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Departing from decades of neutrality practiced by U.S. Presidents on the delicate issue of Northern Ireland’s nationhood, Donald Trump on Saturday during his visit to Ireland said that he would “love to see” a united Ireland and that he believed it’s “going to happen eventually.”
“You have Northern Ireland, and you have Ireland,” Trump doubled down to reporters on Sunday while visiting a golf tournament at one of his resorts in the Irish village of Doonbeg. “It would seem to me that one of the ‘naturals’ of all time is to put them together.”
It’s also not the first time Trump has mused about Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic: he joked about a “merger” of the two in March, though the Northern Ireland official he was addressing at the time, who opposes unification, emphasized that the comment was clearly in jest only.
The U.S. President seemed aware that his recent remarks would garner backlash, particularly from the British. “The U.K. would have something to say about it obviously, but I think it would be a great thing,” he said Saturday, while in conversation with Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin. “I mean, how can it be bad?”
Trump’s statements come weeks after newly installed U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said there was not enough public support for a referendum on Northern Ireland’s future. Other British politicians have balked at Trump’s statements, arguing that Northern Ireland is indisputably part of the U.K.
Martin also downplayed the U.S. leader’s remarks. “It shouldn’t be a surprise,” Martin told reporters on Sunday, adding that Trump “takes a different sort of perspective on things.” The Irish leader said that some responses to Trump, however, were an overreaction.
“They asked me about Scotland—that one I won’t talk about yet,” Trump said Sunday, referencing another country divided on leaving the U.K. The Trump family also owns a golf resort in Scotland, which voted against independence from the rest of Great Britain in 2014. “I’ll save that for another day.”
A heated debate
The island of Ireland was divided in 1921 following the Irish War of Independence. While a northern region of six counties remained part of the U.K., the rest of the island, comprising 26 counties, became the Irish Free State, which eventually became a sovereign republic in 1949.
From the 1960s, tensions in the north between largely Catholic Irish nationalists, or republicans, who wish to reunite with the Republic of Ireland, and mainly Protestant unionists who want to stay with Britain culminated in a three-decade, violent period known as the Troubles.
A 1998 peace agreement—dubbed the Good Friday Agreement and mediated in large part by the U.S.—ended the violence and recognized the right of those in Northern Ireland to recognize themselves as British, Irish, or both. It also recognized that Northern Ireland’s status must be based on democratic consent.
Following the agreement, Northern Ireland has not yet held a referendum. But Irish nationalism gained momentum when Sinn Féin, the predominant Irish republican party, won the most seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2022. It was the first time a republican party dominated the assembly since Northern Ireland’s formation, though Sinn Féin must still share power with unionists under local laws. Polls, however, show that the Northern Irish public is still divided on whether it should leave the U.K., and Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland has focused on socioeconomic issues over reunification in recent years.
In the Republic of Ireland, Sinn Féin is the largest single party, but it belongs to the opposition after two more moderate center-right parties formed the government following the 2024 election, with Martin as the current leader. Some have criticized the Irish government under Martin for its slow uptake of the unification issue. Ireland’s Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald said after Trump’s comments: “The conversation on Irish unity has shifted, and the onus is on the Taoiseach to begin planning.”
Claire Hanna, who leads the small nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party in Northern Ireland, also welcomed Trump’s support. “Turns out he’s not as orange as he looks,” Hanna said, in reference to the political color associated with the Protestant and unionist community in Ireland.
British rebuke
The 1998 Good Friday Agreement stipulates that the U.K.’s Northern Ireland secretary can decide to hold a poll and must call one if they believe a majority would vote for Irish reunification. Chris Bryant, the incumbent secretary, posted this section of the agreement on social media amid Trump’s unification remarks, adding: “Just in case anyone should need a quick refresher course on constitutional matters in Northern Ireland.”
In a visit to Northern Ireland last month, Burnham said that calling for such a poll is “off the table,” citing the divisiveness of past votes on Brexit and Scottish independence. “We’ve got to focus on bringing people together as best we can,” the British Prime Minister told the BBC.
The U.S. President also rankled some on the British far-right who usually side with him. “Northern Ireland is a proud and integral part of the United Kingdom,” Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, a known Trump ally, wrote on social media, explaining that “the people of Northern Ireland neither want a referendum, nor unification.” Rupert Lowe, another British parliamentarian who heads the Restore Britain party, called Trump’s statements “unacceptable” and “insulting,” and suggested that the President “should not be aiming to permanently damage our country to get back at the current malign Labour Government.”
Lowe’s claims come as Trump has expressed frustration over the U.K.’s refusal to get involved in the U.S.’s war against Iran.
Kemi Badenoch, who leads the opposition Conservative Party, posted on social media that Trump was “shooting from the hip as usual, just like he did with Greenland and Canada becoming the 51st state,” though she argued that “this sort of loose talk about the future of democratic countries is deeply unhelpful and creates unnecessary tension.”
