Donald Trump loves the Irish. Do they really have a choice?

A cousin of mine in Ireland — whom I won’t identify, given the 50/50 chance they end up reading this — texted me recently to say that for the first time, they felt actively frightened of America and Americans. (“Pardon my generalization,” they added; I am regarded, in the words of a different cousin, as “almost Irish enough.”) Long-standing Irish jokes about being the 51st state or “just east of Boston” had lost their charm; the status of a small, damp and famously fractious island on the western edge of Europe, three-quarters of which have maintained an uneasy independence for the last century, suddenly seemed in doubt. 

That’s the context — I mean, setting aside the much larger and even more frightening global context — in which Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin (i.e., the prime minister) paid his ritual St. Patrick’s visit to the White House this past week, offering Donald Trump the traditional bowl of sh — OK, fine, bowl of “shamrock.”

It went well enough, I suppose — if your standards are low and you’re willing to ignore the complicated and sometimes painful subtext. Martin is a soft-spoken, somewhat inscrutable fellow of considerable political acumen who has made this pilgrimage twice before in different circumstances (that is, under the previous president, whose name escapes me). I could explain Ireland's peculiar rotating-prime-minister government here, but it still wouldn't make any sense; it's roughly the political equivalent of orange slices for everybody.

Martin lacks sufficient hair to have literally tugged his forelock in Trump’s presence, but his position as supplicant — or itinerant entertainer, an Irish tradition if ever there was one — was obvious to all. At least he didn’t get chucked out the door, Zelenskyy-style, and wasn’t arm-twisted into signing away all rights to U2’s back catalog, Cillian Murphy’s future roles and Sally Rooney’s next bestseller. 

Beneath the surface, this deliberately anodyne event, built around the uncontroversial fact that Ireland and the U.S. are closely tied by ancestry, history, culture and trade, was about lots of other stuff too. My cousin didn’t need to explain that the Irish economy has become far too dependent on high-tech and pharmaceutical exports to the U.S., and is almost uniquely vulnerable to Trumpian tariffs. Martin’s measured, deferential, responsible-adult performance — in his previous career he was a teacher — was understood back home as critical to the nation’s future. 

Essentially, Ireland can’t afford not to be an American client state — and unlike Britain, France and Germany, can’t even afford to pretend not to be one — and everyone in the Oval Office last Wednesday knew it. But if Ireland’s radically asymmetrical relationship with the U.S. is distinctive, the crisis it represents is global and afflicts many other small and medium-size nations. This episode illuminated some inherent contradictions in Irish national identity and Ireland’s role in the world. It also served to illustrate Donald Trump’s “personalist” strongman regime in action — in a mode of relative benevolence, but with its incoherent blend of isolationism and imperialism, its willful and self-destructive ignorance and its increasingly overt racism in full effect.

Media in Ireland labored to boost national morale in the face of this humiliating ordeal, praising Martin for not having thoroughly abased himself or groveled on the Oval Office carpet, and for having mostly kept his mouth shut during an extended Trumpian monologue about anything and everything: The mighty hammer of tariff policy, of course; the cruelty and unfairness of the European Union and his immense affection for Ireland (it’s unclear whether Trump understands that the latter is a subset of the former); Rosie O’Donnell’s reported protest-move to Ireland (Martin pretended he hadn't heard about that, but he definitely has); the suggestion that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer "used to be Jewish" but has "become a Palestinian." (Fact check! The Washington Post reports that Schumer is still Jewish.)

Martin navigated around some awkward moments regarding the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza, mostly by flattering Trump as a hypothetical peacemaker and redirecting the conversation to the president’s “stunning” golf resort in County Clare. JD Vance very likely knows that Ireland is fully on board with the EU’s pro-Zelenskyy policies and has supported the Palestinian cause for decades, partly from a sense of historical affinity. (Anti-colonial attitudes are deeply baked into Irish national identity.) But such information would only have puzzled Trump and complicated the shamrock bonhomie, and Vance — a Roman Catholic convert, after all — beamed in silence from the sofa.

“I think the Irish love Trump,” announced the president, apropos of nothing in particular. Martin did not contradict him, and Trump was clearly unaware that officials of Sinn Féin, Ireland’s left-wing opposition party, had refused this year’s invitation to Washington. Reviews from Martin’s domestic political foes were not positive: Richard Boyd Barrett, a socialist member of Dáil Éireann (Ireland’s parliament) and a perennial thorn in Martin’s side, accused the taoiseach of “utterly pathetic plámásing,” using an Irish-language term that signifies craven and manipulative flattery. Another opposition figure blasted Martin for laughing at Trump’s clumsy joke about Ireland’s housing crisis; one could argue that laughter, in that instance, was purely a question of survival.

On the upside, Trump had clearly been offered phonetic guidance in pronouncing "taoiseach" (TEE-shuk, roughly) and Martin’s first name, which is closer to "MEE-hall" than "Miguel," as it was rendered by Fox News. He did not demand that Martin dance the Lucky Charms leprechaun jig, and did not indulge in blatantly offensive stereotypes about Ireland or Irish people in expressing his affection. Nonetheless the entire event was contaminated with the insidious mythology of Irish specialness, the perception that denizens of the Emerald Isle are a loquacious, hot-tempered, often maddening and universally charming people — who are also, let’s face it, predominantly white and English-speaking (oddly-pronounced names aside). One wonders how much cognitive dissonance was involved in Trump’s 2018 and 2019 meetings with former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who is both multiracial and gay. 

On reflection, allow me to modify the "not blatantly offensive" claim: Asked by a reporter to name his favorite Irish person, Trump briefly appeared stumped, no doubt moving mentally through a list that included Samuel Beckett, Pierce Brosnan, Dolores O'Riordan of the Cranberries and Uncle O'Grimacey of Shamrock Shake fame before settling on "Conor." That would be mixed martial artist Conor McGregor, who was recently, as it happens, found liable for sexual assault in a civil trial. Isn’t that an interesting coincidence? 

Here’s the thing about that maddening narrative of Irish specialness, which is all too easily weaponized for racist purposes, overt or otherwise: It is both a fictional construct and a core element of Irish identity. All Irish people (including the almost-Irish such as myself) know that the romantic stereotypes of Irishness are a form of global currency, often useful in economic, diplomatic and erotic contexts, for instance, and are more than willing to exploit them as necessary. 

That’s exactly why Micheál Martin found himself in the Oval Office presenting a potted plant to America’s disastrously dysfunctional president, as the elected leader of a strange little island nation whose only power is cultural power. It’s an island nation that was dominated for centuries by a neighboring superpower, and now serves as privileged subaltern to another one. 

Ireland really is unique, or at least anomalous, in a number of respects. It certainly wasn’t the only “white” European country to be conquered and colonized — Norway, Poland and the Baltic states would like a word — but it may be the only one whose indigenous culture and language were destroyed and supplanted to such a large extent. (While the Irish language still exists and many Irish people can speak or understand it to some degree, it will never again be in daily use outside a few isolated regions and circles of enthusiasts.)

I can see nothing wrong with understanding that unusual history as a source of strength, or even a source of pride, and in seeking to apply its lessons elsewhere. The problem with Irish “specialness” arises when it is understood as, well, special — as conferring virtue or wisdom or an inherited sense of grievance that can all too easily tip over into xenophobia or racism. (There appear to be fewer Irish Americans in Trump’s orbit this time around, but his first administration was like bingo night in a Queens church basement: Mike Pence, Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn, Mick Mulvaney, Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway, to name a few.)

Irish history also does not, I hasten to add, confer automatic solidarity with oppressed peoples around the world. Certain aspects of the Irish experience are similar to those of African Americans, Native Americans and indigenous or colonized groups elsewhere. India’s independence movement was closely aligned with Ireland's, for example, and explicitly modeled on the combination of civil disobedience and guerrilla warfare that won Irish independence in the 1920s. As a young activist in Paris, future Vietnamese revolutionary Ho Chi Minh followed the Irish rebellion closely, and was reportedly inspired by the example of legendary Irish hunger striker Terence MacSwiney. 

I hardly need to add that the Irish experience is also different from those examples, for reasons that are, so to speak, right on the surface. White privilege was not bestowed on the Irish automatically or all at once; well into the 20th century, British attitudes toward Ireland could legitimately be described as racist, and a faint hangover of bigotry is discernible to this day. Indeed, modern-day affirmative stereotypes about the Irish as a drunken and sentimental tribe of poets, dreamers and pugilists closely mirror older, more negative stereotypes, rendered charming instead of threatening. 

But Donald Trump would never describe Ireland as a “s**thole country” (even if the Ireland I remember from the early ‘70s would almost have qualified). This century’s overlapping Irish economic booms have almost entirely resulted from the island’s status as an offshore center for American industry and investment, with a well-educated, English-speaking workforce and a favorable tax system. Irish workers are certainly better paid than their equivalents in Indonesia or Cambodia, but U.S. executives love to visit, the golf is fantastic, the pubs are so much fun and the people — do you really want me to finish that sentence?

I would not accuse Micheál Martin of harboring any deep philosophical reflections on Irish identity or history during his Oval Office tribulations. His father, Paddy Martin, was a well-known boxer (a fact Trump appeared to enjoy), and Martin tried to fight his corner in a defensive crouch, without taking a knockdown or unduly antagonizing his opponent. He was “plámásing” for sure — a deeply ingrained skill in a people accustomed to being lovable underdogs — but what choice did he have? What I saw was a man who was benefiting from the myth of Irish specialness and also imprisoned by it.

Trump told Martin that he didn’t want to hurt Ireland; he loves the place. The Irish leader departed for a series of fundraising events with rich Irish Americans, believing he had survived. 

Minutes later, Trump told reporters in the White House corridor that he planned to impose a 200 percent tariff on alcoholic beverages from the EU, a devastating prospect for Ireland’s brewing and distilling industries. We get it: He’s stickin’ it to the French, lol. Of course Trump doesn’t know where Guinness and Jameson whiskey come from, and doesn’t care. Hey, he’d be happy to make a side deal with the Irish if he could.