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Columntrump in ireland
The big visit After an eventful week in the US, the Trump show comes to Ireland
As Donald Trump prepares to visit Ireland, the country he encounters is increasingly distant from the USA it once knew and admired.
THERE IS A lot happening in the United States now: from the commencement of another National Football League season, to the “Trumpapalooza”-themed Republican midterm convention, to the 25th anniversary of the horrific events of 9/11. And this weekend, President Donald Trump will set foot on Irish shores.
While NFL kick-off is probably most animating the American people, it is worth casting our collective Mind’s Eye back to a moment in history that will forever live in infamy. Those of us of a certain age absorbed images on television of what was transpiring on a beautiful morning in Manhattan that won’t leave us.
It was strange for me in that I had only a few days previously relocated from Boston to Galway. Like many, on hearing the news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre, I presumed that it was a tiny aircraft that had lost its navigation, not a hijacked Boeing 767.
The reality swiftly dawned that it was something far worse. It was pure evil. Family members and friends have long told me that I cannot comprehend just how crazy the following hours were; rumours abounded that numerous flights had been captured and there was an inescapable aura of apocalypse.
The lives and legacies of those who died so tragically, in particular the heroic first responders, are appropriately being remembered a quarter of a century later. This period has passed by incredibly quickly and has been, to put it mildly, a tumultuous one. Among the hugely significant elements of the upheaval that ensued has been America’s squandering of the moral authority and global support it had on 9/11.
The failed wars prosecuted by George W Bush and neoconservatives in his administration yielded to the “Yes We Can” message of optimism offered by Barack Obama. The Obama presidency’s inevitable failure to match the promise of the inspiring rhetoric he deployed on the campaign trail, in tandem with some ugly truths regarding skin colour in the US, led to what pundits scoffed at and deemed impossible: the rise of Donald Trump.
The state of America
As he approaches the halfway mark of his second stint in the White House and midterms loom, this week saw an unusual midterm convention. Politically speaking, it is a rather bizarre celebration of a man whose multiple missteps and abject failures at home and abroad have made him deeply unpopular. It could well prove the case that, if GOP nominees fare as badly in November as the polling suggests they might, the spectacle in Dallas is recalled by party operatives as an exemplar of how and why things went terribly wrong.
Outlandishly, in an approximately 90-minute, rambling address in a venue where there were plenty of empty seats, President Trump promised $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans win both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. This pledge – or, more accurately, bribe – is of dubious legality, depends on an unlikely scenario coming to pass and, if precedent is any dictate, will soon be abandoned.
The focus appears to be on ensuring the base of MAGA faithful and right-wingers adjacent to it get out and vote. Because Republicans have done poorly during the last decade when Trump himself was not on the ballot, Trump beseeched the assembled crowd and those watching on their screens to pretend that he is up for election.
In an effort to distract attention from what Vice President JD Vance asserts is not a war in Iran and the consequently still high price of gas and consumer goods, the commander-in-chief and others at the convention reverted to the oldest trick in the Republican playbook: the culture wars. There’s a reason they do so: it works.
Millions of dollars in advertising will be poured into tight contests in battleground states and districts, where Democratic candidates once espoused or still articulate views that are well left of the women and men whose votes are up for grabs. That this is the plan should be no surprise. How well Democrats respond to the impending attacks could be decisive to the outcome in, for instance, Texas, where James Talario has a chance of beating Ken Paxton.
Trump’s arrival
Notwithstanding all that he has on his plate, President Trump, after commemorating 9/11 at the Pentagon, will board Air Force One and land at Dublin Airport on Saturday morning. The visit, to be frank, serves no political purpose and has aptly been described as a golf trip to watch the Irish Open at his beloved course in Doonbeg. The Atlantic crossing also demonstrates the closeness of his friendship with US Ambassador Edward Walsh.
Despite speculation that tensions may bubble to the surface in his meetings with Taoiseach Micheál Martin and President Catherine Connolly, especially the latter, my guess is that they will go reasonably smoothly. It’s in no one’s interests for things to be fractious, and it has been widely averred that Trump is affable in person.
His confab with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani went swimmingly. The sole blow-up in the Oval Office with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was arguably egged on more by Vice President Vance than his boss. Martin and Connolly may express their disquiet with ongoing conflicts in Iran, in Gaza and in Ukraine, but I suspect they will be tactful and convey their points in a non-accusatory fashion. Should they be critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they might even find a kindred spirit because it’s pretty apparent that President Trump is furious with him.
The crucial caveat here is that making firm predictions about anything Trump-related is a fool’s errand.
There will be protests in west Clare and in the vicinity of the Phoenix Park. They will attract sizeable crowds, though the Secret Service and gardaí have to be thrilled that “turning the sod” on the new US Embassy building in Ballsbridge has evidently vanished from the itinerary. It would have been a total sh*t show.
Putting aside the righteous anger of the protesters, the prevalent attitude of the Irish citizenry about the US President being among us seems to be “let’s make sure there’s no major incident and let’s get out of it unscathed.” What has traditionally been a very big deal – the arrival of the leader, no matter his party affiliation, of the world’s most powerful country, which so many Irish people were tied to in so many ways – is different in 2026.
The fraying of those ties, owing near equally to emigration slowing to a trickle and to a growing attitudinal gulf between Ireland and the US on a host of topics, is a further regrettable development post-9/11. And as much Irish ire as he provokes, it’s not all down to Donald Trump. Hope springs eternal in my heart for a renaissance.
Larry Donnelly is a Boston lawyer, a Law Lecturer at the University of Galway and a political columnist with TheJournal.ie.
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