{"id":622777,"date":"2026-09-12T20:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T20:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/622777\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T20:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T20:54:10","slug":"not-as-orange-as-he-looks-ni-parties-weigh-donald-trumps-united-ireland-comments-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/622777\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Not as orange as he looks\u2019: NI parties weigh Donald Trump\u2019s united Ireland comments \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was, as one senior SDLP figure put it, \u201cquite a moment, to have the American president saying that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cthat\u201d in question was Donald Trump\u2019s endorsement of Irish unity, delivered when answering questions from the media after his arrival in Ireland on Saturday. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d love to see it unified\u201d, Trump said; it would be \u201ca fantastic thing … a great thing\u201d and even \u201ca very cool thing.\u201d <\/p>\n

At the SDLP conference, taking place in a south Belfast hotel as Trump was speaking in Dublin, they were already talking unity. <\/p>\n

The \u201cdirection of travel\u201d towards constitutional change was \u201cclear\u201d, the SDLP leader Claire Hanna told the party faithful in her speech. Addressing the recent assertion by the UK prime minister, Andy Burnham, that a Border poll was \u201coff the table\u201d, Hanna responded: \u201cA new Ireland isn\u2019t just on the table, it\u2019s on the move.\u201d <\/p>\n

Then the US president weighed in. \u201cDonald Trump<\/a>, in the last hour, has announced that he is in favour of united Ireland,\u201d she said. \u201cTurns out he\u2019s not as orange as he looks,\u201d she added, in an allusion to the Orange Order. <\/p>\n

\"SDLPSDLP leader Claire Hanna MP referred to Donald Trump’s comments as she looked to build momentum for unity. Photograph: Liam McBurney\/PA Wire <\/p>\n

Her audience laughed. \u201cI\u2019m not sure if anybody\u2019s checked on the DUP,\u201d she continued. \u201cI suspect they\u2019re burning those Trump flags as we speak.\u201d <\/p>\n

But, she said, Trump\u2019s comments underlined \u201cas clearly as anything that change is happening, whether some parties here want to acknowledge it or not\u201d.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, those unionist parties disagreed, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) all issuing swift statements essentially telling Trump to keep out of it. <\/p>\n

\u201cNorthern Ireland<\/a>\u2019s constitutional future will be decided by the people of Northern Ireland, not by commentary in London, Dublin or Washington,\u201d was how the DUP leader Gavin Robinson put it. <\/p>\n

UUP deputy leader Robbie Butler took a swipe at \u201cthose now cheering\u201d Trump, accusing them of \u201ccherry picking. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne sentence about a united Ireland and he is apparently a statesman of rare vision,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The former SDLP leader Colum Eastwood, a long-standing critic of the US president, had his own tongue-in-cheek response, posting a video of Trump\u2019s comments on social media with the caption: \u201cAlways liked him.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a sign of the times,\u201d Eastwood told The Irish Times. \u201cWe had the former British prime minister Gordon Brown last week saying he thinks a united Ireland will happen, now we have the current president of America saying he thinks a united Ireland will happen. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think there is a recognition around the world that, after Brexit, the direction of travel was clear, that we\u2019re heading towards Irish unity.<\/p>\n

\"USUS president Donald Trump arrives at Farmleigh in Dublin and is greeted by Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean that those of us that want to see it don\u2019t have to work very hard to make sure it happens. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever about all the conversation and the distraction about criteria and dates, there is going to be a Border poll, we are going to win it, and Ireland\u2019s going to be united … so it\u2019s good to see that the American president, even though I don\u2019t agree with him very much, understands that reality.\u201d <\/p>\n

As Hanna said in a statement later on Saturday, \u201cwhen even Donald Trump has clocked that Irish unity is no longer some distant or theoretical prospect, it tells you something about just how far this conversation has shifted\u201d.<\/p>\n

Or, as she put it in her speech earlier, it was \u201cbecoming clearer by the day that the future of this island is changing\u201d and \u201cmore and more people are talking about our constitutional future. <\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t just take it from me,\u201d she said. \u201cTake it from the leader of the free world.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was, as one senior SDLP figure put it, \u201cquite a moment, to have the American president saying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[26189,969,61,60,43,2443,83876,49234],"class_list":["post-622777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-democratic-unionist-party","tag-donald-trump","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-northern-ireland","tag-social-democratic-and-labour-party","tag-ulster-unionist-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}