Middle Ireland feels grievously insulted by the US president. On St Patrick’s Day, when the globe traditionally turns green, Donald Trump’s official guest at the White House was not the taoiseach bearing a bowl of shamrock, but an unelected stooge recently found by a civil court jury liable for the rape of a woman in a Dublin hotel. Fear and loathing of the mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor, who is facing civil trial in the US for alleged sexual assault of another woman in Florida, is one of middle Ireland’s most unifying forces.
“We couldn’t think of a better guest to have with us on St Patrick’s Day,” gushed Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt on 17 March, rubbing salt in the wound. McGregor was given access to the Pentagon, met the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and the national security adviser, Mike Waltz. In the Oval Office, McGregor and his family posed for photographs with the US president, a man also found liable for sexual assault. Prominent in the photographs was Elon Musk, the world’s richest individual and Trump’s unelected jobs slasher. McGregor presented Musk with a box of his own brand cigars. Four days later, the Dubliner, self-styled “the notorious”, announced he intends to contest the Irish presidential election later this year.
McGregor’s declaration got far less attention in his own country than it did internationally. The former fighter is not expected to even make it to the starting line because of a constitutional requirement for candidates to secure nominations from either 20 members of parliament or four entire local authorities. It is exceedingly unlikely he can obtain the backing to compete in the race to succeed Michael D Higgins, the poet and former anti-war activist who has been the much loved president for the past 14 years.
So far, the centre still holds in Ireland. Last November’s election returned the same two centrist parties to government that have dominated since the state’s foundation. Yet the centre has its wobbles. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Trumpocracy appears to believe it can shift the tectonic plates by endorsing McGregor.
Middle Ireland is politically middle of the road and is not to be confused with middle-class Ireland because frustration with perceived liberal political-correctness-gone-mad over gender equality, transgender rights and immigration transcends social strata. Despite ranking as one of the world’s wealthiest countries, Ireland is in the throes of a protracted homelessness crisis, with rocketing house prices and creaking public infrastructure. Having reinvented itself since the 1990s from grim Catholic orthodoxy into tolerant modernity by passing referendums providing for divorce, same-sex marriage and abortion, there is a sense among some that the change has been too rapid.
This creates a certain appetite for the gospel according to JD Vance, which holds that Europe has retreated from its values by suppressing hateful and misogynistic online commentary, banning protests outside abortion clinics and deciding to “open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants”, as the US vice-president told the Munich Security Conference in February.
McGregor does not need to become president to galvanise Ireland’s small but vocal minority on the hard right. He emerged as its figurehead in November 2023 when violent protests erupted in Dublin city centre after two children and their preschool teacher were stabbed on a street. “Ireland, we are at war,” he had posted just the day before on Musk’s X platform. Riot police have been deployed at anti-immigrant demos.
The Irish government was given no notice of McGregor’s White House visit, not even when, in an unexplained departure from normal protocol, taoiseach Micheál Martin’s St Patrick’s Day visit was brought forward by a week. What really incensed middle Ireland was McGregor’s inarticulate untruthfulness when he was invited to meet journalists in the White House press briefing room, claiming an “illegal immigration racket” was “running ravage” in Ireland. Martin said McGregor’s assertions were “wrong” and did not reflect the views of the Irish people. The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre said the White House visit was designed to “launder” McGregor’s reputation.
McGregor’s White House visit has been described as “sinister” but what may be most sinister is the reason he was invited for St Patrick’s Day and, previously, for Trump’s inauguration in January. The White House is actively courting Europe’s far right. A week after making a Nazi-like salute at Trump’s inauguration festivities, Musk urged delegates at an election campaign event for Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland party not to let immigration dilute their culture. Italy’s rightwing prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán are seen as Trump’s best friends in the EU.
Politically, Ireland is small potatoes but as an English-speaking country, the westernmost EU member and a non-Nato member it is a potential back door to Europe’s conversion to the Trumpocracy’s gospel. The country is particularly vulnerable because of the high density of US pharma and tech companies swelling its coffers.
Trump has repeatedly complained about the EU’s €13bn tax fine on Apple in Ireland, and his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, has described the country’s corporate taxation regime as his favourite “tax scam”. Factor in its trade advantage with the US, and Ireland’s growing economy would be plunged into recession were Trump to punish it with tariffs. The inevitable social upheaval would make fertile ground for McGregor and his ilk to flourish. The danger is real. In November, the patriarch of one of the most prominent criminal families came nail-bitingly close to winning a parliamentary seat in the Dáil.
Now Ireland finds itself dragged into the international swamp of toxic masculinity as a consequence of McGregor’s Oval Office outing. Responding to the tánaiste Simon Harris’s denunciation of him and the former kickboxer Andrew Tate as “social pariahs”, the latter was scathing. “Jealous weak men will do anything it takes to stop powerful men regaining control of the system,” taunted the influencer who is facing a rape charge in Romania, which he denies.
While Ireland holds its nose at the sight of McGregor in the White House, it holds its breath at the sight of Trump fanboy-ing over him.