In the space of less than a month, Ireland has hosted the two men who may run off against each other in next year’s US presidential election. The visits of Donald Trump and Joe Biden were in many ways vastly different: Biden, the sitting president, locked down chunks of the country on a whistle-stop tour both north and south, speaking to massive crowds and being formally feted by the great and good.
Trump, by contrast, was almost entirely cloistered within the compound of his Doonbeg resort, attracting a few supporters, but shorn of the trappings of office. Naturally, there was a degree of pageantry – he was welcomed by a troupe of Irish dancers and a brass band, but beyond the resort, even Doonbeg town itself was quiet. “Locals are avoiding the place,” was the view of Rita McInerney, a local shopkeeper and one-time Fianna Fáil general election candidate. On his third visit, there was a definite undercurrent of frustration with the associated media circus, in particular with repeated rounds of how to separate the business and economic benefits of the hotel from the perennially toxic brand of politics practised by Trump. “We very much have to separate the politics and the business,” McInerney told The Irish Times during the week.
While the visits were different in tone and cadence, they went a long way to capturing the essence of the two political brands that US voters may be asked to choose between. Biden was all misty-eyed sentimentality, appeals to a fuzzy if unifying sense of decency, a few verbal slips and a well-practised folksiness. Trump, on the night of his arrival, was about as diplomatic as he can be – full of praise for Ireland and his resort, deflecting questions about the civil case he faces in New York over the alleged rape of E Jean Carroll, the writer, and only tentatively engaging with some of the well-worn tropes of his political style. He passingly suggested his trip was better than Biden’s and skirted around questions on one of his most persistent beliefs – that the US was the victim of other countries’ sharp practice – specifically, an investment policy that has filled the Irish exchequer with corporate tax from largely US multinationals.
It didn’t last.
On Wednesday afternoon, Trump drove a golf ball into the Doonbeg breeze and marched over to the waiting journalists. He launched a blistering, bewildering and rapid-fire four-minute broadside against Carroll – delivered from a golf club he owns, thousands of miles from New York, rather than in the court where she is accusing him – and the Judge hearing the case, mocking Biden’s theoretically puny golfing ability (and by association, implicitly raising the potential frailty of the 80-year-old president next to the supposed virility of the 76-year-old Trump). He hit all his markers – simultaneously rendering himself as heroic and vilified, aggressive and victimised, a pitiable rich man, a ruthless operator with honest intentions.
Trump’s invective inevitably generated headlines – but to what end? “He does two things – one is he tries to shift the narrative and control it a little bit, and secondly, he creates spectacle,” is the view of Scott Lucas, Professor at UCD’s Clinton School of American Studies. After a slow start, Trump certainly grabbed the trip by the neck with his lurid attack on Carroll, and hyper-macho taunting of Biden. While these are ultimately interchangeable parts in the rolling-thunder brand of attack politics that Trump purveys, they play an important part of feeding the base, generating content that chimes with the presence and the politics he embodies and projects. “It keeps Trump’s personal news cycle ticking over,” says Prof Lucas.
Devotees in Doonbeg
Trump’s fans – the putative targets of the news cycle – were present both by accident and design, but they showed a common adherence to the central tenets of Trumpism. Steve and Wendy Bauld, Canadian tourists celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, didn’t know Trump was coming when they booked, but delighted in his arrival. “When he talks about fake news, he’s absolutely right,” Wendy said. “You can’t believe anything any more,” she argued, saying he is quoted out of context.
Her husband said Trump is “smart, articulate, and he takes incoming [fire] like I’ve never seen before. Biden ... he doesn’t even remember he was in Ireland last week. There’s no comparison between the two.”
Limerick man Tadhg O’Shaugnessy booked a stay in the hotel with his girlfriend Indu purposely to be close to Trump. He brought with him an array of gifts for Trump – much to the chagrin of the secret service, who intercepted his efforts to bestow them on the former president – including a striking painting of Trump astride a horse, bearing a sword in a vaguely Napoleonic mode. He told The Irish Times that the January 6th riots were a set-up, and that Trump was defrauded in the 2020 election. On Thursday, the Quinns from Cookstown, Co Tyrone left home at 6am to travel to Doonbeg to see Trump. Mark, Kellie and their 3½year-old daughter Harri-Mae played nearby as Trump discussed the future of the golf resort with aides on the 18th green – mother and daughter sporting “Trump Won” T-shirts.
The devotion to Trump in Doonbeg was vivid – ranging from the dutiful hospitality of staff to the vicarious defence of the former president displayed by some guests. A journalist who asked Trump why he wasn’t in New York for the Carroll case was subjected to biting criticism from some guests in the bar, accusing him of jumping on the former president – who was protected at all times by a phalanx of secret service agents and who gamely parried the question, preferring to talk about his long-standing intention to visit Doonbeg.
White, American, Irish or Irish-American
By Thursday teatime, Trump had departed, posing for photographs with fans on the way out. Business as usual returned to the resort, as reporters peeled off and burly squadrons of secret service agents became a thing of the past. Helicopter traffic ferried guests to and from Shannon Airport. Outside the hotel, no fewer than nine Porsches were parked in two lines either side of an internal road.
A sheaf of persistent rain had descended over west Clare, having largely held off as Trump golfed under an ominous sky. Now it wrapped the far end of Doughmore beach in mist, softening the view from the well-appointed residents’ bar of the resort’s holiday cottages – bleakly redolent of a Celtic Tiger ghost estate among the dunes and marram grass. The bar is comfortable, the clientele equally so – overwhelmingly white, American, Irish or Irish-American, sipping drinks that were pricey, but not so outlandishly expensive as to leave them only within the reach of the true global super-elite (a glass of wine started at around €11). There was a little golf chat, but overwhelmingly the talk was of Trump – American tourists facetimed their families, relating their passing interactions with him or his son Eric – one woman describing the son as tall, handsome, rich and wonderful. People wondered whether he might be aboard one of the helicopters, but he was long-gone – by road.
Scotland and Ireland may ultimately be background scenery to a wider play as Trump aims for a second stint in the White House. Polling suggests that Trumpism remains massively popular and a galvanising force, at least among Republicans, says Prof Lucas.
“At the end of the day, if he can keep the circus going and play at being the ringmaster, then maybe he does make it his show.”
