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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he would “love” to see British-run Northern Ireland unify with Ireland, remarks made during a visit to Dublin that drew a sharp response from pro-British unionists in Northern Ireland.
Trump’s comments come weeks after new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said a referendum on Northern Ireland leaving the United Kingdom was “off the table,” a position Downing Street on Saturday said remained unchanged.
“Well, I don’t want to cause any problems, but I will tell you, I’d love to see it unified,” Trump told reporters as he sat next to Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin after the pair met in Dublin. “It’s going to happen eventually…. I think it would be a fantastic thing.”
He added: “Now the U.K. will have something to say about it … but I think it would be a great thing.”
Trump later said that there “was no good answer” to the question on Irish unity but repeated that he thought it would be “a very cool thing.”
Break with neutral stance of previous presidents
Under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which then-U.S. president Bill Clinton played a key role in brokering, a referendum can be held only at the discretion of the British government.
The accord ended three decades of violence between Irish nationalists seeking a united Ireland and unionists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain in the U.K. Unlike England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom.
While polls show a comfortable majority in Northern Ireland favour remaining in the U.K., the gap has narrowed slightly since Britain’s departure from the European Union pushed unity higher up the political agenda.
The leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, Northern Ireland’s largest party advocating continued union with Britain, rejected Trump’s prediction, saying unification with Ireland would lead to “the destruction of our country.”
“Northern Ireland’s constitutional future will be decided by the people of Northern Ireland, not by commentary in London, Dublin or Washington,” Gavin Robinson, who has publicly supported Trump in the past, wrote on social media platform X.
In Belfast, supporters of Irish unity gave a guarded response.
“I think it’s just headline grabbing…. I don’t think he gives a toss whether there is a United Ireland or not,” said Eamon Hanna, a supporter of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, which has been a strong critic of Trump’s policies.
Previous U.S. presidents, including those with strong Irish heritage like Joe Biden, have been careful to remain neutral on Irish unification. The U.S. government played a key role in brokering the 1998 peace deal.
Shortly after Trump left to watch a golf tournament at one of his resorts in the west of Ireland, thousands of protesters, some holding posters calling the U.S. president a warmonger and chanting “Free free Palestine,” marched through central Dublin.
It was one of the country’s largest anti-war protests in recent years.
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