Irish Examiner View: Joe Biden a hard act for Trump to top

Tens of thousands of people gathered to welcome Joe Biden to Ireland earlier this month.

The visit of Donald Trump will not engender anything like the same levels of public engagement, affection, or excitement that Joe Biden's visit inspired. Picture: Chris Tilley/AP

The news that former US president and potential Republican Party candidate in next year’s US presidential election Donald J Trump is to visit Ireland next month has singularly failed to ignite the imagination of the people of Ireland.

Following on from the hugely successful visit of current US president, Joe Biden, earlier this month to our shores when tens of thousands of people gathered to welcome a man widely felt to be an ‘honorary Irishman’, the visit of Mr Trump will not engender anything like the same levels of public engagement, affection, or excitement.

A considerable number of Irish people — like many in America — view Trump’s four-year tenure of America’s highest office to have been one riven by controversy, two impeachment trials, and a fetid relationship with matters of truth, racism, and reality.

There are those here who, again like so many US citizens, looked on with disbelief and horror as Trump trampled the norms of fealty and honour whilst in high office and who are horrified by the prospect of his potential return to the Oval Office. 

Just last weekend, a member of his own party decried him as “a four-time loser” unfit for a second Republican nomination.

A visit to our country by great leaders is always a welcome thing. There is little enthusiasm, however, for an open-armed ‘céad míle fáilte’ for a man facing multiple legal jeopardies and who may yet become the first former US president to face jail time. 

His arrival on our shores will therefore more likely provoke protests and ill-temper rather than our normal hospitable reception.