It was a dismal St Patrick’s Day sight for millions in Ireland and the United States, enough to curdle many a pint of stout on both sides of the Atlantic. But for those who support Conor McGregor as an alternative voice, it was the beginning of the Irish revolution.
What began as an overnight rumour – a social media posting by McGregor – had, on a damp St Patrick’s morning on the east coast, hardened into fact. Tánaiste Simon Harris was rushing through the morning Manhattan traffic from early Mass in St Patrick’s Cathedral to march in the parade when it was confirmed.
Just as he promised, McGregor was in the White House to meet president Donald Trump. He wore a three-piece, grey-green pinstripe suit and shaved his head for the occasion. McGregor has lost the gaunt look of his mixed martial arts (MMA) persona as he seeks to outrun the triumphs and disgraces of his fighting days and reinvent himself as a public figure, as an anti-immigration, anti-establishment spokesperson for “the people of Ireland”.
The image was jarring: McGregor and family standing around Trump as he sat smiling from behind the gleaming Resolute Desk. It was impossible not to recall the moment when Trump, sitting with Taoiseach Micheál Martin six days ago in that same Oval Office, haltingly praised McGregor, describing his tattoos and referring to him as “Conor”, possibly unable to recall his surname in the moment. Martin stuck rigidly to the rehearsed diplomatic script of Whatever You Say, Say Nothing.
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In the immediate aftermath, that disciplined diffidence has been praised as the wisest course: the longer arc of hindsight may leave the policy prone to revisionism.
The question of why Trump had McGregor as his guest on Ireland’s national day remains, on the surface, baffling. It may be partly attributable to the fact that Trump enjoys the company of fighters. It would be naive to believe that Trump’s staff did not inform him of the judgment against McGregor in last November’s rape case in Dublin, during which Nikita Hand gave a harrowing and courageous testimony. For her, for all victims of sexual violence, Monday’s preening must have been beyond distressing.
But it is probably true that the facts of the case did not deeply register with Trump because he is more ready to believe the word of McGregor, who had protested his innocence and is set to appeal, than the finding of any court. Trump himself was, of course, found guilty in a civil sexual assault case and during the election campaign presented it as part of an orchestrated campaign against him by vested interests within the department of justice.
Nonetheless, this was an indulgence of the Irish man by Trump. McGregor’s star has not so much fallen as been extinguished in the US in the years since he established himself as the MMA’s mouthy, swaggering, preternaturally confident star.
Although he was given his moment in the White House press briefing room, the US media blinked in collective curiosity and then readied themselves for the predictably volatile lunchtime press briefing in which McGregor’s presence was not mentioned.
So, why do it? What was in this for the Trump White House?
The answer has very little to do with McGregor himself. This is a precarious, taut moment in the United States, where day-to-day life continues to the soundtrack of competing narratives.
The first is that Trump is, in his unorthodox, hardscrabble way, stripping down the bloated bureaucratic systems and wokism absurdities to restore his promise of American greatness through common sense. The counterview was offered on Sunday by Chris Murphy, the Connecticut senator who has been the clearest voice of protest from the foundering Democratic Party.
“What’s important is that we meet this moment. And what I’m telling you is that if we continue to observe norms, if we continue to engage in business as usual, this democracy could be gone. I don’t think we have a year to save American democracy. I think the way the president is acting – using law enforcement to target dissidents; harassing TV stations and radio stations that criticise him, endorsing political violence – puts our democracy at immediate risk.
“So, if you are a Democrat in the Senate or the House you have to start acting with urgency. And that is the conversation we need to start having inside our caucus.”
This gets to the heart of it. In New York, St Patrick’s Day looked and sounded the same as it ever did. The same is true of day-to-day life in the city. But there is a significant if disparate set of voices warning that the United States, self-styled paragon of democracy, is sleepwalking towards authoritarianism under the joking, hectoring, overwhelming force of Trump’s persona and power.
Fatally for the Democrats, their message has not landed. While Trump’s approval ratings fluctuate, the opposition’s is tanking.
“It turns out when you let your hatred of president Trump get in the way of doing what is best for America, the people reject you,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday.
In their visits over the past week, both Taoiseach and Tánaiste have followed the lead of Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer by continuing to observe the norms Chris Murphy is warning about. They may have had no alternative.
The Taoiseach’s visit was understandably lauded as a diplomatic success. But it remains to be seen if there was any substance behind Donald Trump’s fond sentiments. He may well regard Ireland with a vague, hazy degree of affection.
But the brutal truth is that his soft words – the genuine amazement at the statistic he read out that 50 per cent of congressional medals have been awarded to Irish-Americans – had nothing to do with Ireland or with Micheál Martin. They had to do with the great and great-great-grandsons and daughters of the thousands who sailed and whose descendants marched down Fifth Avenue and in Chicago and Boston and elsewhere on Monday.
Trump’s Irish salute was for the Irish-Americans who voted for him in greater numbers than any Republican president since Ronald Reagan.
There is, of course, a bitter and definitively Irish irony in the fact that McGregor came to Washington to spout anti-immigrant cliches on Ireland’s national day, which has for centuries been intertwined with the complex and haunting story of Irish immigration. So, as he prepared for the parade in Cork, Micheál Martin felt compelled to respond to McGregor’s little podium speech with a post that read: “St Patrick’s Day around the world is a day rooted in community, humanity, friendship and fellowship. Conor McGregor’s remarks are wrong and do not reflect the spirit of St Patrick’s Day, or the views of the people of Ireland.”
Again, the decision was understandable, but it offered McGregor a chance to engage with the Taoiseach through the temporary authority conferred on him by his morning in the White House.
“We had a great meeting – he is a great man. I told him his work rate is outstanding and I wish him all the best,” McGregor said of Trump before addressing the Taoiseach’s rebuke.
“I am an employer of almost 300 people in the country of Ireland. He is an employer of none. Every available metric has shown to us that the Government of Ireland has failed the people of Ireland. In 10 years. Dublin city has gone from one of the safest cities in Ireland to one of the most dangerous. So, shame on him for saying that, speaking down on an Irishman. I won’t speak about him personally – throw a jab. I could. I could throw jabs handily at them. However, I speak on the metrics and the metrics show they have failed the people of Ireland.”
McGregor’s political incarnation may prove as ephemeral as his sporting triumphs if he ever gets to the stage where his name is on a ballot paper. But he is emerging in the online world as the figurehead for an “Ireland-for-the-Irish” movement, and his pop-up White House turn has thrilled his vocal army of believers.
St Patrick’s Day was their triumph. Maybe the Trump administration sees McGregor as a useful fool; maybe the president just wanted to meet him.
“We couldn’t think of a better guest to have in the White House on St Patrick’s Day,” Leavitt said while introducing McGregor.
Let that settle for a while.
In the end, the grim, unsettling cameo underlines the truth that now the shamrock bowl lies wilting, Ireland and its Government remains as vulnerable as ever to the caprices of the Trump administration – and that the anti-immigrant sentiment that was crucial in the last election in the United States is travelling to Ireland, on private jet rather than coffin ship.
There is an immortal line buried deep in the sprawling, stagy Martin Scorsese epic Gangs of New York, which pits the Nativists against the scourge of the newly arriving Irish.
“That, my friend, is the minority vote,” Bill Cutting tells Monk McGinn after dispatching him with an axe in his back. Then, a taunting aside to the crowd.
“Why don’t you burn him, see if his ashes turn green?”
