Trump’s outburst on Ireland shows he’s losing his grip on reality

Of all the peculiar, self-serving, ill-considered, and downright barmy things Donald Trump has said and done in the five years and eight months that he has been President, nothing has quite reached the heights (or depths) of his contribution to the question of Irish sovereignty at the weekend. On a visit to Dublin to meet the Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Trump was asked by a reporter what he thought of the idea of a unified Ireland. This is standard journalistic practice these days: pick a subject so big, so complicated, so nuanced, so emotionally charged and so potentially disputatious, and wait for Trump to reduce an age-old issue of great perplexity to a simplistic, off-the-cuff solution. In the elegant Edwardian surroundings of Farmleigh House, the US President certainly didn’t disappoint. Sitting on an armchair, he leaned forward, hands clasped, and rose to the occasion with a trademark mixture of grandiloquent certainty and nonsensical informality. “I’d love to see it [Ireland] unified,” he said. “I have friends on both sides. Great people. They’re Irish people – how can they be bad? You know what: it’s going to happen eventually, so it might as well happen now… I think it would be a fantastic thing.” Realising that he may have stepped into a diplomatic fly-trap, Trump added that “the UK will have something to say about it. Obviously.” Really? After centuries of struggles and bloodshed and sectarian division, the British government may have an opinion on this most contentious and defining of political issues? Whatever made him think that? Nevertheless, he concluded by asserting: “I think it would be a great thing. How could it be bad?” Later, at a press conference, he seemed to understand (or was told) that he’d fallen for something of a sucker punch. “Every question is a kill,” he said, explaining that he’d been asked about Irish unification. And so, puzzled by this conundrum, he instead doubled down on his earlier response. “I actually said it would be, I think, a very cool thing.” He then repeated that a united Ireland would be “cool”. Cool? When you set this against Tony Blair feeling “the hand of history on his shoulder” as he fought to keep the Good Friday Agreement alive, or Bill Clinton saying that the people of Northern Ireland “have chosen hope over hate; the promise of the future over the poison of the past. And in so doing, already they have written a new chapter in the rich history of their island, a chapter of resolute courage that inspires us all”, you realise how low we have sunk in terms of statesmanlike behaviour and language. Cool? It’s such an insult to the architects of the Good Friday Agreement, which ended 30 years of bloodshed and, in which, it said that unification could only happen if there was a majority on the island of Ireland in favour. And such a casual disregard for the sensitivities involved, particularly for the families of the 3,500 people (more than half of them civilians) killed during the Troubles. Trump has been acting in an increasingly bizarre way. One recent weekend saw him take to social media with AI images that showed him intimidating Canada’s Prime Minister with a hockey stick and patrolling dark streets with killer robots. There were maps showing the United States taking over other countries. There were tributes to himself as “the Greatest President of All Time!”. In all, he posted 60 times in a little more than 10 hours. He is the anti-President, the world leader who doesn’t behave like one, who’s capable of acting in the way an ordinary, uninformed citizen might, expressing certainties that are based only on sketchy knowledge and predicting outcomes as “inevitable” because his instinct says so. That’s what makes his intervention in the Irish debate so manifestly wrong. Irish unification is not a matter to be decided on the personal whim of an American President, settled over a pint of the black stuff and a handshake. The lack of respect this shows for history, culture, religion and politics is quite jaw-dropping, even by Trumpian standards. This is not, as satirists might say, a sign that Trump has gone crazy. Rather, it’s another example of how detached the American President is from reality, and how dangerous that may be for the world. He doesn’t appear to appreciate that reality cannot be shaped by Executive Order, and world events cannot be bent to his will. However, like a stopped clock that’s accurate twice a day, Trump could be right that, one day, Irish unification will happen. But he will not have hand in it. That will be left to the Irish people, and to statesmen and women who, unlike him, understand the complex, grand, and often unforgiving sweep of history.