US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that a unified Ireland would be “fantastic,” wading into a complex and politically charged subject during a two-day visit to a major tournament at his private Irish golf course.
At a meeting with Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin in Dublin, Trump said he would love to see the reunification of the Republic of Ireland with the UK’s Northern Ireland.
“I don’t want to cause any problems but I’d love to see it unified," Trump offered when asked for his opinion on the issue by a reporter. "It’s going to happen eventually. It may as well happen now.
“I think it would be a fantastic thing," he said, adding that "the UK will have something to say about it, obviously.”
Competing visions of Northern Ireland — whether it's Irish or British — drove decades of violence in Northern Ireland that left some 3,600 people dead. Previous US presidents have avoided commenting directly on the subject, even those, like Joe Biden, with strong ancestral and emotional ties to Ireland.
