All you need is some sturdy cardboard, a marker, a few squiggles of glue, a stick of wood and a pithy slogan. I’m toying with “BUZZ OFF – YOU’RE NOT OUR TYPE”, but I may have to rethink it. AI says to keep it under six words for maximum impact. And I want my placard to hit Donald Trump where the sun don’t shine – in his dark heart.

I’d been dithering about joining the protests against the US president visiting the Irish Open at his golf course in Clare next weekend. Then I heard a fellah vox-popped in Doonbeg say the warmonger will get a céad míle fáilte in the village but that [home-grown] protesters are not welcome.

Decision made. See you in Doonbeg, folk of Ireland, whose gardaí are being deployed at great cost and inconvenience to indulge a whim of, arguably, Earth’s sulkiest, most irrational and blundering enemy.

Do not be fooled. Trump is coming here because he likes golf – not because he admires Ireland’s 40 shades of green. The man’s regard for the natural world can be summed up in three words: “Drill, baby, drill.”

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Nor is his interest in Doonbeg altruistic. His Irish operation may provide wages for the coastal village of about 280 residents, but it raked in nearly $20m (€17m) last year for its greasy-fingered sex-offender owner. He’d turn the place into a fighters’ cage in a nanosecond if he thought it would........

© The Irish Times