While the country was flexing its parading muscles and indulging in all things green this week, its most shameless global talisman was making agitated moves around the White House. Styling his visit as a missionary endeavour, Conor McGregor – clad in another of the too-small pinstripe suits that have become his signature – insisted more than once that he was there to represent the people of Ireland and their problems.
Those problems were not homelessness and housing, but immigration and “spending on overseas issues”.
It seems almost banal to point out how embarrassing it is to have McGregor represent Ireland on the world’s stage. When, in his discussion with the Taoiseach on Wednesday, the US president Donald Trump mentioned that McGregor might be his favourite Irish person, Micheál Martin missed an opportunity to do more than respond with an awkward smile. A wrinkle of disapproval there might have made Monday’s shenanigans look less like the wacky tail-end of a diplomatic mission.
There was much about the spectacle that was depressing – not least the opportunity cost. Given our modest population and the wealth of internationally-known ambassadors for our culture, Ireland is an overachiever in terms of global recognition.
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But while it was a shame not to see someone more deserving highlighted (even if there was an open question about whether anyone more deserving would have shown up), we need to manage that shame. After all, the quality of an invitation list is a function of the host.
When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “we couldn’t think of a better guest to have here with us on St Patrick’s Day”, I believe her. A magnet attracts nickel, even from a table full of gold.
Here McGregor is in the headlines for the finding by a jury in a civil trial that he raped Nikita Hand – a decision he is appealing – but in the United States, McGregor is mostly known for his bombastic promotional talk, his fighting prowess and his particular brand of toxic masculinity.
[ Why did Donald Trump bring Conor McGregor to the White House?Opens in new window ]
The other interesting thing about him is his Irishness. Little of McGregor’s recent appearances in the courts, or activities around the riot, would be familiar to his fans over there, nor would his recent aspirations for political power.
As fear and fire raged in Dublin city centre on November 23rd, 2023, McGregor tweeted: “There is grave danger among us in Ireland that should never be here in the first place”. The following September, he sent out a raft of messages about how his presidential politics would differ from the establishment “thieves of the working man, disrupters of the family unit, destructors of small businesses”.
McGregor and fellow anti-immigration mouthpieces deploy a two-pronged strategy – they complain about immigration and spending on international protection, and highlight crimes committed in Ireland in which a foreigner might have been involved (“foreigner” intended loosely here, since it doesn’t matter what your passport looks like if these people think you’re the wrong colour).
Keeping “our” women and children safe is often a theme, as if Ireland didn’t have its own absolutely shameful record of violence against its women – a record in which the civil jury recently found McGregor had played a role, putting him in good company with his White House host, who was himself found liable for sexual misconduct.
Something else struck me as revealing about the visit. One of the key themes broached by McGregor was the importance of preserving a particular sense of Ireland for Irish Americans who might like to visit. “There are rural towns in Ireland that have been overrun in one swoop, that have become a minority in one swoop, so issues need to be addressed and the 40 million Irish Americans need to hear this because if not there will be no place to come home and visit.”
Leaving aside the irony of him claiming that we should stop immigration so the descendants of immigrants can have an appropriately nostalgic-feeling holiday destination to visit, McGregor’s remarks remind us that the activities in the capital this past weekend are more about legacy Irish Americans than Ireland itself.
Following the Taoiseach’s press conference with Trump, much was made of the response of Fox News pundits, who said Trump had “let [Martin] off easy”. Host Brian Kilmeade (whose grandfather was born in Longford in 1905) called Martin “very socialist” and “very left”, which goes to show that the political awareness levels and enthusiasm of many better-known Irish Americans are often mismatched.
[ Conor McGregor represents ‘very worst of toxic masculinity’ - TánaisteOpens in new window ]
What neither McGregor nor Trump seemed to grasp was that Ireland is not merely a potential holiday destination. The resemblance between McGregor’s holiday-making remarks and Trump’s claim he would seize the Gaza Strip and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” are a reminder that we inhabit an era in which powerful men have the shallowest possible sense of geopolitics.
The “Gulf of America” map in the background of their Oval Office meeting underlined that sense of geographical unseriousness. Ireland is a real place, and the idea that we should be tethering our national progress to suit the imagined misty-eyed whims of people whose ancestors left here a long time ago is offensive.
The McGregor White House appearance is just another symptom of the toxic leadership situation in America; of an administration helmed by a vicious man who enjoys the company of fighters and forceful men, and who has a record of elevating men accused of sexual misconduct to key roles.
But it’s also a harrowing reminder of the success still available to men accused of harming women.
Dr Clare Moriarty is a postdoctoral researcher working at Trinity Research in Social Sciences in Trinity College Dublin
