Trump: Orange is the new Green

Red Lines

The episode examines the political fallout from Donald Trump's recent comments regarding Irish unification during his visit to Ireland. Pane

Key takeaways

• David Young describes Trump's comments as being delivered during a press conference 'spray' in Dublin.
• Dermot Ferreter argues that Donald Trump is 'profoundly ignorant' about the nuances of Irish history and the Belfast Agreement.

Main topics

• Donald Trump's Irish unity comments
• Impact on Northern Ireland politics

Notable quotes

I think Donald Trump is profoundly ignorant about Ireland.

Conclusion

While Trump's comments have caused significant media noise, the panel

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Welcome to the Haunted Library. Have you come in search of a tale? This podcast invites you to browse the shelves and find stories that will linger long after you've left this place. From gothic masterpieces to pulpy penny dreadfuls, join me, Colin Morgan, with new episodes twice a week. Find The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 5 (0:38) Was Dublin and Doonbeg just a dream or possibly a nightmare for some people? Does what Donald Trump had to say about Irish unity really matter? Did his comments move the dial at all on that? or was it just a 72-hour wonder? I'm Mark Carruthers. That's what we're discussing in this edition of Red Lines. And I'm pleased to say the man who asked the question that prompted the answer that made its way around the globe and back is with us today, David Young, head of the Press Association in Scotland and Ireland. Also with us, Dermot Ferreter, Professor of Modern Irish History at University College Dublin and a regular columnist for the Irish Times, and Ben Lowry, former editor of the newsletter. So welcome. to you all and thanks for making time for us today. Have to start with you, David Young, because your question prompted the answer we've all been talking about. First of all, did you have any idea what you were about to unleash when you put your hand up in that first press conference in Dublin last Saturday? Speaker 4 (1:36) Yeah, well, even the sense of putting your hand up was probably a bit off the mark in terms of how those events go. They're on like... Any real press conferences that we would experience over here, it's essentially, for want of a better phrase, a bit of a bun fight where, you know, whoever shouts the loudest, whoever, you know, is lucky enough to catch either the president or the Taoiseach's eye has a chance of asking a question. So, fortunately, I did catch the president's eye close to the end of what they call the spray. And, yeah, did I expect the answer? I think... Part of me did because he had hinted at it, not only in March when at the speaker's lunch he talked of the merger, but even at the start of that meeting when they both... Both principals had a few words to open things up and that's the way these things usually work. They make some opening comments. And then the first or second question, he was asked about his engagement with Catherine Connolly. And at that point, he mentioned again that they'd talked about Northern Ireland and he made another joke to the Taoiseach about when are you guys getting together in respect of potential hinting at unification again. very different from making a joke and making a quip at a lunch or as a sort of an aside to a question. It's different, obviously, to get him on the record and making a serious point on that. And that's what I'd hoped to achieve. And thankfully, it worked out like that. Speaker 5 (3:02) Yeah, I mean, he described it as a nice question in his first answer. You're saying, are you, that... You got a sense that his answer was to some extent pre-prepared. At least he was anticipating being asked that question by somebody at some point. Speaker 4 (3:18) Well, I got a sense that he knew what his thoughts on the matter were, whether or not he planned during that visit to articulate them publicly as emphatically as he did, I'm not sure. As I said, you know, the circumstances of the event itself makes me sort of... question that to a degree because it was at the tail end of the spray. He had other opportunities during that engagement and that engagement with the press to mention it if he wanted to proactively and he didn't choose to do that other than that, you know, as I said, that joke or that quip in regard to why don't you guys get together. So when he was asked the question, I think he took the opportunity to answer it and from that point on during the weekend, I think he He very much lent into it and rolled with it and went from there. He clearly knew it had caused a degree of controversy or a significant degree of controversy. He is a president that clearly, some might say, likes to engage in such controversy. So I think, you know, once he had said it, I think he certainly wasn't going to back away from it and he continued to double down and triple down as the weekend continued. Speaker 5 (4:27) Yeah, absolutely no doubt about that. And those of us who were following, The weekend's events unfold saw him restate the position and not walk away from it on a number of occasions while those around him and up here tried to make sense of it all. We'll talk in a bit more detail about precisely how much weight his comments carried and whether it moves the conversation about a united Ireland forward in any meaningful way or not. But I just want to bring in Dermot and Ben at this point. Dermot, first of all, I mean... Were you surprised to see Donald Trump weighing into this debate in the way that he did? Speaker 1 (5:03) No, I wasn't surprised in the sense that, you know, if he's arriving somewhere or if he is hosting in the White House, he will perhaps have, you know, been briefed about certain questions that he may just decide then to give a soundbite. And it was a soundbite. I mean, I think about it in two ways. I'm loathe to attach any significant weight. to it because I think Donald Trump is profoundly ignorant about Ireland. I don't think he spent the plane journey over reading the Belfast Agreement from cover to cover. His interest in Ireland revolves around his elite golf resort and occasional briefing from officials about pharmaceutical companies, American pharmaceutical companies and Ireland. But, you know, beyond that, there isn't much engagement. It's not on his political radar to any significant extent. um having said that obviously any white house intervention at that senior level on the irish question or on the question of of partition is going to generate a significant amount of attention and response and you know this is a 50-year story i suppose you could say in in relation to the 1970s going back to the 1970s when there was an intervention by the carter white house um and you know john hume and others ended up going to the united states because they really had nowhere else to go, you know, and I mean, that did generate in the long term significant engagement, you know, you had Reagan putting pressure on Thatcher in the 1980s and then the greening of the White House under President Bill Clinton and so on and the involvement in the peace process. But this is not obviously on that level or on that scale. It was a soundbite. It was a useful distraction, I think, because. That was what generated the headlines. You know, it took a focus away from much more difficult questions. It's very easy, obviously, to express the desire to see Ireland united and not have to have any kind of detail attached to it or any deep kind of thought spread over it. And I think that's significant. about the media response. And I mean, he said it himself and he was clearly enjoying the idea that he had caused a fuss, you know. And I mean, that is part of the Donald Trump playbook. You know, you find something that the media will run with and then you double down on it because it's generating hits. So I think it's all very superficial and shallow. It will annoy. various people. It will please other people, but it will also please some people who don't want to be speaking positively about Donald Trump. So it's not straightforward at all. I'd imagine Micheál Martin wasn't particularly happy. He wasn't going to say that publicly. But, you know, there's a certain snippiness on the part of the Taoiseach at the moment about talk of Irish unity. And it also feeds in, I suppose, to what really is quite a deep... antipathy between himself and Sinn Féin when it comes to the whole question of a border pole and so on. So, you know, it can have reverberations in a lot of different ways. But at the same time, is it beyond Donald Trump to change his mind and say in a few weeks or a few months that he's actually a committed unionist? Speaker 5 (8:23) Yeah, well, that's an interesting question, Ben, isn't it? I want to ask you, first of all, just what you make of Dermot's assessment there that Trump is profoundly ignorant on Ireland, that this was a distraction. I have to say, at one point over the weekend, I did see the Taoiseach Micheál Martin saying, well, I've just had lunch with the president and we sat down together and I was explaining to him. about the Good Friday Agreement and I was talking him through the role that the two governments played in the past and I was talking to him about some of the complexities of Northern Ireland and the constitutional conversation. I think he was fairly tight-lipped at that point. It was obvious, if you read between the lines, I think that he was saying this is a man who, as Dearman says, didn't really know. about the nuances of what we all know is an enormously complex