US president Donald Trump’s ability to create confusion and mayhem wherever he goes was on display last weekend when he casually backed the notion of a united Ireland. His host Taoiseach Micheál Martin was taken aback, while some of Trump’s most vocal critics in this country were delighted with his sudden burst of enthusiasm for Irish nationalism.

Given Trump’s support for anti-establishment nationalist parties across Europe, his united Ireland démarche may well have been a deliberate strategy. It has certainly emboldened Sinn Féin while putting the Taoiseach’s carefully calibrated approach to a shared island on the back foot for the moment.

Successive US presidents have had a direct impact on Ireland over the past half century or more, but not always in the expected way. The election of John F Kennedy as the first Irish-American Catholic president in 1960 prompted high hopes that he would weigh in and back the Irish government’s anti-partition campaign.

The then minister for external affairs Frank Aiken urged the ambassador to Washington Thomas J Kiernan to raise the partition issue with the president and persuade him to put public pressure on the British in advance of his visit to Ireland in 1963.

‘I fell in love with Ireland’: Joy at citizenship ceremony despite looming new rules

Joshua Allen given time to decide........

© The Irish Times