Trump’s thumbs-up to Irish reunification breaks with precedent, but evokes earlier age of White House support

Filed 2h ago · Via The Conversation · The Buffoon Desk

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Medieval Loop One

Alexander Nakarada · creatorchords.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Rijksmuseum · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

President Trump told Taoiseach Micheál Martin he would 'love to see' a united Ireland and called reunification 'a cool thing,' breaking with decades of formal U.S. neutrality on the question since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The remarks drew swift pushback from the Irish government, Northern Irish unionists, British conservatives, and Trump ally Nigel Farage.

A historian situates this in a longer pattern: Andrew Jackson wrote fondly of Irish liberty but took no action, Andrew Johnson and Ulysses Grant both quietly declined to help Fenian independence efforts despite courting Irish-American votes, and Woodrow Wilson's self-determination rhetoric excluded Ireland when it mattered at Versailles. The piece frames Trump's comments as reviving that older tradition of presidential sympathy without policy behind it.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Every president in this rundown talked a good game about Irish freedom and then went home for supper without lifting a finger. Trump saying reunification is 'a cool thing' fits that mold exactly, all applause and no follow-through. The Irish have heard this kind of warm nothing from American leaders since before the potato ever failed.

Source: Read the original at The Conversation → Scored: Medieval Loop One · Alexander Nakarada · CC BY 4.0

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