Leo should suggest Doonbeg for Trump and Kim’s meeting
OH to be a fly on the wall of the Oval Office when the Taoiseach meets US President Donald Trump at the annual St Patrick’s Day knees-up in the White House this week. The president has a stunted attention span and an aversion to disapproval so maybe Leo Varadkar should think again before unloading a litany of criticism on his host.
Last week, Mr Varadkar told hard-left TD Paul Murphy in the Dáil that he does not agree with many of Trump’s policies including those on migration, climate change and trade. And he promised to add LGBT and Muslim rights to his list when he meets President Trump.
But that was before the president claimed his forcing of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un to talks in May as an historical personal triumph on Friday.
Mr Varadkar will talk ‘in detail’ about trade and ‘point out to the president the extent to which our relationship is truly bilateral’. The Taoiseach will also gently remind President Trump that nearly 10,000 Americans in 50 states work for Irish companies.
Maybe nobody in Government Buildings has noticed that the US President responds much more favourably to praise than criticism. The more shameless the flattery, the more he appreciates it – and he lives by the dictum that one good turn deserves another.
Offering neutral Ireland as a base for his meeting with President Kim – and suggesting Trump International Resort in Doonbeg, Co Clare as the venue for that meeting – is the sort of offer that the president would appreciate.
SAUDI Arabia was rewarded handsomely with military hardware when it put on the equivalent of a glitzy Broadway musical to welcome him. China fared better after Trump’s daughter Ivanka’s designer brands were given coveted Chinese trademarks the day her father met China’s president Xi Jinping. And president Emmanuel Macron of France won a friend for life by making a fuss of the US President.
A tongue-lashing from the Taoiseach in the White House could also revert the status of the St Patrick’s Day celebrations back to its 1952 level.
Back in January, Irish American newspapers in New York reported that White House sources were thinking of downgrading the St Patrick’s Day party. The sources said they had ‘taken notice of anti-Trump comments by many Irish political leaders – and considered Ireland one of the least friendly nations toward the US.’
Before former US president Bill Clinton inaugurated the St Patrick’s Day party when he was ramping up his involvement in the peace process in 1995, a simple ceremonial handover of a bowl of shamrock at the White House had been the protocol since 1952.
And after wagging a disapproving finger at trade tariffs, Mr Varadkar will also have to plead for illegal Irish immigrants’ children threatened with deportation in President Trump’s DREAM Act.
The Taoiseach knows there is no such thing as a free lunch – even at the White House on St Patrick’s Day and especially when the president believes he is a major figure in history.