.
After spending more than an hour in the company of Mr Mappin at his Camelot Castle Hotel in Tintagel I found myself bamboozled after hearing him talk about everything from his relationship with the American President to the coronavirus pandemic which currently grips the world.
In our meeting he told me:
- Donald Trump will win again on November 3
- How his hotel does the “bare minimum” to comply with Government legislation around COVID-19
- That he has discovered a cure for depression and a cure for drug addiction
- That President Trump is “the greatest environmentalist that has ever walked the earth”
- He has prevented four wars with meetings he has held at Camelot Castle
- That there are cures to coronavirus
- And that coronavirus is an attempt to prevent President Trump from being re-elected
Arriving at the Camelot Castle Hotel you are greeted by a sign which claims it has the best coffee in Cornwall – it’s the first sign of the confidence and bravado which John Mappin wears on his sleeve.
It is also the first of many claims which the hotelier seems happy to make with seemingly no evidence to back them up.
Walking into the reception area of the hotel you are confronted by a number of photographs of Mr Mappin with various celebrities, as well as a large photo of Trump himself.
And as I sat waiting for Mr Mappin and glanced around the room I spotted a framed photograph of soul star Isaac Hayes – I’m still not entirely sure why it was there.
None of the staff I encountered at the hotel were wearing face masks and while the majority of guests wore them, you could see that some had chosen not to due to the hotel’s relaxed policy.
I took the opportunity to ask him about this during our conversation which lasted just over an hour.
He had been telling me how one of the negatives in this country is that people worry too much about what other people think and said that he was “over that a long time ago”.
“You can’t go through life worrying about what other people think, what your parents think, you cannot live your life that way, you have to keep your own goals and do what you think is the right thing to do.”
So, following that line of thinking, I asked, what did he think about the restrictions which have been put in place by the Government to help prevent the spread of coronavirus and, more importantly, does he follow them.
“I do follow them,” he said “We have the signs up but, here is the way we do it here, we say these are the government restrictions but it is also the law that if you have a hidden disability we are not allowed to ask you what that disability is or why you are not wearing a mask, as we could get fined. I respect the law. I would never ask you why are you not wearing a mask as you could have a hidden disability. What we have done is complied with the law to the absolute bare minimum, because I am not going to break the law, I don’t agree with breaking the law, I agree with changing the law to rational argument.”
OK, but if he goes to a shop, would he wear a mask?
After a slight pause Mr Mappin said: “Well, it depends, if I had a hidden disability. And you’re not allowed to ask if I have a hidden disability. That would depend if I had a disability. I also like to follow my doctor’s advice and my doctor told me that masks won’t help you. That is what my doctor told me.”
Mr Mappin then went on to claim that there was scientific evidence showing that masks don’t work and that they actually cause more respiratory problems.
Before he explained: “My personal view is that masks absolutely don’t work, what they do do is this. They maintain a culture of fear, when you walk out down the high street and you see everyone wearing masks you are constantly being reminded that there is something to be scared of. You are perpetuating what I call a form of weaponry.”
He said that it was a programme which was being used by Governments to create a state of fear and panic.
And then made a bold claim: “It’s a programme and all devised, every single thing you have witnessed in 2020 it was all designed to prevent another four years of Trump, that’s what all this is about.
“Everything that we have witnessed this year has been a covert operation to attempt to prevent President Trump from doing another four years. Because they know that he is exposing their corruption.”
It wasn’t the first time we had touched on coronavirus and its impact over the course of our conversation.
This included his claims that he is aware of cures to the coronavirus – although this was first said to be three cures and later became five – and a suggestion that these are being suppressed due to the interests of pharmaceutical giants and to continue the “programme of fear”.
Mr Mappin said that he knew about the cures in February “because I am close to the President” and they include one which is “99.3% cure which is fantastic, that’s even for very old people with underlying conditions”.
He said: “So I was like ‘why is this cure not being made available?’ and then of course you do the maths and realise that it costs very little and obviously somebody has been planning to make a lot of money out of that. They don’t want people to know about this cure, they don’t want people to feel safe that there is a cure and something can be done about it, what they want people to be is in fear and worried so the Government has been putting out this programme of fear basically, it’s a propaganda programme.”
While Mr Mappin would probably happily talk about such theories and claims all day, and indeed has set up an online TV channel based at Camelot Castle to share his views online – he claims that more than 100million people from all over the world have tuned in during lockdown – I was more interested in his relationship with Mr Trump.
And it was clear that he sees himself as a key ally of the US President: “The truth of the matter is, other than Nigel Farage, there is nobody in this country that understands President Trump and therefore knows President Trump better than myself.”
And will he be re-elected on November 3?
“I think he will, I think he will.”
Will he be putting another bet on?
“No. I am too old for that now.”
Looking at the election campaign he said: “It is very interesting and Trump has absolutely got his finger on the pulse if you look at the difference in the size of the rallies and the people who turn up for Trump rallies and the people who turn up for Biden rallies and it’s like 30 to 70,000. The only thing I think if he loses they will cheat, they will have cheated, they will have rigged the mail-in voting, they will somehow rigged the ballot, it’s the only way they can win. It’s the only way they can win, the only way he can lose. A lot of people are watching the turnout, the evangelical turnout will be massive. Everybody thought that Christians wouldn’t back Trump because nobody thought he was a Christian, but he is very Christian indeed. And having met him I can tell you that one of the main things, one of the main strengths is that you feel when you meet the President you feel the love of God emanating from him. You feel it, it’s palpable.”
So what is he like as a person?
“He is hilarious, he’s very relaxed. He’s like, imagine the funnest guy that you would meet down the pub, we have all got a mate that we love to go down the pub with, he’s that guy. That’s who he is. He’s fucking hilarious and people love him for it. He is just not perfect, he’s not a perfect human being, but then again are you perfect? Am I perfect? No, we’ve all got flaws. He just rolls with it, he goes with the next thing and he is a beautiful, beautiful being.”
Mr Mappin says that the world’s media made a mistake before the previous election in not taking Trump seriously and said that he feels that media organisations should take “time out” and “give him a fair shake”.
He said: “This guy has actually brought peace to the Middle East, he has created the best economy that America has ever had, he has done amazing things, he has delivered freedom, he has improved the justice system, he has got hundreds of black people out of jail serving these ridiculous sentences that they should never have been in for. He has done some really good things. Let’s just have a fair balance and, you know what, if we were to do that and we were to be fair what we would get back would be so good and what the world would get back. It doesn’t help local people here, even in Cornwall to have a negative view, we are a fair country I think and all I have ever said is be fair to the guy. Look at some of the good things he has done and report those accurately. I think he is going to have another four years and I think it is going to be fantastic for Britain, it is going to be fantastic for Europe.”
Mr Mappin then said that he had been working with Trump on a plan to plant a trillion trees and claimed that at Camelot Castle had lobbied Trump to launch the idea.
However a quick Google search reveals that the Trillion Trees initiative is a project led by Birdlife International, the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) and Wildlife Conservation Society and that the US is a signatory to the idea.
But Mr Mappin said: “One of the things we are very proud of is we came up with the idea to launch a trillion trees global reforestation programme, President Trump tweeted out and announced in a press release. Our whole thing from him is that we are launching a global reforestation programme. Trump, if Trump does this trillion trees that he announced yesterday that actually makes President Trump the greatest environmentalist that has ever walked the Earth. The greatest environmentalist that has ever walked the Earth.”
Listening to Mr Mappin you have to question the claims he is making and the plausibility of what he says. And when a simple fact check reveals that even something which sounded credible like the Trillion Trees project claim is untrue you start to question everything he says.
None more so when he claims that he has a cure for depression and a cure for drug addiction.
“I came across a cure for depression and a cure for drug addiction and in the last 30 years we have helped draw attention to this particular solution to depression and drug addiction and we have actually helped to cure over a million people from depression which is a very, very, obviously if somebody experiences that it is a very valuable thing.”
And again when he suggests that Camelot Castle, perched out at the very end of Tintagel, was the location for the prevention of wars.
“This room here, and I can say this hand on heart, God’s truth, we have prevented four wars from occurring on this planet in the last four years. There are four wars that would have otherwise have occurred as a result of conversations that have happened in this room.”
Mr Mappin claimed that a delegation from North Korea went to the hotel to ask him to decipher a communication from President Trump that they did not understand and that they went to him as the only person in England who understands him.
It’s almost surreal to hear someone speak with such conviction about these claims which can only be fairy tales.
Walking through Tintagel there is evidence all around of the mix of folklore and legend which surround the village, it’s infamous castle and King Arthur.
It is a history which has become filtered through myths and stories which have been passed through the generations to leave the real picture a little unclear.
Listening to John Mappin you have to wonder whether he has perhaps spent too long in Tintagel and is trying to create his own myths and legends which are based more on hearsay than tangible evidence.