Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Obama will return to Ireland in ‘coming year or so’

Outgoing President Barack Obama will return to the Republic of Ireland “in the coming year or so,” according to U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Kevin O’Malley. “The last sentence the president said to me … [4 January] when we were saying goodbye, was ‘please tell them I’m coming’,” O’Malley told RTÉ host Marian Finucane.

While the location or context of his return is less clear than the timing, Obama is generally popular in Ireland. His May 2011 visit included a stop in Moneygall, County Offaly, the ancestral home of his great-great-great grandfather.

Since then, a service plaza was erected in Obama’s honor on the M7 motorway just outside the village. In addition to petrol and fast food, the place is packed with Obama souvenirs, plus memorabilia of popular presidents Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy. In a contemporary sense, it might be the most Irish-American spot in all of Ireland, through certainly not the most scenic or historic.

Barack Obama in Moneygall in 2011.

Obama, who also visited Northern Ireland in June 2013 for a G8 summit, leaves office 20 January, the inaugural of President-elect Donald Trump, who owns a golf resort in Doonbeg, County Clare. O’Malley will leave his Dublin post a few days earlier due to a demanded from the incoming administration that all non-career ambassadors depart immediately.

IrishCentral, citing a tweet from New York Times writer Maggie Haberman, reports the next U.S. Ambassador to Ireland will be philanthropist and businessman Brian Burns, the grandson of an emigrant from Sneem, County Kerry.  Burns, 80, and his wife, Eileen, have been close friends of Trump through the Palm Beach and Mar-A-Lago connection.

O’Malley, a St. Louis trial lawyer whose grandparents emigrated from County Mayo in the early 20th century, was appointed by Obama in June 2014 after a record-setting 18-month gap following the departure former ambassador and Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney.

Trump to continue St. Patrick’s Day tradition at White House

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has invited Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny to the White House for St Patrick’s Day in 2017, continuing a tradition that dates to 1952. Trump and Kenny spoke with each other for about 10 minutes on 9 November.

“He understands Ireland very well, he was complimentary about the decisions made about the economy here,” Kenny told The Irish Times. “He is looking forward to doing business with Ireland and I asked him specifically about Patrick’s Day, he is looking forward to continuing that tradition over many years.”

Trump owns a golf resort in Doonbeg, County Clare, which was “buzzing with activity” the day after his election, the TheJournal.ie reported.

Read my five-part blog series about U.S.-Irish relations at St. Patrick’s Day, which explores 1916, the year of the Rising, and 25-year anniversaries in 1941, 1966 and 1991; plus 1976, the year of the American bicentennial.

Below, watch a U.S. Embassy in Ireland-produced video about the White House shamrock ceremony.

Irish opinion on Trump’s triumph

Here’s a first day sampling of Irish and Irish-American opinion about Donald Trump’s shocking presidential victory.

      • On behalf of the Government and the people of Ireland, I am pleased to offer our sincere congratulations to Donald J. Trump on his election as the 45th President of the United States.

Statement by An Taoiseach (Enda Kenny) on the election of Mr Donald J. Trump

  • The republic of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt is now the United Hates of America, held together, insofar as it will hold together at all, by fear and loathing.

Fintan O’Toole in The Irish Times.

            • Five areas of immediate concern for Ireland: Undocumented Irish; multinationals; trade; border controls and visa programs; and cross Atlantic relationships.

Philip Ryan in The Irish Independent

            • Why so many Irish Americans voted for Trump? The answer I heard most often was that these voters could stomach [his] flaws because, they believed, Trump would do greater good by “draining the swamp,” that is Washington.

Niall O’Dowd in Irish Central (U.S.)

            • In comparison to Hillary Clinton, who made several visits to Northern Ireland over the past 21 years, Donald Trump is more of an unknown quantity so far as most Stormont politicians are concerned.

BBC NI Political Editor Mark Devenport

            • The election of Donald Trump … is America’s Brexit vote. He is its Putin, Orban, Erdogan, Duterte, wrapped into one unique, grotesque, autocratic form, and, yes, also a cry of despair. But caveat emptor U.S. voters have no idea what they have bought.

“They Know Not What They Do,” editorial in The Irish Times

The entrance of Trump's Doonbeg golf course in County Clare during my July visit.

The entrance of Trump’s Doonbeg golf course in County Clare during my July visit.

Trump attacks Clinton’s ties to Ireland

Donald Trump is making an issue of Hillary Clinton’s relationship with Irish businessman Denis O’Brien.

O’Brien is listed by the Clinton Foundation as having made $10 million to $25 million in donations to the charity as of June 2016, The Irish Independent reports. The Irish government is also listed as fifth among 19 nations that have donated to the Foundation, contributing in the range of $5 million to $10 million.

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Bill Clinton and Denis O’Brien

“This attack may not be deliberate Trump payback for overt political assaults on him by senior politicians in the Dáil this year, but it should be enough to worry Irish voters,” Colum Kenny writes in The Irish Times. “With the E.U. going after tax breaks for U.S. jobs here, we do not need a pissed-off president in the White House.”

Here’s the email the Trump campaign sent to reporters, which quotes extensively from Irish and U.S. media reports.