Trump’s comments on a united Ireland may have targeted audience across the Atlantic

Full account

US President Donald Trump's two-day visit to Ireland was overshadowed on its opening day by unscripted remarks suggesting he would welcome a united Ireland, comments that reverberated across Dublin, Belfast and London. Asked at a joint press appearance with Taoiseach Micheál Martin at Farmleigh House about his personal views on Irish unity, Trump said he would 'love' to see the North and South reunite. He returned to the theme shortly afterwards in a lengthy address to Irish and Irish-American business figures at the US ambassador's residence, this time raising it near the start of his speech, as though aware of the reaction his earlier comment had already provoked.

Reaction on both sides of the Atlantic focused less on whether Trump's underlying prediction was wrong than on what, if anything, it signalled about US policy. Mick Mulvaney, who served as the first Trump administration's special envoy to Northern Ireland, moved quickly to play down the remarks, insisting they did not amount to a change of course and that Washington remained fully behind the Good Friday Agreement. Democratic congressman Brendan Boyle offered a similar assessment, noting the enduring cross-party US backing for that settlement. Both men allowed that Trump might ultimately prove correct that unification would happen 'eventually', while stressing this was a far cry from any active American push in that direction.

Questions were also raised about who the comments were really aimed at. Trump's address to business leaders ran to roughly forty minutes, twice its billed length, and drifted well beyond Irish affairs into a recap of his domestic record on immigration enforcement, trade agreements and defence manufacturing, along with renewed criticism of what he regards as Britain's insufficient backing for his military action against Iran. Given that much of this was being broadcast to American viewers before dawn, and with the US midterm elections looming in November amid pressure on the Republican Party, some observers suggested the true target audience sat in the United States rather than in the room in Dublin, even though Irish-Americans do not vote as a single bloc.

A separate account, citing senior Irish government and US administration sources, offered a more pointed explanation for the episode. According to this reporting, Trump raised the subject of a 'merger' unprompted within minutes of a private meeting with President Catherine Connolly at Áras an Uachtaráin, though Connolly reportedly steered the conversation instead towards the actions of Israeli forces in Gaza rather than engaging on unification. Sources briefed on the visit characterised the president's later public comments as a deliberate, premeditated move rather than a spontaneous aside, describing it as calculated to inflict maximum political discomfort on the British government over its lukewarm support for the Iran strikes. Trump's Irish itinerary, which began with Air Force One's arrival in Dublin under heavy security shortly after 8am, was built around attending the Irish Open at his Doonbeg resort, making the unity remarks an unexpected diplomatic sideshow to what had been billed primarily as a golfing trip.

• www.bbc.co.uk
• www.dailymail.com