Donald Trump is a Republican and self-avowed nationalist. That, apparently, is true in an Irish sense, too – even if those terms have very different meanings across the Atlantic.

On Sept. 12, 2026, while seated next to taoiseach, the Irish title for prime minister, Micheál Martin, the U.S. president stated that he would “love to see” Ireland unified and that it is “going to happen eventually,” so it “may as well happen now.”

The next day he called reunification “a cool thing” but noted, “No matter what you say or how you say it, there’s no good answer.”

While such comments may have been welcomed by some supporters of unification both in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland – or “republicans” and “nationalists” in Irish political parlance – Trump’s comments were generally denounced by all parties, including the taoiseach.

The comments likewise set off a firestorm among Northern Irish unionists, who wish the region to remain part of the United Kingdom, as well as British conservatives and Trump allies such as Nigel Farage, who likewise insist that Northern Ireland should always remain part of the United Kingdom.

As an expert in Irish-American history, I view Trump’s comments as a break from recent precedent.

Since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement – which politically resolved the rumbling civil war known as the Troubles and achieved cooperation between the North, the Republic, and the U.K. – U.S. presidents have formally adopted a policy of neutrality when it comes to the question of Irish unification. Instead, Trump’s intervention hearkens back to an earlier age in which American presidents were often more opinionated on the issue of Irish nationalism.

Irish blood in the White House

Ireland first became a colony of Britain in the 12th century and regularly faced discriminatory polices, such as 17th- and 18th-century penal laws, which prevented Catholics and, to a lesser degree, Presbyterians from entering the upper tier of the socioeconomic........

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