DUBLIN — U.S. President Donald Trump stepped into the long-standing Ireland question Saturday during a golf-centered visit, saying he’d welcome a united island — a development long feared by Northern Ireland’s British unionists.
Seated next to Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin after flying in from Washington, Trump said he could not see why Northern Ireland — the part that remained in the U.K. when the rest of Ireland gained independence more than a century ago — hadn’t joined the Republic already.
“I’d love to see it unified. I think it’d be great. A great feather in everybody’s cap if that happened. It’s going to happen eventually,” Trump said, nodding to Martin, who has for years tried to mend fences with unionists without much success. “You’ve got the right man over here to get it moving. But I think it would be a fantastic thing. Now the U.K. will have something to say about it obviously. But I think it’d be a great thing. How can it be bad?”
Nearly 3,700 people lost their lives over three decades of violence tied to Northern Ireland’s constitutional status, a conflict largely addressed by the U.S.-brokered Good Friday Agreement of 1998. That accord set out that Northern Ireland should remain part of the U.K. so long as most voters there want it — a position that, according to virtually every poll since, has held up.
Trump’s comments will certainly rile staunch unionists in the north and provoke debate in London, but many here see his view as a pragmatic acknowledgement of a long-term democratic process. If Europe and the U.K. approach the issue sensibly — and work with international partners rather than reflexively opposing change — any transition can be orderly and peaceful.
