WEXFORD REACTS TO TRUMP
DAVID TUCKER ASKED WEXFORD TDS, AND THREE WEXFORD-GROUNDED PEOPLE WITH STRONG LINKS TO THE U.S., THEIR VIEWS OF THE NEW PRESIDENT OF THE FREE WORLD. THIS IS THEIR RESPONSE...
New York resident Pierce Turner, who lives in Manhattan:
‘He’s really reviled in New York and always has been. I remember passing him by in Radio City once, maybe 10 years ago, and the ego coming off of him was repellant even then,’ said Pierce.
‘He bluffed his way along like a poker player and it was really clear in the last (TV) debate when he was hit with real political questions. It was like looking at a mirror image of myself hopping from foot to foot if I was asked to conduct a 100-piece orchestra. I wouldn’t have any idea what to do.’
Pierce said Trump ‘looked like a scared dog’ during his televised meeting with President Obama following his election. ‘He was so out of his depth.. he’s acting like (Nigel) Farage and (Borris) Johnson. When they got Brexit they ran for the trees, they only know how to break it and not how to fix it and Trump is the same,’ referring to Trump and Farage, who met at the weekend, as ‘a real pair of eejits’.
‘Now we’re stuck with him. My only hope is that he is not really as bad as Hitler, I don’t think he is, but there the rabble that is following him, some are not that bad, but just misled and he stirs them up.
‘It’s going to be very strange and I’m worried about what the rabble will do when they realise he’s not going to do everything he said he was, like repealing Obamacare and building a wall along the border with Mexico.’
‘My greatest hope is that he will try to stay afloat and try to adjust things slightly,’ said Pierce suggesting that Trump would most likely be on the phone to Obama every couple of days asking for advice once he took office.
‘He will be calling him every second day and saying “give us a hand here”,’ he said.
Seattle-born Elizabeth Rose-Browne, media relations manager for Wexford Festival Opera, said it was frightening to to see who he’s apppointing to his cabinet.
On Sunday, Trump appointed Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as chief of staff and Steve Bannon, his campaign’s chief executive and the former chairman of the conservative website Breitbart News, as his chief strategist and senior counsellor.
Bannon is widely viewed as a controversial figure closely associated with the ‘alt-right’ movement. Elizabeth said that in a strange way ‘it was good that Trump controlled the executive, the judiciary and the congress in that it meant there will be no one else to blame’. ‘We are in a pretty grave situation,’ she said.
Asked whether she believed the real Donald Trump was the hectoring bully so visible before the election or the more conciliatory figure in evidence since, Elizabeth said she had no idea. ‘It’s the unknown that is so frightening, he has the power and means to do what he wants.’
Dual US and Irish citizen, and onetime general election candidate Breda Cahill said that instead of pre-judging, people should look at what Trump is going to do and then make their minds up.
‘I think it will be positive for America and Americans. It would be good for Ireland if we had someone like him fighting for us in Europe and doing what was best for us,’ she said. Breda said Trump was not the bogey man he was being made out to be. ‘I think a lot of his rhetoric was to mobilise the disaffected, to get people’s attention. People are so used to politicians being politically correct that no-one really believes anything they say any more and that’s why we’re having these lash backs,’ she said.
‘We need change on the world stage, somebody that is different and not part of the establishment and who is going to have a fresh view because I don’t believe that what is politically correct is always morally correct.’
She said Trump was embraced by the establishment when he first came to Ireland, but was shunned the second time around when he said things we didn’t like.
‘We forgot our manners and made public comments on an election in another country which smart politicians don’t do.’
Wexford Deputy and Labour leader Brendan Howlin said that like many people all around the world, he went to bed on the night of the US election feeling apprehensive, and ‘woke up to realise that a nightmare had become a reality’.
‘A man who has, at every opportunity, sought to demean and belittle whole swathes of his society, has become the leader of the largest free nation in the world. That’s a sobering reality,’ Mr Howlin said.
The Wexford deputy, and former government minister, said ‘most of us got involved in politics because at a really basic level, we wanted to do our bit to make the world a better place; to improve the lives of our people. In doing so, we have a duty to set high standards, and to hold ourselves to them; to imagine a better world, and to persuade people that our imaginings can be brought to life.
‘There isn’t a politician who hasn’t occasionally failed in that endeavour. We are human, and we err. But time and ‘What we saw last night was in a different vein entirely.’
‘President-elect Trump never once sought to be the best possible version of himself. Over the last year and more, he sought out every possible fear and insecurity in the American people. And then he ruthlessly preyed upon them.
‘He brought political discourse to a new and shameful low-point. And along the way, he picked almost every marginalised group, and targeted them with hate-filled rhetoric.’
Mr Howlin said as a democrat, ‘I must and do respect the decision of the American people. They have voted for a man they believe will change things, and they have voted to say they are unhappy with the status quo. Across the western world, we need to reflect on that message’.
‘But as President Putin congratulates President-elect Trump, and as Nigel Farage and Marine le Pen look forward to meeting with him, we truly have cause to be concerned. We commemorated a century of our proud history during the course of this year. But today, we have to wonder how much of our history we in the western world have managed to forget.’ Minister Paul Kehoe congratulated Donald Trump and his family on the election result and said he anticipated that relations between the US and Ireland would continue to be strong.
‘It’s a great honour to be elected US president and I congratulate him,’ the Fine Gael Minister told this newspaper.
‘It was a very close election and I always thought it was going to be close, but I absolutely respect the democratic vote of the people of America,’ he said.
‘I was a Clinton supporter and always supported the Democrats and would have supported Obama and this time Clinton in what was a very fraught, personalised campaign.
‘But I respect Trump and he has toned down his language a huge amount with his acceptance speech and since then and I think we will see more of that.’
Minister Kehoe said it was great that Trump had given 10 or 15 minutes of his time to talk to the Taoiseach Enda Kenny on the phone following his election and that he had committed to the Taoiseach continuing the tradition of visiting the White House on St Patrick’s Day.
‘This will be a full day with him (Trump) for St Patrick’s Day and a reception for him in the White House.’
Asked whether he feared any clampdown on Irish people working illegally in the USA, Minister Kehoe said he didn’t see any changes overall and ‘he is going more after the Mexicans than the Irish’.
‘But no doubt this issue will be raised by the Department of Foreign Affairs. J1 visas are very important to the Irish and that will continue to be the case,’ he said.
Minister Kehoe made the point that while he respected the democratic vote, the way the system worked in the USA was wrong, with Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote, but losing the election. Fianna Fáil Deputy James Browne said he had real concerns about the direction the US will head in following Trump’s election. ‘Mr Trump is now president elect of the United States. We must acknowledge the democratic will of the US voters and respect the Office. However, I would have very real concerns about what direction he will bring the US in and I was disturbed by much of his commentary during the election,’ he said.
‘Since the election he appears to be tempering some of his more extreme views but this remains a worrying and uncertain time.
‘He tapped into a very real fear of voters for their future and it is up to more mainstream politics to set out an alternative vision that can address these concerns to ensure that voters are not driven to vote for more extreme political views.’ ‘I do believe he will do a good job or he’ll be a catastrophe. I don’t see anything in the middle for him,’ said Deputy Michael D’Arcy. ‘Trump got fewer votes than McCain or Romney got in the previous elections, and he still won,’ The deputy said he doesn’t believe President Trump will be the same person as the person who campaigned to be president. And he said it was difficult to know what to think about his lack of experience. ‘ Barack Obama had two years of experience as a legislator when he became President,’ he said. ‘Trump has none, and the hope and expectation is that he will build a competent team around him to make up for that lack of legislative experience.’
‘He beat the Republican party and they withdrew their support. He beat the Democratic party, and he had a third of the money,’ he continued. ‘He’ll either be good or bad.’