Why Kenny was a triumph in DC
we got into the Oval Office I wound up standing beside President Donald Trump. I’d been in that small office before and I knew if I shifted to the right as we came through the doors from the Rose Garden, I’d have a good spot.
The Irish press corps had been told not to ask questions last Thursday. Yet as the cameras clicked, a relaxed Donald said, ‘I really love Ireland’. So pushing aside a large lamp, I shouted at Enda Kenny in a rather garbled manner: ‘Have you invited the President, Taoiseach, to Ireland?’
‘During the course of his presidency,’ said the Taoiseach. Donald turned to me and smiled. Enda addded: ‘During the course of his presidency he will be there.’
I smiled back at Donald and he said to me ‘I will.’
Another question was asked, and I felt the hand of a Secret Service agent on my shoulder.
‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Watch that,’ he said politely of the lamp. The grip was firm. That exchange has caused a problem for Kenny’s successor. Minister Leo Varadkar, the favourite to take over from Kenny, has made his position clear.
‘I wouldn’t [invite Trump], he told Sean O’Rourke last month. ‘I’m not sure what purpose it would serve.’
Varadkar made an error in this. If he is Taoiseach when Trump visits, he will be in a terrible position.
Will he apologise? More likely, The Donald will seek to humiliate him. I was in Washington the day Trump refused to shake Angela Merkel’s hand. Just as Kenny delights in causing mischief for his potential successors, Trump enjoys humiliating those who cross him.
Those who come and pay homage, prostrate themselves, are granted his favour. Kenny did the right thing, going to visit Trump.
Minister Sean Canney was in China last week – that country is a notorious human rights violator. In China, 46 crimes are punishable by the death penalty. Trade between Ireland and China is worth about €9bn.
Chief Whip Regina Doherty was in the United Arab Emirates, where misogyny is institutionalised. Flogging and stoning are punishments for crime. Irish agri-food exports to the UEA were worth €60m in 2016.
Yet there were no complaints about these visits.
As Kenny said in New York on Friday: ‘Donald Trump is the democratically elected President of the United States’.
President Trump is the leader of the Free World. US companies employ 140,000 people in Ireland.
President Trump says obnoxious things; there is no proof yet of his having committed any crimes.
He has said horrible things about Mexican people. He is a misogynist.
He is not good on detail, which is something he has in common with the Taoiseach.
There is another thing they have in common. Standing about two feet from President Trump last Thursday, as he smiled warmly at me, I was able to debunk a myth. Trump does not wear more make-up than Enda Kenny. Both were plastered in it.
This is the third President I’ve been to see at the White House, and this was the biggest, most outrageous festival of Paddywhackery I’ve seen yet.
Trump immersed himself in it. Kenny really loves it like no other Taoiseach.
Covering Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen in Washington on their St Patrick’s Day gigs, I could see they didn’t enjoy it. They considered themselves important, substantial political leaders and felt uncomfortable in the stage Irishman role. In 2007, addressing the crowd in the White House after President George Bush, Bertie seemed uncertain, unnerved by the patronising plastic Paddy stuff.
Enda? After six years as Taoiseach he still seems surprised he’s there, among the big boys. He gets to ride in a huge, armoured presidential Cadillac, He gets his own eightman Secret Service detail.
The Taoiseach is not good at remembering whether meetings with Ministers occurred or not. He makes stuff up. But if you were to invent the perfect Irish politician for the Washington St Patrick’s Day carnival, it would be Enda Kenny.
Homespun, whimsical, obscure and eccentric, that’s his style. And that’s what they expect of the Paddies in Washington.
And they love him in Washington, Trump especially. For Trump, Kenny is the kind of clubbable, non-threatening guy that he enjoys.
Accompanied by his wife Fionnuala, Kenny arrived at Vice President Mike Pence’s house shortly after 8am, wear WHEN
ing thick make-up. There was tooraloora music playing in the background as Pence tearily reminisced about his ancestors from Doonbeg in Clare and Tubercurry in Sligo. Outwardly, the press corps laughed. But deep down, as someone whose two uncles emigrated to Australia never to return, to miss both their parents’ funerals, I understand it.
As we followed Kenny around the White House, into the Oval Office, American TV anchors stopped us to tell us about their Irish relatives and ask where in Ireland we came from. Trump was lapping it up.
Later, at Capitol Hill, watching hardened politicians like Speaker Paul Ryan ham it up at the Speaker’s Lunch, you understood all this was extremely important for them. And for Ireland. The Speaker is a powerful person. If the President and the Vice President are incapacitated, the US Constitution says the third in line is the Speaker. Under a portrait of George Washington, Ryan sounded like a little boy as he spoke about his relatives in Kilkenny, pretended to drink Guinness and tried a terrible Irish accent.
Trump followed him. He spoke about his ‘new friend’ the Taoiseach. As he spoke under the same portrait of Washington, the man who refused to shake Angela Merkel’s hand the following day, stopped his speech. In a spontaneous gesture, he reached across the table and shook Kenny’s hand again. The sexist said to Fionnuala Kenny, ‘We’re friends too, right?
This bombastic, often crazed man, seemed almost vulnerable as he, too, tried to get in on it. As he explained that the first ever St Patrick’s Day parade was held in his hometown of New York, he went off script and said, ‘I spent a lot of time in St Patrick’s Day Parades over the years, I can tell you that.’
After the speeches at the Speaker’s Lunch at the Capitol, Kellyanne Conway moved between tables in a green dress, laughing loudly.
On such friendly occasions does the future of the world turn.
We were briefed later that Thursday that Trump told Ryan that the Republican Congress will have to do ‘something’ about the concerns regarding illegal Irish immigrants.
Trump, who usually gets his information from late night Fox News programmes, told Kenny he was ‘surprised’ that there were as many as 50,0000 undocumented Irish.
The President learned something and promised to act. Kenny made a wonderfully effective speech about Irish immigrants.
Tooraloora music played in the background
Kenny didn’t just meet Trump, Ryan and Pence. He met powerbrokers like Congressman Peter King and ‘nuts and bolts’ men like Steve Bannon and Homeland Security chief John Kelly. Kelly is, of course, of Irish descent.
Last month, after Leo Varadkar said that Kenny shouldn’t go to Washington, former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern wrote in this newspaper about his decade of St Patrick’s Day trips. He explained the massive importance of the unique St Patrick’s Day experience.
‘I met more secretaries of state in those few hours prior to presenting the shamrock than most prime ministers have met in their careers,’ he said. He got results on our 12.5% corporation tax. Bertie got Bush, no fan of Gerry Adams, to let him into the White House. Adams was there again on Thursday.
Kenny was emboldened, refreshed by all of this. I asked him in a press conference outside the White House whether he’d still be Taoiseach when President Trump arrived.
‘Will you still be a reporter, John?’ he asked in return. He was flying.
Kenny pulled off the incredible task of taming the beast that is Trump. And he believes, deep down, that he can fight off Varadkar and Co and do this all again next year.