MATT COOPER

WE ALL have relatives or friends who we invite to come visit us sometime but who we never expect to actually turn up. Then they arrive and, because you have nothing in common or you simply don’t like them, you have no idea how to make conversation as they sit on your sofa in the good room.

You try to chat for a while and then it peters out. But instead of going they say they’ll stay a few nights. You stifle a groan and smile and go and organise the bedding, while trying to ensure that your growled, whispered comments to your partner – ‘well you invited him’ and ‘he’s not my uncle’ – are not overheard.

You know you can’t complain either. After all, you visited him previously, year after year, as it happens, using his much better pad as a convenient launch for your own adventures. And being a good-mannered freeloader you had the courtesy to insist he come stay sometime. You just never expected him to take you up on your word.

Danger

It’s a bit like that with Donald Trump’s on-off visit to Ireland in November.

Enda Kenny, when he was Taoiseach, went to the White House in Washington and somehow charmed the new US president, while simultaneously and subtly issuing him with a stern rebuke as to his immigration policies. Trump either didn’t understand, notice or care.

Kenny’s successor Leo Varadkar followed up this year and ingratiated himself shamelessly – all in the national interest of course – while issuing the customary ‘you must come over and see us sometime’ message, in the hope that it would never be acted upon.

The danger always was that the invitation would be accepted, of course.

Trump, being somewhat tone deaf, has been brown-nosed in Ireland previously, long before he became president of the US, or even a serious candidate.

The businessman and reality television presenter – as he was at the time – arrived in 2014 to Shannon Airport, en route to the golf course and hotel at Doonbeg in Co. Clare that he had purchased, to be greeted with embarrassing red carpet treatment. It wasn’t just the harps playing that made us cringe – as I wrote in these pages at the time – but it was the oversight provided by the then Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, an endorsement that was excessive and unnecessary.

The unexpected announcement, just 12 days ago, that Trump was going to pop in during his trip to France for the Armistice commemorations on November 11, set the cat among the pigeons. The lack of detail as to what Trump wanted was surprising and it emerged quickly that the Government had been given little or no details of the American planning.

So, just as opposition parties puffed in immediate indignation – ‘let’s not be having this terrible man here’ – to be joined by Government members, who said they too would take to the streets in protest, a serious dose of pragmatism took hold of most of our Government members.

They would have to be courteous to Trump. It would not have been a personal courtesy, however, but one to the office which he holds. Because it remains important to Ireland, given the deep economic dependency created by the number of American multi-nationals offering employment on this island, and the considerable cultural connections created by centuries of emigration from here to there, that we have as good a relationship with the US as possible.

Poisonous

There is no point in cutting off our nose to spite our face. So I still feel a sense of disappointment that he may not be coming.

Even some of us who regard Trump as obnoxious and dangerous – and who despair of the poisonous influence he is having on American public life – saw relatively little merit in planning dramatic displays of protest during his short visit.

He would either disregard it or misinterpret it – ‘Are all those leprechauns out celebrating for me?’ – or become angry, with potentially dangerous consequences. The latter is no exaggeration, as I’ll get back to later.

I imagine that Varakdar, Simon Coveney – who within hours of the announcement that Trump planned to come here had pointedly and perhaps bravely tweeted condemnation of Trump’s mean-spirited decision to end all US contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees as ‘heartless and dangerous’ – and other Government ministers were delighted with the news yesterday that Trump probably isn’t coming (in November at least) after all.

The potential for embarrassment and misstep was suddenly eliminated.

Protest

They weren’t the only ones who were greatly relieved, I’d imagine; our Presidential candidates must have been somewhat worried about the questions that were bound to be asked in debates and interviews that will run up to the late October poll, given that one of the first tasks facing the new (or returning) President, in an official capacity, would have been to welcome Trump to the country.

Higgins would have been reminded how he protested fervently in 1984 against the visit of then US President Ronald Reagan, a man upon whom history now looks favourably, something that is most unlikely to be ever said about Trump.

Of course, there was confusion last night as to whether or not Trump’s visit is definitely off. That the ‘on or off’ questions were raised by contradictory comments from US press secretary Sarah Huckerbee Sanders (who implied it might still happen) was of little surprise to those who have watched the Trump administration in action (or who are reading, as I am, Fear, Bob Woodward’s remarkable, if predictably disputed, insider account of the chaos in the Trump White House.) Things do not seem particularly well organised.

Yesterday’s news inspired claims by some politicians that their planned protests prompted Trump to abandon his visit. That seems ludicrous. The idea that Trump even knew of the protests he might have faced or that he would have allowed himself to be influenced by it seems fanciful.

The fear, of course, is that this is merely a postponement, rather than a cancellation. And there may be concern in Government circles that any perceived snub or insult to Trump – and his entourage would be aware of them – could result in the withdrawal of our Taoiseach’s annual invitation to the White House for each St Patrick’s Day.

There are some who like to downplay the significance of that access, claiming it is overstated and overvalued, but the reality is that it is a guaranteed annual meeting that is simply not available to most other countries. If such access is lost during the Trump era – which could go on another six years – there is no guarantee that it would be returned again under the next president.

Sometimes you really do just have to suck things up.