Eric Trump, who runs large swathes of his father Donald’s hospitality business, is a regular visitor to the family’s hotel at Doonbeg, Co Clare, but his first memories of Ireland are of another hotel: Seán Quinn’s Slieve Russell in Co Cavan.
“Is he still around?” he asks of the former cement and insurance tycoon, explaining that his childhood carer, Dorothy Curry, comes from Co Cavan, where they would go every year. “An amazing woman,” he says, remembering how she would speak Irish to him and remains “a big part of my family”.
Curry, according to reports, inherited a $1.1 million (€1 million) apartment from Ivana Trump when she died last year.
Sitting in the residents’ bar of the Doonbeg hotel, the younger Trump discusses the future of the resort, energy independence from Russia and his father’s chances in the 2024 US presidential election. But he gives short shrift to questions about the wide array of legal challenges facing his father on his return to the US, including the civil case alleging rape of the writer E Jean Carroll.
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Trump jnr rejects the suggestion that his father is in hiding in Scotland and Ireland due to his legal difficulties back home.
“I’m not going into that claim,” he says of the Carroll allegations, before adding: “Does he look like he’s in hiding?
“Excuse me, he came to Ireland for 24 hours, he just did a press conference for you on the first green of a golf course, does that look like he’s in hiding? C’mon.”
Trump snr told reporters at Doonbeg that he was returning to the US to “confront” the allegations, which he said were part of a “political attack”. He said he had been “falsely accused”.
Asked why Trump snr was not submitting a defence, after his lawyers had indicated in the New York court they would not be calling any witnesses, his son says: “What do you think his people are doing right now?”
Trump jnr is unsurprisingly bullish about his father’s political future, arguing that his main rival to be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, is “fading very quickly”.
“People are seeing what’s happening in the United States, people are seeing how weak Joe Biden is – my father can be un-PC, he can certainly be controversial, not a single person in the world can argue with the results,” he says, launching into an expansive take on his father’s achievements in office, mostly focused on the economy.
He argues that his father left the White House with a rocketing stock market, low inflation, low unemployment and energy costs. “American businesses were succeeding, manufacturing was coming back to America, factories that were closed, the lights were turning back on – and all over the nation,” he says.
When Biden took up office in 2021, he says, “all of those things reversed”, even blaming Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the current US president.
“That’s happening purely because of the weakness of the guy in the Oval Office right now,” he says, lamenting what he says is the collapse of American strength. This is a trope of his father’s: that the US has been enfeebled through the incompetence or conspiracy of elites, particularly Democrats.
“There’s no question that the man in the Kremlin has been aggressive but I think if you had strength… American strengths always held this globe together,” says Trump jnr. “We don’t have that right now. We are not perceived as having the strength and we could have brokered that deal,” he says, suggesting that China is taking that role.
“Now all of a sudden you see this communist nation that’s trying to step in to try to take that position. I don’t think that’s good for western society, including where we’re sitting right now.”
Putin, he argues, had “tremendous respect for my father” and would not have invaded Ukraine had the elder Trump been in the Oval Office.
“Frankly, I don’t think China would be playing the same games that they’re playing with Taiwan, I don’t think Iran would be playing the same games that they’re playing right now,” he says, describing how “peace through strength” was the Reagan doctrine, and that it became “the Donald Trump doctrine”.
“Putin certainly knows my father is a tough guy and he never played games when my father was in office. That much I can tell you and history will show that, it’s just a fact. My father did a number of things that really made it much harder for Russia to play their games – one of them was energy independence.”
In Trump’s analysis, Biden’s moves to restrict the development of oil infrastructure led to higher oil prices, which enabled Putin to finance his war.
“At the lowest energy prices ever, they’re not filling up the coffers, they’re not being able to buy weapons systems, they’re not being able to fund wars when oil is at $30 [a barrel].”
European countries, including Ireland, should look to reduce their dependence on Russian fuels and instead import from America, he said.
“A hundred per cent, absolutely, and there’s a million ways to do that. I think you should be buying oil from your allies instead of your adversaries. It was a huge mistake that Germany made, it was a huge mistake that a lot of Europe made,” he says.
As to whether his father is responsible for polarising American politics, Trump jnr believes his style will be effective in the 2024 campaign.
“I do, because people respect strength. And it’s one of the things I don’t think we have right now,” he says, never missing a chance to refocus on Biden’s weakness. “Listen, he [Trump snr] can be un-PC, but he gets the job done.”
Returning to the idea that the strength Trump seeks to portray is both welcome and vital, he adds: “He doesn’t need anything from anyone, he can’t be bought, he can’t be sold, he can’t be coerced and I think you need that.
“I think countries in the world need that tough, fatherly figure, motherly figure... You need someone who has backbone and strength, and you can’t cower.”
