I never said I agreed with Trump about anything, says Leo
TAOISEACH Leo Varadkar insisted he was not allying himself to Donald Trump’s worldview as he returned to domestic duties yesterday, celebrating a tech company’s expansion in Dublin.
Mr Varadkar said that he had never voiced agreement with Donald Trump on anything, although he claimed to have said that he had sympathy for the US president’s ‘willingness to take on his critics’.
Mr Varadkar clarified reports that said he agreed with Mr Trump’s criticism of the press.
‘I didn’t say I agree with him on anything, whether it’s his views on gender, abortion, race, migration or free trade or his views on the media,’ he said in Dublin at the celebration of customer service software company Zendesk’s decision to base its Middle East and Asia HQ in the city, in addition to its European base.
‘I did say I had some sympathy with him in the fact that he’s willing to take on his critics, while the rest of us, probably rightly, tend to take criticism on board, absorb it and rise above it,’ the Taoiseach said, trying to counter the perception that he had joined in Donald Trump’s demonisation of the media.
Mr Varadkar was forced to respond after leaked reports of a conversation at an invite-only lunch in New York dominated headlines. He allegedly said he had sympathy with Mr Trump’s views on the media, that the press were not held accountable and were prone to pursuing a story rather than the truth.
Mr Varadkar was reportedly asked at the gathering of ex-pats in New York if investigative journalism was not a good thing, to which he responded that sometimes journalists got things wrong, but were never held to account.
He specifically mentioned RTÉ, and then doubled down on his reservations about the national broadcaster in the Dáil, citing its botched Mission to Prey documentary in which a priest in Africa was falsely alleged to have fathered a child.
‘When it comes to President Trump, I didn’t say I agree with him on anything,’ Mr Varadkar said. He has, however, renewed Enda Kenny’s invitation to President Trump to visit Ireland.
‘I certainly didn’t say that I agreed with him in his comments about the media and I would like to clarify that,’ he said.
It is the second time this year in two US visits that Mr Varadkar appeared to side with a man reviled for carrying out policies Enda Kenny branded ‘racist and dangerous’. In March, Mr Varadkar found himself under fire for claiming at a Speaker’s lunch in Washington that he had tried to settle a planning issue for Mr Trump at his resort in Co. Clare.
‘He’s willing to take on his critics’ Renewed invitation to visit Ireland