EditTrump’s case for a united Ireland
No U.S. president has so publicly and explicitly backed Irish unity as Donald Trump did over the weekend
Donald Trump used a weekend in Ireland to break with decades of American caution and say out loud that he wants a united Ireland — a line aimed as much at Irish-American voters before the mid-terms as at Dublin, London or Belfast, writes Dick Roche.
EUalive’s columnist Dick Roche is a former Irish Minister for European Affairs. His columns can be found here.
Coming two weeks after Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s remarks on the Good Friday Agreement, the president’s comments add to a growing argument about what comes next for that settlement.
Unlike the headline-grabbing asides that pepper so many of his speeches, Trump’s words on reunification sounded like a position he had thought about.
Leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland meet after Trump backs a united Ireland
The question that produced them did not fall from a clear blue sky. He teed it up himself.
The comments were probably aimed less at an Irish audience than at the American mid-terms. That does not make them less significant.
Nerves in Dublin
When Trump landed in Dublin on Saturday morning, the main worry in government and diplomatic circles was that his courtesy call on President Catherine Connolly might go badly. There was speculation, even anticipation, of a blow-up at Áras an Uachtaráin, the first event of a busy weekend.
As a TD, and again in the 2025 presidential campaign, Connolly had been a regular critic. In a 2017 Dáil debate she called him “a misogynist and racist (whose) policies are discriminatory and appear to be in contravention of the Geneva Convention.” She said the taoiseach should take a St Patrick’s Day message to the White House that “we abhor President Trump’s policies,” adding: “I shudder at what President Trump represents.” The criticism continued at the start of his second term, when she was deputy speaker, and through her campaign for the presidency.
The visit to the Áras passed without a public explosion. A little over an hour later, Trump’s own readout of part of the conversation was making headlines.
The second event was a meeting with Taoiseach Micheál Martin. At the joint briefing afterwards, Trump was asked whether the Middle East had come up with Connolly. He sidestepped it. “We discussed a lot of things quickly. We weren’t there very long but it was a very nice meeting. We had a very respectful meeting.” Then: “We did discuss Northern Ireland. I always find it very interesting.”
He said the subject had also featured with Martin. Recalling that he knew people from all parts of Ireland, he went on: “I sometimes say, ‘Hey, when are you guys getting together?’ Right? I do ask that question every time.” Martin, sitting beside him, said: “You do — you’re consistent in that.” Trump added: “I’m sure it’s complicated, but life is complicated.”
Given the opening he had created, the questioning drifted — including to the Falkland Islands — before a direct question brought it back: “What’s your view on Irish reunification?”
He did not hold back. In what looked like a prepared answer he said: “Well I don’t want to cause any problems, but I will tell you I’d love to see it unified. I have friends on both sides, great people, they’re Irish people, how can they be bad, right?” He added: “It’s going to happen eventually. It might as well happen now. I think it would be a fantastic thing. Now the UK will have something to say about that, obviously, but I think it would be a great thing. I mean, how can it be bad?”
At his third engagement, a reception at the U.S. ambassador’s residence billed as an address to Irish and Irish-American business leaders, he returned to the subject unprompted. Ignoring that he himself had introduced Northern Ireland when asked about the Middle East, he cast the reunification question as a journalist’s “killer” — one where “no matter what you say, no matter how well you say it, there’s no good answer.” He added: “But I actually said it would be, I think, a very cool thing, to be honest with you.”
The rest of the speech was domestic politics, framed for the mid-terms.
On Sunday, at the Irish Open, he was asked again about the comments and the backlash. He did not walk them back. “It just seems to me that you have Northern Ireland and you have Ireland and it would seem to me that one of the naturals of all time is to put them together. So that’s only my opinion, and by the way many people agree.”
Reactions
Two weeks after Burnham’s remarks on the Agreement, and two days before the first ministers of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland — leaders of parties that want to leave the United Kingdom — were due to meet in Cardiff, the intervention landed at an awkward moment for London.
A spokesman for Burnham said the government’s position was unchanged and that, in the prime minister’s view, there is no majority public support for a referendum on Irish unity. The deputy prime minister dismissed the episode as “Donald Trump is Donald Trump and will say and speak his mind as he sees it.” Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called the comments “unhelpful.”
The taoiseach suggested there had been an “overreaction,” and that Trump had said similar things before.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, whose party took part in protests against the visit, “acknowledged President Trump’s comments on the reunification of Ireland” and said “the conversation on the reunification of Ireland has shifted, and the onus is on the taoiseach to begin planning.” Gerry Adams, who led Sinn Féin when the Agreement was signed, said the remarks were “welcome even though we profoundly differ from him on many other matters.” Claire Hanna, leader of the SDLP, the second-largest nationalist party in the Assembly, said Trump was “reflecting a growing momentum behind constitutional change” and “a signal of the energy and dynamism in the topic.”
In Northern Ireland, DUP leader Gavin Robinson said the future would be decided by the people of Northern Ireland and “not by commentary in London, Dublin or Washington.” Ian Paisley Jr, son of the party’s founder, was calmer: “Everyone (including President Trump) is allowed a personal opinion even when it’s wrong.”
The reason why
As Trump left on Sunday evening after what his team will have counted as a successful visit — and, for golf fans including the president, an enjoyable one — the question he left behind was why he so deliberately put Northern Ireland and reunification at the centre of the trip. By endorsing unity in public he broke a convention previous American presidents had observed with care. It was not a slip.
Commentators have not been short of theories: a distraction from the Middle East and the war with Iran; punishment for Britain’s failure to back him on the Strait of Hormuz; a message to Burnham, whom Trump has called “extremely liberal.”
The likelier reason is votes. The mid-terms are in the final stretch. As of 2024 the U.S. Census Bureau recorded almost 32.5 million people identifying as Irish-American. They once voted Democrat. That began to change in the Reagan years. With the president’s popularity slipping and the election less than two months away, every chance to reconnect matters. The Irish Open at Trump International Golf Links, Doonbeg, gave the Republican leader a ready stage. He used it: affection for Ireland and the Irish; praise for the country’s success in winning American investment — usually a sore point for him; a pitch for Irish business; the case for unity; and, to finish, a cut in tariffs on Irish whiskey.
The flattery will not reach every Irish-American voter. It will reach some. In a tight election every vote counts. Thirty hours of canvassing in Ireland may yet show up at the ballot box. Time will tell.
Caption: US President Donald Trump (R) and Ireland’s Taoiseach Micheal Martin (L) attend the trophy presentation of the Irish Open at the Trump International Golf Links and Hotel in Doonbeg, Ireland, 13 September 2026. Trump is on a two-day visit to Ireland, which includes attending the Irish Open at his golf course in Doonbeg. EPA/NEIL HALL
Updated: September 15, 2026 - 07:32
