text:
Given that today it was announced that the description of a crime committed by an immigrant has widened, Melania seems to fit the bill exactly.
The Washington Post states that Homeland Security Honcho General Kelly has made the new orders clear: "Kelly's new DHS policies considerably broaden the pool of those who are prioritized for deportations, including undocumented immigrants who have been charged with crimes but not convicted, those who commit acts that constitute a 'chargeable criminal offense,' and those who an immigration officer concludes pose 'a risk to public safety or national security.'"
A chargeable criminal offense includes working illegally as Melania did. She broke the law—she must pay.
And it's not fake news! Fox News reported this during the campaign.
A Fox news report stated: "Melania Trump was paid for 10 modeling jobs in the United States worth $20,056 that occurred in the seven weeks before she had legal permission to work in the country, according to detailed accounting ledgers, contracts and related documents from 20 years ago provided to The Associated Press.
"The details of Mrs. Trump's early paid modeling work in the U.S. emerged in the final days of a bitter presidential campaign in which her husband, Donald Trump, has taken a hard line on immigration laws and those who violate them … Trump has noted that federal law prohibits illegally paying immigrants."
Mrs. Trump, who received a green card in March 2001 and became a U.S. citizen in 2006, has always maintained that she arrived in the country legally and never violated the terms of her immigration status (which is not true, according to Fox).
During the presidential campaign, she has cited her story to defend her husband's hard line on immigration.
So we can look forward to an ICE raid on Trump Tower no doubt with Melania dispatched in handcuffs to JFK? I doubt it.]]>
The freshman Republican from Indiana said the measure was "common sense" as many employers already trawl through job applicants' Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.
3/ This is a common sense way to increase security and ensure those who wish to harm Americans cannot enter the U.S.— Jim Banks (@RepJimBanks) February 17, 2017
"We must have confidence that those entering our country do not intend us harm," Banks told his local newspaper, the Journal Gazette. "Directing Homeland Security to review visa applicants' social media before granting them access to our country is common sense. Employers vet job candidates this way, and I think it's time we do the same for visa applicants."
Other measures in the bill include the requirement that all prospective tourists over the age of 11 be interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security.
Immigration attorney Jerri Mead said the bill's provisions were essentially "an expansion of procedures already in place."
However, critics on social media dubbed the bill obtrusive and a waste of resources.
@RepJimBanks maybe start with a warm up bill next time, don't go full Big Brother right out the gate. Gotta work ur way up to police state.— Anthony Hardwick (@KciwdrahOA) February 17, 2017
. @RepJimBanks That's reprehensible, and waste of time.— John K Sawers (@johnksawers) February 17, 2017
However, not everyone was opposed.
@RepJimBanks @rickbkylex Well done, sir!— Theodore (@RefDemo) February 17, 2017
@RepJimBanks that's a BRILLIANT idea.— M.Furius 🐸 Camillus (@nihilobstat23) February 17, 2017
Ireland is one of 38 countries that benefit from the Visa Waiver Program, that allows citizens to travel to the United States for up to 90 days on vacation without obtaining a visa from their local US Embassy first.
The Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) that tourists fill out recently added a question to ask applicants whether they've visited any of the seven countries on the new Administration's suspended travel ban list. Last year an optional box was also added in which applicants may choose to provide links to their social media accounts. However even before Bank's bill many speculated that it would not be long before the optional box became compulsory.
Renewing my ESTA travel authorisation re travelling to US. Form is now asking for social media account details. Marked optional (at moment)— Images by WmDore (@wmdore_images) February 17, 2017
Oh. pic.twitter.com/zQFw1g92Zp— Jamie Ross (@JamieRoss7) February 17, 2017
Were the bill to pass the measures would form part of the extreme vetting promised by President Trump as a candidate.]]>
A photo was posted on Twitter by Clear Sports, an outdoor and sporting goods company, showing its Chef Executive Garry Singer alongside New York Yankee player Paul O'Neil, McIroy and Trump. However, McIlroy told the website No Laying Up that Singer and O'Neil were not part of the presidential group. Their group was rounded-out by, Kildare-born, Nick Mullen from International Sport Management and Rich Levine, a friend of the President's.
McIroy told the site "He probably shot around 80. He's a decent player for a guy in his 70's!"
The golfer said he received the call asking if he'd call on Saturday night, to play on Sunday morning. McIroy is currently nursing a stress fracture in his rib and was not planning to play golf for another week. However, he said he had to make an exception for the POTUS.
Big battle today at Trump International with Clear CEO Garry Singer @McIlroyRory @PaulONeillYES @realDonaldTrump Drain the putt... pic.twitter.com/AZJqEVtlBT— ClearSports (@ClearSportsLLC) February 19, 2017
Currently ranked as the world's number three golfer McIlroy has not played competitively since January, however, has confirmed that his rehabilitation has been doing well and he plans to play next week at the WGC-Mexico Championship.
McIlroy who currently lives in Florida, with his American fiancée Erica Stoll, has previously expressed his views on US politics. Ahead of the presidential election McIlory said "I'm not American.
"He's not going to be the leader of my country."
He continued "Look, it really doesn't bother me too much. I've been following it. I really thought I knew what politics were until I started to watch some of these presidential debates…Look, I can't vote. And if I were to vote, I'm not sure I would want to vote for any of the candidates."
This also isn't the first time that McIlroy has voiced his opinion with regard to the POTUS' golfer prowess. In June 2013, while attending the G8 meetings in Northern Ireland former president Barack Obama took the opportunity to play few rounds. While speaking to the press he said "I did meet Rory McIlroy last year, and Rory offered to get my swing sorted…Which was a polite way of saying, 'Mr. President, you need help."
Read more: Ex-Canadian leader Brian Mulroney performs "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" for Donald Trump]]>
A video posted on various social media platforms appears to have been taken at a fundraiser for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. It was headlined by the Canadian songwriter David Foster.
Mulroney, who has been a longtime neighbor of Trump's in Palm Beach, FL, was sitting with the President and his wife, Melania, at the fundraiser. The Star also reported that Mulroney gave the President a first-hand read on the meetings with the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in Washington last week.
Also present was Brian Burns, named by Trump as his the future US Ambassador to Ireland.
Calling Mulroney to the stage, the headliner Foster, said "I would never presume to say that I could go to the president of the United States and ask him to sing, so I won't do that."
Mulroney jokingly said to the president, before starting his performance, "Mr. President, I hope this doesn't fracture U.S.-Canada relations for decades…I apologize in advance."
He told the crowd the previous evening he had visited with Andrea Bocelli, the opera singer at his home, and the Italian pro had said he had a good voice.
This was not the first time that Mulroney said "When Irish Eyes are Smiling" for a US President. In 1985, the Canadian and his wife, Mila, joined Ronald Regan and his wife, Nancy, in singing the song during a meeting Quebec City, dubbed the "Shamrock Summit."
The Trump and Mulroney families have known each other for over 25 years. The families have homes in Palm Beach and their adult children know each other well.
The former Canadian PM is clearly proud of his Irish roots. Mulroney was born in Baie-Comeau, Quebec to Irish Canadian Catholic parents Mary Irene (née O'Shea) and Benedict Martin Mulroney.
Ironically his entertaining favorite tune, "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling", was not the work of those back on the Emerald Isle. While it's long associated with the Irish and tends to crop up in ever Ireland-related movie, it was in fact written by a trio of writers in the United States, with strong tied to America's Tin Pan Alley.
Read more: The history behind "When Irish Eyes are Smiling"]]>
With our current President, Barack Obama, also visiting his ancestral family home, Moneygall, County Offaly, during his time in office, historians are taking a look at the 22 American presidents with roots in Ireland.
John Robert Greene, a historian and author of dozens of books, explained: "It's very simple, Catholic votes …There's not a huge love of Irish tradition, with the possible exception of JFK and Ronald Reagan, not a huge love of Irish culture, with the possible exception of JFK, Reagan and Bill Clinton, but there's a huge love for Catholic votes and particularly Irish Catholic votes.
In 1984 President Ronald Regan and his wife Nancy visited Ballyporeen in County Tipperary. Eight bed and breakfasts, two cafes and souvenir businesses opened up. The tourist boom lasted for six or seven years.
The local pub was renamed after the president before he even arrived and after his death in 2005 the Reagan presidential library acquired the interior of the pub. The walls were decked with images of the president around the world.
The pub's owner, Mary O'Farrell, told the BBC, "He was real Irish in temperament …You'd know he was Irish, he had that sense of humor and glint in his eye."
Most of the 22 Irish American presidents have their roots in Tyrone and Antrim and come from a Protestant background of 19th century Ulster. They generally settled in the south and west in the US. Later they labeled themselves Scots-Irish in a bid to distinguish themselves from the Catholics fleeing Ireland during the potato famine of the 1840s. It better served those running for the presidency to not associate with those coming out of Ireland, who were being accused of stealing American jobs.
During the early 20th century, those attitudes began to change and then along came John F. Kennedy.
Although neither his parents nor grandparents were born in Ireland, he forged a solid Irish identity and he became the first Catholic to take the office. At Kennedy's rallies, filled with prominent Irish Catholics such as Tip O'Neill, "Danny Boy" was the tune of choice.
Talking about Kennedy Greene said, "He clearly wanted the link to the Irish and he made himself more Irish than any other American president."
Since Kennedy (who was assassinated on November 22, 1963) every president apartment from Gerald Ford has claimed some sort of Irish ancestry, says Greene. Although he commented that in Bill Clinton's case there was no evidence.
Carl Shanahan, founder of Wild Geese, an organization that promotes Irish culture in the US and worldwide, said that what these presidents are doing is exactly like what millions of Americans do every day.
Shanahan said, "Being Irish doesn't hurt you at any level of society. We were never at war with Americans like the Germans, the Italians and the Japanese. In Washington's army the numbers were a third Irish or Scottish-Irish …There is an affinity by association. It's the reputation of the Irish, the fighting Irish. A guy who gets off his feet and fights the battle and wins. We had boxing champs and baseball teams."
He continues, "We fought their wars, opened up their territories and built their cities. There's nowhere to tell that story and if we don't tell it, then people will forget."
One excellent demonstration of this is the St. Patrick's Day parade, which is older than the United States itself. The first parade took place 250 years ago in 1766, in New York, ten years before the Declaration of Independence.
* Originally published in 2013.]]>
Consider fake nuclear weapons in Iraq. Several stories by ace reporter Judith Miller that ran on the front page of The New York Times seemed to prove beyond doubt that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Her informer used the code name "Curveball," which was pretty apt given he was lying. Three trillion dollars later and countless lives lost it was a hell of a fake news coup.
In the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964 three North Vietnamese patrol boats attacked an American destroyer on August 4.
Except it never happened. No matter, fake news reported it did. On August 7, 1964 Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution allowing President Johnson to bypass Congress and send ground troops into Vietnam. We all know how that turned out.
William Randolph Hearst started the Spanish-American War when the battleship Maine exploded in Havana harbor in 1898. Hearst sent America to war with inflammatory headlines and cheer-leading drowning out President McKinley, who wanted to calm the waters. It is believed now the Cuban army fighting the Spanish at the time likely detonated a charge that blew up the magazine on the ship in order to get America into the war.
So maybe the media should not be so self-righteous when it comes to sneering at Trump's comments about fake news.
Trump put on an extraordinary performance at his press conference, proving beyond a shadow of doubt he is his own best defender.
He was funny, relaxed, informative, off the wall and stayed until there were no more questions to answer.
It made you realize that Trump is like an empty oil truck – he needs the fuel of the media to operate.
During the campaign, he was on the front line every day and gave 'em hell. Now he is far more remote, peering out through the White House curtains at the passing parade.
He sends emissaries out, but they are losing, not winning like Trump promised.
Sean Spicer has become a figure of fun. Reince Priebus looks shattered. Bannon is such an oddball that some people seem to visibly recoil when he's around. Stephen Miller would not be out of place as an Oliver Stone assassin character. Kellyanne Conway has lost all bearing.
So it is up to Trump to rescue Trump, and yesterday he did so.
But he can't keep coming up to bat and swinging every inning. His followers will have loved his combativeness, his directness and above all his sometimes open contempt for the media. But it is no longer a campaign, and Trump needs an "A" team to rebuild his reputation in the White House, having lost two cabinet choices, botched an immigration order, etc.
But he has inner strength. His comments on Israel and the Palestinians at least got rid of the blatant fallacy that a two-state solution is still possible. It reminded me of the need for Irish pols to say a united Ireland is their goal when everyone knows it is at least generations away.
If Trump can forget about the size of crowds, what a CNN host is saying to him, what clothes brand his daughter is hawking etc. and lay off hard-working immigrants he can be a very meaningful president. He doesn't lack the ability to impact, as his press conference showed.
Focus, focus, focus, Donald.
Here is the press conference in full:]]>
In memory Reagan stands more solidly than he ever did in life, that avuncular former film actor with an Irish twinkle in his eye. Grown men loved him. In the years that followed we placed him in the national iconography somewhere between John Wayne and Santa Claus.
To conservatives Reagan has come to mean what President Obama is beginning to mean to the left – the finest president of their lifetimes, the only one whose personal stature matched his political leadership.
To some conservatives just to say Reagan's name is a near benediction. It will be that way with Obama soon too.
You can see how this happens. The passing of time has a clarifying effect, it smooths away many of the rough edges of our experiences, it can start to gently trick us, until what happened and how we remember it start to sail away in opposite directions.
As you watch the past sail over the horizon you must choose which ship your eye will follow: what really happened or how you will recall it in your heart?
They are rarely the same thing. In fact they almost never are.
Since its foundation the United States of America has been reluctant to reconcile the story of what really happened here with the way our hearts choose to remember it.
There's a damn good reason for that. America has long understood that to accept both sides of its historical record would lead to a moral reckoning that many people in this country have resisted since the first pilgrim fired the first musket at the first native American.
Instead, we have agreed to believe in a half-told tale. It starts off in our homes and then its spreads to our schools, and from there directly to our government – this half-told tale of America that we insist on telling ourselves to avoid pain.
We are told, for example, how the first pilgrims invited Native Americans to a harvest dinner for the first Thanksgiving in 1621. But who hears about how their rapacious descendants slaughtered those natives in their millions?
Slavery was the engine that caused the South to rise. The institutional ownership of human beings, the horror began before the first Thanksgiving and its long legacy has never been thought sufficient to merit the payment of serious reparations, and because it has not it has never really healed.
But the truth matters. Stories matter. What gets told and what gets overlooked matter profoundly. They matter because what's suppressed is often on its way to being forgotten, with unintendedly grave results for the generations that follow.
The electoral college notwithstanding, there is one reason above all others why Donald Trump is our president now. Simply put, he promised to keep the America of our dreams from colliding with the real America. He sold us the same old lie that Reagan did, the one that helps us to sleep in our beds.
A black man has been president, gay marriage is a reality, Black Lives Matter brings the streets to a standstill, the two Americas, like two ships, were finally threatening to collide.
To prevent that collision from happening along comes that avatar of 1980s nostalgia Donald Trump, asking us to get into his silver DeLorean time machine and go Back to The Future before we had a chance to make sense of the present.
We got in because we wanted to escape, not because we wanted to go forward.
We knew Trump was a smooth but dubious salesman but we trusted him to hold the line against chaos. We knew the rough work that he'd do to other people's dreams would protect our own. That's why we gave him the gig.
ICE detained nearly 700 immigrants in a five-day nationwide raid: https://t.co/tZ60G7fXMn pic.twitter.com/nLqfd2aMFl— Fusion (@Fusion) February 14, 2017
The passing of time allows you to see what you have missed. In Reagan's America in the 1980s most white, middle class people considered it a time of progress and advancement. Black people in that era saw their opportunities shrink and their paths run out. But it was gay people, more than any other community, that saw more of the business end of that hypocritical era.
For them it wasn't a decade, it was a war.
Ronald Reagan refused to even utter the word AIDS publicly for seven years until 41,027 people had died and 71,176 persons had been diagnosed. What other community would have had to die in those staggering numbers before a sitting American president even condescended to acknowledge their suffering?
Reagan ran away from the kind of leadership that could have saved them. They did not belong to his story of America. And because he looked the other way it took more years that it should have for the lifesaving treatments to be funded and approved.
In voting for Trump white conservatives think they have just turned the clock back on minority progress, back to a time when they would find themselves unquestioned – and unquestioningly – in control of the nation's future. Trump was a Faustian bargain they made to stave off the future. They didn't believe in him, they just wanted him to stick his finger in the dyke.
But white conservatives in this country used to be much smarter. They used to play their political hands with much more subtlety and foresight. Nowadays their fatal error is that they have come to believe their own propaganda. Ask Steve Bannon, ask Steve Miller, ask Sean Spicer, ask Kellyanne Conway. Three weeks into the new administration their names are already synonymous with unbelievable propaganda.
Here's Kellyanne Conway trying really hard not to talk about Mike Flynn's resignation https://t.co/x8sSI2vZsA pic.twitter.com/zyDLFPRM85— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) February 14, 2017
But Trump is slowly revealing himself to be perhaps the greatest fantasist of all. We now have a president who believes in disprovable fantasies like his fake win of the popular vote, the fake terrorist attacks he cites, the fake voter fraud claims he rails against, the fake claims he makes about Muslims in New Jersey celebrating 9/11 and so on.
Alarmingly, just like the people who voted for him, the America in Trump's heart no longer matches the America of fact. He's as stumped by our present as the people who elected him.
That's is why he and his administration have launched an all-out war on the truth.
Those who voted for him thought Donald could tell the difference between our history and how we speak of it. But it turns out he can't distinguish between the great lie, the half-told tale, and anything else.
So, Trump won't stave off the great moral reckonings that are still ahead of us that frighten so many conservatives here. Instead, he's become a giant lighthouse that is guiding them all home.
Read more: Hey Irish, don't blame Trump on immigration, blame Ted Kennedy]]>
Don't blame Donald Trump for the lack of immigration from Ireland, rather blame Teddy Kennedy.
Donald Trump may actually help the Irish if he moves to a skills-based immigration policy. Under the current family-based system created by Kennedy's immigration bill in 1965 the Irish have been all but wiped out.
The 1965 act raised quotas from countries that had been previously disadvantaged, namely those in Asia and Latin America, and established a system under which an immigrant with family in the United States was given preference.
This proved prejudicial to European countries like Ireland, whose immigration had slowed. Official statistics showed a drastic reduction in the number of legal Irish immigrants, with more than 70,000 coming to this country in the decade 1956-65, compared with only 10,000 plus in 1976-85.
Thus, was Ted Kennedy's bill – nothing to do with Mr. Trump.
Kennedy apologized for outlawing the Irish in a 2006 statement.
"What we were trying to do was eliminate discrimination that existed in the law, but the way that that legislation was developed worked in a very dramatic and significant way against the Irish."
Thanks Ted. The impact has been profound: by 2007, fewer than 170,000 people born in Ireland were living in the United States, less than one-tenth the number of the Irish-born residents during the late nineteenth century, even though the total American population was much larger at the beginning of the twenty-first century than it had been a century earlier.
There were warnings at the time of the 1965 Act that the Irish would be impacted. "Tip" O'Neill, later Speaker of the House, asked the Irish government if they wanted an exception in their case.
The government of the day amazingly replied no, sealing the fate of hundreds of thousands of their emigrants who have lived illegally in America since then. There was opposition from Irish American organizations, but Kennedy brushed it off.
His aides were worried about a bill that would take away Irish immigration to America, but Kennedy plowed ahead, aided and abetted by brother Robert, who was also in the Senate at the same time.
The previous so-called national origins policy was utterly discriminatory, but it would have been the right thing to ensure that mother countries of generations of American immigrants had some legal recourse to immigration.
Some southern Republicans strongly opposed Kennedy's efforts to end immigration as America knew it, but he moved past them.
It was the time of huge civil rights breakthroughs and Kennedy saw immigration in the same light.
On September 22, 1965 the Senate voted 76-18 to pass the new bill that utterly excluded immigration from Europe save in a very small percentage of cases.
We Irish are suffering the consequences since.
Judge John Collins, a young lawyer at the time of the 1965 Act remembers efforts made by an Irish group who stated they were "a committee of American Irish organizations and individuals who have banded together to protect the interests of those members of the Irish race who desire to immigrate to the US. We recognize that the former US immigration policy discriminated against some nationalities. Now, however, we find that the present law discriminates against the Irish."
Read more: John Collins - Seeking help from Senator Robert Kennedy on changing 1965 Immigration Act
A few statistics were provided – the monthly average number of Irish immigrants then entering was 99; It had been 448. In 1965, 5,378 Irish men and women immigrated to the US. In the first six months under the new law, 696 entered. At the same time, total immigration to the US increased 23,677 over the previous year.
At one Irish meeting, Collins says the tireless Father Donal O'Callaghan, a great advocate of the Irish, made a prediction that has proven eerily very close to the bone.
Fr. O'Callaghan, told his audience that if the 1965 law was not changed, the GAA (composed of many new immigrants) would be the first to go, followed by the United Irish Counties Association and then lastly the AOH. His prediction was right on target. All those organizations have suffered massive losses in numbers since the 1965 Act.
O'Callaghan was fond of quoting John Boyle O'Reilly on the topic.
"No treason do we bring from Erin
Nor bring we shame nor guilt
The sword we hold may be broken
But we haven't dropped the hilt
Like the Minstrel Boy the harp will be heard no more because of the 1965 Act.
This one is on Kennedy, not Trump folks.
Read more: In Queens the threat of immigration raids grows]]>
The meeting had been due to take place on March 1 but was bumped up to February 23 at the insistence of the Irish Government on account of "recent events," Minister for Transport Shane Ross said.
His department has also ordered a review of the process that allows people traveling to America to clear US immigration and customs in Ireland before flying, allowing them to simply walk off their plane once they land.
"My officials have already been in contact with the US authorities and have conveyed our concerns about President Trump's executive order and its implications for US preclearance services at Shannon and Dublin Airports," the Minister told journalists.
While the agreement may be canceled by either Governments with a year's notice, there is no provision under the current agreement for it to be temporarily suspended.
Irish politicians have previously expressed their dismay at the president's executive order – suspended pending its review by Federal courts – that banned immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Minister for Children Katherine Zappone immediately called for an inquiry into preclearance when the ban was announced. "We need to determine whether our constitution and the international treaties we have signed up to, that those laws operate in context of Irish soil in terms of prohibiting those policies of discrimination against nationalities, and also people of particular religions, that Donald Trump has implemented," she said at the time.
I am deeply concerned that discrimination maybe happening at US immigration in Irish airports and am seeking an urgent review.— Katherine Zappone (@KZapponeTD) January 29, 2017
Nevertheless, the Irish Government wants the system to continue if possible.
Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar – and potentially the next Taoiseach (Prime Minister) – said he though the current arrangement was of "of huge advantage to Ireland."
"People remember those long two hour queues at US airports. It's good for tourism. It's good for aviation," he told the Irish Times. "When I was transport minister it was very helpful when trying to get new routes into Ireland. It's very good for jobs. Having that does not prevent us from questioning US policy."
After U.S. District Judge James Robart struck down the travel ban as unlawful President Trump reacted angrily and vowed to appeal the decision.
The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 4, 2017
However, the Department of Justice's appeal to the 9th Circuit was also unsuccessful and was sustained by a three judge panel, provoking a gleeful tweet from the President's defeated rival Hillary Clinton.
3-0— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 10, 2017
President Trump is refusing to let the matter rest and it's likely the ban will ultimately end up Supreme court.
SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017
Read more: In Queens the threat of immigration raids grows
H/T: The Irish Times.]]>
Specifically, he was upset that Spicer was portrayed by a woman. As Politico reported: "More than being lampooned as a press secretary who makes up facts, it was Spicer's portrayal by a woman that was most problematic in the president's eyes, according to sources close to him. . . 'Trump doesn't like his people to look weak,' added a top Trump donor."
Well! We thought McCarthy's performance was terrific and we realized there's an abundance of Irish and Irish American female comedians who could certainly do justice to the rest of the Trump administration.
Here are our top picks for women comedians to play the Trump administration on SNL, or maybe even in a full feature dystopian farce. Let us know in the comments if you have other ideas or suggestions for the cabinet members we didn't cover!
The second word broke that Trump was less than pleased about McCarthy playing Spicer, the internet came to a consensus about who should take on the role of Steve Bannon, Trump's chief strategist and former chair of the alt-right site Breitbart News: Rosie O'Donnell. Indeed, we can easily see her transforming into Bannon's disheveled mien, and Trump's long-standing hatred of O'Donnell would no doubt make the caricature all the more cutting.
love u billy https://t.co/dF15VGg4kz— ROSIE (@Rosie) February 10, 2017
O'Donnell has confirmed her interest in playing Bannon, even changing her Twitter profile picture to a photoshopped image of her as Bannon. Her reps said she wouldn't be on SNL this weekend, but fingers crossed she makes an appearance soon.
The former Glee star might have a couple inches on the Vice President height-wise, but that shouldn't detract from her ability to capture his aged Ken doll essence. In addition to being a comedic genius Lynch is a proud lesbian, which contrasts nicely with Pence's horrifying record on LGBT rights as Governor of Indiana.
It's not a good time to be Mike Flynn! Trump's National Security Advisor is currently under extreme scrutiny for potentially having discussed sanctions on Russia with the Russian Ambassador before Trump was sworn into office. Who better to capture that twitchy, nervous energy than SNL alum Molly Shannon?
Given that his nickname is "Mad Dog," Trump's secretary of defense has to be played by someone who can capture his gruff, abrupt nature. Kathy Griffin pulls no punches.
Tried, tested, audience approved.
From Michael Jackson to Hillary Clinton, the Parks and Recreation star (who has roots in Cork and Sligo on her mother's side, in case you were wondering) has never met an impersonation she couldn't handle. The beady eyes and southern drawl of Trump's highly controversial Attorney General will be a new challenge. Nevertheless, she will surely persist.
Trump's Chief of Staff and the former RNC chair, Priebus is one of the more seemingly normal members of his administration, so it'll take a certain understated humor to pull this off. Irish comedian Maeve Higgins, who has an excellent podcast about immigration, "Maeve in America," and who's taken a few turns on Inside Amy Schumer, would do great.
Trump's pick for Secretary of Energy Rick Perry is now in charge of a department he once publicly said he'd abolish. How absurd! Nobody does absurdity as well as Will and Grace star Megan Mullally.
From ExxonMobil CEO to secretary of state is quite a journey. The Canadian Irish actress and writer known for her turns in Home Alone and Christopher Guest movies would ooze into the oil tycoon's shoes.
We have no idea if Stranger Things' Millie Bobbie Brown has Irish roots (she's British, though Winona Ryder did get her a Claddagh ring as a parting gift when they wrapped filming on the Netflix series, so maybe!). But we'd love to see her and her flawless American accent take a crack at Trump's youngest adviser and son-in-law, widely thought to be the voice of reason on his team but from whom not much has been heard since the inauguration.
Update: A few readers brought it to our attention that we left out The Donald himself. After careful consideration, we decided there was one actress in particular with the gravitas to take on the role.
Despite the fact that Meryl Streep is one of the most lauded and celebrated actresses of our generation, Donald Trump has denounced her via his Twitter as "overrated" in reaction to her sharp criticism of him at the Golden Globes. Streep has proven herself to be an absolute chameleon, transforming herself profoundly for every role, from Margaret Thatcher to Julia Child. What's more, she's even impersonated Trump once before, in June 2016 at the Public Theater Gala in New York. Streep's great-grandmother on her mother's side, Grace Strain, was born in Creeslough, Donegal in 1865. Streep named one of her daughters Grace in her honor.]]>
During an interview with CNN on Tuesday, the Irish American Congressman attempted to explain why attacks by white supremacists had not been added to President Trump's list of 78 attacks his administration thinks have not been adequately covered by the media.
But the glaring omission of our home grown domestic terrorists, the majority of which are self described white nationalists, perplexed CNN's Alisyn Camerota.
"Why isn't the president talking about the white terrorists who mowed down six Muslims praying at their mosque?" Camerota asked Duffy.
"I don't know, but I would just tell you there's a difference," Duffy replied. "You don't have a group like ISIS or Al Qaeda that is inspiring attacks around the world. That was a one off, Alisyn."
The problem is, it wasn't a one off and we do have white nationalists groups inspiring attacks on our home soil.
Each time a white supremacist goes on a killing spree they are invariably referred to by the media as a "lone wolf" who "acted independently" as though they weren't aware of - or were even a part of - a national and international neo-Nazi network.
"So you give me two examples, right," said Duffy, reluctantly admitting the recent attack on a mosque was more than a one off. "And in recent times, we're going to talk about the one example. That's different than the whole movement that has taken place through ISIS and inspired attacks."
How it was different Duffy failed to clarity. Tell that to the bereaved, however.
Statistics simply don't bear Duffy's contention out. Since 9/11, according to The New York Times, an average of nine American Muslims per year have been involved in an average of six terrorism-related plots against targets in the United States.
Most of those plots were disrupted after tip offs from within their own communities, and the 20 plots that were carried out have accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years.
In contrast white nationalists have averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities, according to a study by Arie Perliger a professor at the United States Military Academy's Combating Terrorism Center.
In fact the numbers of white nationalist attacks have only increased since the study was released in 2012. So it's remarkable, given these easy to verify findings, to hear a United States Congressman contend that we face a special threat from Muslims when the facts say otherwise.
U.S. law enforcement also says otherwise. In 2014 law enforcement officers determined the "sovereign citizen" movement - an offshoot of the white-supremacist movement – is actually the most pressing terrorist threat in the United States.
So given what our security experts say, it's time for Congressman Duffy to clarify exactly what the "difference" between competing sets of radical terrorists is?
Read more: Why Donald Trump should decline Irish invitation from Enda Kenny]]>
Don't take our word for it. Steve Bannon, of County Clare ancestry, is featured on the cover of this weeks' Time Magazine, which says Bannon is the second most powerful man alive.
There is no one closer to Trump or more responsible for his policies. Not since lawyer Tommy Corcoran convinced FDR to implement the "New Deal" has anyone in the White House been so powerful.
There is also no one who incites the ire of the left more than the White House's Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.
Labeled a "white supremacist" by Nancy Pelosi and caricatured by terrified "Saturday Night Live" liberals as the grim reaper and the power behind the throne, the 63-year-old Irish American has been catapulted into the spotlight in a way few would have predicted this time last year.
Bannon was a believer in "Trumpism" when President Trump was a Democrat and reality TV star, and if the administration is going to refashion American politics with a new political ideology, Bannon will be the midwife.
"I come from a blue-collar, Irish Catholic, pro-Kennedy, pro-union family of Democrats," Bannon told Bloomberg before he shot to global fame. "I wasn't political until I got into the service and saw how badly Jimmy Carter f***ed things up. I became a huge Reagan admirer. Still am. But what turned me against the whole establishment was coming back from running companies in Asia in 2008 and seeing that Bush had f***ed up as badly as Carter. The whole country was a disaster."
Disenchanted, Bannon co-founded Breitbart News – the 'go to' website for the so-called "alt-right." The site considers itself "anti-establishment," but it has been derided as a racist and misogynist peddler of fake news by opponents.
Bannon's appointment as Chief Executive of Donald Trump's campaign in August unleashed a flurry of condemnation from Congressional Democrats; 169 signed a letter urging then candidate Trump to dump Bannon because of his ties to "white nationalism" – a charge he rejected.
In the few short weeks, he's had a desk in the West Wing, Bannon has attracted criticism and attention in a way no White House staffer has since Karl Rove worked for George W. Bush.
The thrice divorced Catholic is apparently teaming up with conservative critics of Pope Francis within the Vatican to try and undermine the left-wing pontiff, the New York Times reported.
Until January 20 this year Pope Francis had a kindred spirit in the Oval Office on issues such as climate change, immigration and Islam. President Trump's election changed all that and the administration is readying itself for clashes with Rome over many totemic issues.
People who oppose the #MuslimBan— Nunca Trump (@EveryTrumpFan) January 29, 2017
The Pope
Dick Cheney
Dr. Seuss
People Who Support It:
Steve Bannon
See the problem yet?
In private Bannon has derided His Holiness as a "socialist/communist" and the Pope's internal critics hope he'll be a valuable ally in the fight for "radical traditionalist" values.
He's also earned the ire of skeptical generals following his appointment to the National Security Council.
"Putting aside for a moment Mr. Bannon's troubling public positions, which are worrisome enough," Michael Mullins, a former Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs wrote, "institutionalizing his attendance threatens to politicize national security decision-making."
Steve Bannon sitting on the National Security Council is dangerous and unprecedented. He must be removed.— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 30, 2017
He added that he feared giving a political operator such an important role would, "have a chilling effect on deliberations."
What influence his Irish heritage has on his politics is unclear. Speaking to Irish radio station Newstalk in 2011, Bannon spoke about how he felt the backbone of the Tea Party was made up of people in the South and the Midwest of Scotch and Irish descent, but there's little else to suggest his links to Ireland will shape his work in the White House.
After the election one worried Londoner fretted on Twitter that his Irish roots would make him hostile to Britain – perhaps, finally, a claim too wild for even Steve Bannon.
Steve Bannon will be no ally of GB, from Irish catholic heritage (which is why white supremacist is so confusing) pro United Ireland.— Helena Jane (@N1_Angel) November 14, 2016
He did, however, explain to Newstalk about what drove his political activism during the Obama years. "We have socialism in the United States for the very wealthy and very poor, and a brutal form of capitalism for everyone else."
The then journalist was also remarkably prescient that the White House would soon be occupied by a rank outsider. His prediction missed the mark by four years (he originally said Americans would replace Obama with a Tea Party conservative in 2012), but still, unlike most of the media, Bannon can genuinely attest to having predicted the rise of Donald Trump.
This difference from what Sarah Palin refers to as the "lamestream media" perhaps undermines Bannon's contempt for much of American journalism; only a few short days into the Trump administration he launched into a vicious diatribe against his former trade.
"The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while," he said. "The media here is the opposition party. They don't understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States."
After an election in which only two of the country's hundred top newspapers backed his boss it's hard to refute that Bannon might have a point. Rarely before can there have been such a gulf between journalists and those who still buy their newspapers. But could Bannon's attacks be motivated by something beyond the avalanche of attacks his boss endured as a candidate last year?
Media outlets were quick to remind voters that Bannon's second wife, Mary Louise Picard, accused him of battery and domestic violence before their divorce in 1996. Piccard dropped the charges but said at the time that she only did so after she was "threatened" by Bannon's attorney and convinced that if she went ahead she "would have no money and no way to support the children."
She also alleged that he complained the school they sent their daughters to had too many Jewish pupils and that Jews raise their children to be "whiny brats." All of which Bannon denies.
His third wife, Diane Clohesy, a fellow Tea Party activist and Breitbart News contributor, has a history of drug misuse. She was involved in a bizarre case involving smuggling drugs into a prison inmate. They divorced in 2009, but have since collaborated on a documentary about Sarah Palin.
Bannon is one of the most powerful and provocative figures in Trump's inner circle and, it's said, it was he who pushed most strongly for Press Secretary Sean Spicer to make his bogus claims about the size of the crowds on Inauguration Day.
Moving forward, it seems likely he'll pursue his passion for "economic nationalism" that helped win Trump the election.
"The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f***ed over," he told the Hollywood Reporter.
"If we deliver, he added. "We'll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years."
It's a high bar to scale, but it does not seem that Bannon has had the time to contemplate failure yet.
"I am," he gushed to them, "Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors."
Perhaps unaware that when Cromwell failed to deliver for King Henry VIII he was denounced as a traitor and executed for treason. Steve Bannon must hope he can avoid a similar fate.]]>
But no woman who has watched the professional rise of an under-qualified or incompetent man is surprised by Donald Trump. Every day sexism and preferential treatment in the working world is such a commonplace for them that Garland's shock is almost laughable.
Recall that even when Trump confessed to sexually assaulting women against their will on tape his candidacy progressed without interruption, reminding us that when our own interests are on the line we are a say one thing and do another society.
So Trump isn't the exception: he's the rule. He represents money over talent, bullying over leadership, and coercion over conviction. It would bad enough if stopped there, but of course it never does.
It does violence to an organization when an unqualified person is placed in a position of power over vastly more experienced and competent candidates. First, it sends a message: who you are trumps what you can do.
Second, it squashes dissent -- protest this and you will face immediate dismissal. Third, it rewards the bad with good, demoralizing almost everyone else in the process.
Most women have observed this preferential phenomenon at some point in their working lives, so they know that when bad men take good positions the rot will quickly spread.
Put an under-qualified man in a position of power and watch what it does to him. Edicts will start coming down from on high. He will test the limits of his new authority like a bully picking playground victims.
To compensate for his lack of qualifications and to distract us from his basic incompetence he will set a series of roaring administrative fires. Good staff is then placed in the position of deflecting his bad decisions, softening his blunt edges and trying to make his malpractice look like management.
Garland would probably be stunned by just how many women try to offset male incompetence in a working week. Just ask Kellyanne Conway, the increasingly unbelievable mouthpiece for the Trump administration.
Tasked with defending the indefensible, she is sacrificing her own integrity to camouflage chaos. It's an old story.
Multiple legal experts say Kellyanne Conway's TV endorsement of Ivanka Trump's brand violated ethics rules. https://t.co/fEgwA8HMUh pic.twitter.com/S68oLdKWdx— ABC News (@ABC) February 9, 2017
But it's not these high paid, designer dress wearing spokeswomen that you should feel most sorry for. They are handsomely paid to mask their own horror.
Instead it's the working men and women of the United States, especially the federal government employees, who find themselves at the business end of Trump's most impulsive edicts.
I don't know what it's like to get up, report to my job at Customs and Border Patrol at my local airport, and then handcuff and detain a five-year-old for hours, separating him from his worried parents, as one did last week in Dulles Airport, but thanks to Donald Trump someone now does.
Oh look it's the ban keeping us safe from this dangerous kid. Thank god they cuffed him. Dulles airport. @CNN @thehill @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/z38cjPs6Ht— Leatriana Pope (@Leatibug13) February 1, 2017
You wake up thinking you're a good person, but then you keep a child from seeing his own family for hours, held in handcuffs, because someone in authority made a cruel and indefensible decision. All you did was follow his orders.
Authoritarianism doesn't always arrive with a bunch of jackbooted thugs smashing store windows and setting fires. To flourish, all it really needs is people to carry out their orders without question.
It means that otherwise decent people can find themselves carrying out life changing acts of cruelty against innocent people they would otherwise have no malice toward. It's sobering just how quickly all of this can happen.
All a bad manager needs to flourish is for underlings to do his bidding. It can take them too long to recognize that system can only work if they are willing to do as he tells them.
The United States Constitution says that the people rule. Our president is elected by us and answerable to us. He is not a king; he is our employee.
The question before us now is one that is familiar to most working women. Will we do as we are told in the face of cruelty and prejudice toward the innocent, or will we resist and act as our conscience and convictions dictate?
Read more: Congressman Sean Duffy says white terrorists are different to Muslims]]>
The tide was far too strong, of course, and the Irish had a sufficient grip on their American existence by the time the first broadly restrictive immigration act came into force a century ago this past weekend.
The Immigration Act of 1917 came into effect on February 5 that year, after Congress overrode a veto by President Woodrow Wilson.
The Irish were not the prime target of the 1917 act but were certainly included in its crosshairs if they happened to stray into them.
Mostly, it was aimed at southern and eastern Europeans.
It also targeted people from Asia Minor and Asia, hence the act is also known as the "Asiatic Barred Zone Act."
The tripwire in the act was literacy, which was used broadly in addition to what would be to today's world an astonishing list of inadmissible persons.
The literacy test had cropped up in numerous immigration proposals beginning in the 1890s.
President Wilson thought the idea unfair as, in his view, a literacy test was a litmus test of availability of education, and not necessarily ability.
Congress wasn't so subtle.
After the 1917 act became law people like this – and this is a Wikipedia listing - were barred from the United States: "alcoholics," "anarchists," "contract laborers," "criminals and convicts," "epileptics," "feebleminded persons," "idiots," "illiterates," "imbeciles," "insane persons," "paupers," "persons afflicted with contagious disease," "persons being mentally or physically defective," "persons with constitutional psychopathic inferiority," "political radicals," "polygamists," "prostitutes" and "vagrants."
Those who were determined to be "mentally defective" and "persons with constitutional psychopathic inferiority" could also be homosexual persons who revealed their orientation to immigration authorities.
The literacy test was aimed at anyone over sixteen.
The "Asiatic Barred Zone" included much of Asia and the Pacific Islands.
The zone excluded immigrants from Afghanistan, the Arabian Peninsula, Asiatic Russia, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, and the Polynesian Islands.
Earlier legislation stretching back into the 19th century had particularly targeted immigration from China and Japan, though Japanese immigration (as well as immigration from the Philippines) was not included in the Barred Zone list of nations and regions.
Immigration from Canada and Mexico was treated with relative leniency, though in the case of Mexicans, the 1917 act ended the waiver of a "head tax" that had previously not been applied to Mexican immigrants.
The recent executive orders by President Trump banning travel and refugee flow from seven designated Muslim-majority countries, while significant, might not match in scope and reach that which emerged from Congress a hundred years ago.
But the 1917 act and the 2017 orders are, for sure, kindred spirits, though, in the case of the former, the justification was a fading form of what some viewed as American purity, while in the latter case the reasoning is justified on the basis of national security.
This article was originally published in the Irish Echo. You can read more from them here.]]>
In an interview with the Irish Times, Spicer, whose great-grandfather moved to the US from Kinsale, Co. Kerry, commended Ireland on their economic policies, stating that they set an example he believes the US should follow.
"Ireland, frankly, did a really good job of getting the Celtic Tiger by bringing industry and business over there through smart policy. One of the things that the president talked about during the campaign was we have got to be smarter when it comes to tax and regulatory policy," Spicer said.
President Trump has suggested that the US corporation tax will be reduced from 35 percent to a rate between 15 and 20 percent, a tax cut which will see it come more in line with the 12 percent corporation tax offered in Ireland.
This and a further warning from Trump that US companies who relocate in other countries will face a heavy tax on their exports back to the US has caused concern in Ireland that many of the US companies who have made Ireland a home for overseas operations will return to the US. There are currently over 700 US companies with operations in Ireland employing around 140,000 people.
Within a week of his inauguration, Trump met with business leaders in the White House to discuss his proposals for tax reform and the cut back on regulations, again warning that his "America First" doctrine would ensure that US companies would be heavily taxed if they attempted to relocate elsewhere. In this meeting were two businessmen with operations in Ireland; Michael Dell from Dell Technologies and Alex Gorsky from Johnson & Johnson, who employ several thousand people in Ireland between them.
Spicer downplayed the impact this could potentially have on Ireland, however, stressing that it should not be viewed as a threat to the Irish economy.
"Ireland did very, very well because it was very competitive. I think the United States lost out in a lot of cases because it wasn't competitive, but competition is good," he said.
Great discussion about growing 🇺🇸 economy this morning with @POTUS. Always fun to see @WhiteHouse filled with @DellTech pic.twitter.com/VLbqcPwZS8— Michael Dell (@MichaelDell) January 23, 2017
Spicer, a former communications director of the Republican national committee, also attempted to downplay the concern for the estimated 50,000 undocumented Irish living and working in the US, suggesting that they were not the main target of Trump's campaign to crack down on illegal immigration.
"We are going to walk through this in a very systematic, methodical way," he told the Irish Times, repeating once again that those who have committed crimes or who "are not productive members of society" will be the main focus if Trump carries out his campaign promise to quickly deport between two and three million early in his presidency.
"You got to remember that number one, first and foremost, being in this country is a privilege, not a right, but again I think the president has got a big heart and I think we are going to walk through this in a very systematic way," he said.
"Our nation has a very robust legal system of immigration … we are a nation of laws and so coming to our country through the proper channels is key. You can't break the law to come here to live. It just doesn't make sense.
"So I think, frankly, we are probably among the most lax when it comes to the countries of the developed world in terms of our immigration laws."
Amidst a busy and controversial first two weeks in his new Press Secretary role, Spicer did appear to relax during one of his earlier press conferences when asked by RTÉ Washington correspondent Caitríona Perry about the traditional invite to the Taoiseach [Irish Prime Minister] to visit the White House on St. Patrick's Day, Spicer declaring the issue as something that was "near and dear" to him.
An extremely proud Irish American, Spicer is looking forward to March 17, despite the controversy in Ireland surrounding the invite and calls for Taoiseach Enda Kenny to refuse.
"I have been in Washington for twentysomething years and it is a big day. You watch the prime minister come, that lunch that they have on the Hill," he said.
"I have always seen it from afar and so now it is neat to have what will be a much different seat."
With many Irish Americans such as chief strategist Steve Bannon, Kelly Anne Conway and national security advisor Mike Flynn, receiving prominent roles in Trump's White House, Spicer believes it to be because Irish Americans are "attracted to good movements."
"And the president is leading a solid movement," he adds.
H/T: Irish Times]]>
So asks the old folk song, recorded by many an angry musical artist, from Pete Seeger to Irish punk rockers Dropkick Murphys.
Well, we know what "side" the rabid liberal who said the following is on, right?
"Closing borders and building walls are not rational acts. Mass detentions and wholesale deportation benefit no one; such inhuman policies destroy families and communities."
Just in case we weren't sure, this fellow went on to cite the Irish as one of many groups "over the past 260 years whom we have welcomed and helped to find a better, safer life for themselves and their children in America."
He added, "Even when such groups were met by irrational fear, prejudice and persecution, the signature benevolence of the United States of American eventually triumphed."
Then the kicker, "That confident kindness is what has made, and will continue to make, America great."
You see what this liberal is doing? Rubbing Trump's nose in it.
But maybe that's part of the problem.
It's easy for liberals to pretend that everyone is horrified. But many people are quite fine with what Trump is doing. He said he'd do this stuff and now he's doing it.
At the very least, Trump supporters believe none of this stuff will personally affect them. So go ahead and keep all those damn Muslims out of this country. Go ahead and outlaw abortion. Go and de-fund "sanctuary cities."
It's important that Trump critics acknowledge this. Both sides, too often, seem to live in a bubble, talking only to like-minded people, content to merely have their own point of view affirmed.
Really fighting back is going to require more than this.
Consider the two marches that descended upon Washington these past days. One was the March for Women, at which much progressive anger was unleashed.
Then there was the March for Life, dominated by conservative Catholics and other activists who are sensing that 40 years after Roe vs. Wade, the stars might finally be aligned to, once again, criminalize abortion.
It might seem as if these are the two sides we have today. But these two sides are not completely oppositional. In fact, they may need to march together from time to time.
Which brings us back to our aforementioned liberal friend voicing his anger at Trump's anti-immigrant policies.
Actually, this was the city of Newark's new archbishop Joseph Tobin, which should shock nobody, because the Catholic Church, for all of its problems, has always been a consistent voice for social justice.
You know why? Because that's what Christians are supposed to do.
As Tobin noted, Moses said in the book of Exodus: "You shall not oppress an alien; you well know how it feels to be an alien, since you were once aliens yourselves."
This is a passage that resonates not only with Tobin the Catholic but Tobin the Irishman, who noted that he is "the grandson of immigrants."
Jesus himself, Tobin noted, said, "Whatsoever you did to the least of my brothers, you did to me."
He added, "Threatening the so-called 'sanctuary cities' with the withdrawal of federal funding for vital services such as health care, education and transportation will not reduce immigration. It only will harm all good people in those communities."
This all sounds so good. But here's the problem for many Trump critics: someone like Tobin was at the wrong march last week!
Someone like him would have been at the March for Life because the Catholic Church has also adamantly and consistently opposed a woman's right to choose.
Well, that is true. Liberals are free to sneer at Catholics because of abortion, but all they are doing is alienating one of the most generous and socially progressive organizations in this country.
As for Trump's supporters, they are so concerned about keeping Christ in Christmas that they are forgetting to keep him in their own lives.
If we're going to talk about building bridges rather than walls, that may mean, at times, looking the other way on some issues so as to make progress on others.
Strange times call for strange bedfellows.]]>
Speaking to BBC News recently to promote his new movie "Gold," McConaughey, 47, seemed to have found some common ground between the current US political landscape and his latest flick. He told the BBC that his latest movie is a "small time, central redneck America sticking one up to the snotty East Coast elites, as it were."
BBC's Andrew Marr asked the Irish American "True Detective" actor about the "Dump Trump" movement in Hollywood, led by the likes of Meryl Streep, and whether he thought the 45th President should be given the chance.
"Do you think it's time that maybe Hollywood and the cultural elite of America gave this guy a break?" Marr asked.
"Well, they don't have a choice now, he's our President," McConaughey said.
"He's our president. And … as divisive of an inauguration and time that we've ever had, at the same time, it's time for us to embrace [and] shake hands with this fact and be constructive with him over the next four years."
McConaughey continued, saying that it's now time to work with the president during his term whether you agree with him or not.
"So even those who most strongly may disagree with his principles or things he's said and done – which is another thing, we'll see what he does compared to what he had said – no matter how much you disagreed along the way, it's time to think how constructive can you be.
"Because he's our president for the next four years, at least. President of the United States," he added.
McConaughey's own wife is an immigrant to the United States, born in Brazil. She became a citizen in 2015. The interview aired two days after the president his travel and immigration executive order dealing with seven Muslim-majority countries, although it is unknown when exactly the interview was recorded.
The Hollywood actor has immigrant roots himself with Irish heritage on both sides of the family. McConaughey's mother, Kathleen McCabe, was born in New Jersey, and her family hails from the Cavan/Monaghan area while his father James Donald McConaughey, who died before his son became a big star, also had Irish roots.
The Academy-Award winner previously told an Irish paper he would love to send his kids to the Gaeltacht for an immersion course in the Irish language and culture.
Calling Trump's next tweet...— Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) February 2, 2017
Amazing ACTOR Matthew McConaughey culd teach a thing or two to Meryl Streep. Loved him in FINDING DORY!
Uh Oh, Matthew McConaughey said something reasonable about President Trump— 1777 🇺🇸 (@July041776) February 2, 2017
The left will have none of that 🙄
"My kids are really privileged to call themselves Brazilian Irish. Irish-Brazilian, how great is that? Connected to two of the most vibrant, colorful, exciting cultures on the planet. Both very different yet with so many similarities. It's beautiful. It's a gift," he told the Irish Sun.
"I gotta keep up the Gaelic. I want them reading the literature. I want Riverdancing. I want them saying 'grand' and 'lunatic' to the marvelous," he added.
"When they're older, I want to send them to that Irish language summer camp you guys do. It's like a rite of passage for you guys, isn't it? When you're teenagers. I want them fluent – which means I gotta do a crash course too."
Donald Trump reminds me of the Bull, a man so accustomed to getting his own way that laws, customs and morality seem to mean little or nothing.
Like Trump, the Bull is obsessed with imposing his will on everyone and everything. In the process, he loses sight of his humanity and decency.
The Bull has cultivated a field for decades, but now the woman who owns it has died and it must be sold. Like Trump, the Bull is fixated on his objective: to get that field at all costs.
The Bull Trump wants to bulldoze through legislation on immigrants, refugees and Mexicans in days, rather than carry out a completely political process involving Congress and his advisors (the two generals in his cabinet knew nothing about the refugee ban). He either misunderstands fundamentally how the U.S. government works, or is laying plans for a very Republican coup.
The Bull McCabe would countenance no opposition either. Even when the church, a visiting Yank and many in the village disagree about the future of the field and who should own it, the Bull sees no other reality than his own.
Sound familiar? Then there's Bull's son, desperately trying to escape his father's shadow, but the madness of the Bull infects his child who will stop at nothing to achieve his own objectives.
Like the Bull, Trump cannot see what is coming down the tracks: a judgment day on his activities, a searing insight into his true motives, a clear exposition of when rational thought fades and madness begins.
By the end of the play the Bull is quite mad. He is seen trying to stop the waves lapping over the body of his son like King Canute of old. In that climactic scene in the film Harris embodies that madness, inhabits it, owns it.
Will that be Trump's fate too? We know he is delusional with facts to feed his own fevered brain and presented as his own reality.
How long will it be until Bull-like, he loses it altogether and can no longer be reached by a rational human being?
Actions like elections have consequences as Bull realizes when he kills his enemy who is taking his field. His life then spins out of control.
Does Trump realize that as he gazes around an incensed world that sees him as a desperate despot after less than two weeks in power? He, like the Bull, looks like King Canute trying to stop the multicultural and interconnected realities of our world.
The American people did not sign up for attacks on Mexico, locking down the border, screaming "no" at immigrants and refugees, imagining crowd sizes, or attacking the media.
Trump, like Bull, appears to be living in a long-ago world when powerful white men ran the show and all others kowtowed. He is about to find out the realities are very different.]]>
Already over one million people in Britain, that's one in 65, have asked in not-so-polite fashion that he stay away.
Because it is a state visit he will be encountering the Royal Family quite a bit – which is where the real awkwardness begins.
First Prince Charles will avoid him according to the London Sunday Times because of Trump's view that climate change is a hoax.
Even Kate Middleton has a crow to pluck with the new president.
In a tweet after photographs of a semi-nude princess sunbathing were taken by a long lens photographer Trump stated:
Suspect the PM will worry though what Donald Trump would say if he meets Kate Middleton on his first state visit... pic.twitter.com/3114LqTvX7— Asa Bennett (@asabenn) January 8, 2017
A lawyer for the royals described the photos as a 'grotesque breach of privacy' and six defendants now face a criminal trial in France.
William seems certain to have major problems too. Trump spoke very coarsely about William's beloved mother Lady Di days after she died in a car crash.
President Trump told Howard Stern's shock jock show that he could have slept with her.
Howard Stern asked him: 'Why do people think it's egotistical of you to say you could've gotten with Lady Di? You could've gotten her, right? You could've nailed her.'
'I think I could have,' Trump replied. Charming.
Three years later, he referred to Lady Diana as 'crazy, but these are minor details,' but again said he would have slept with her 'without even hesitation.'
Indeed there are suggestions he stalked her after her break up with Charles.
Writing in the Sunday Times, a British broadcaster claimed Trump gave the princess 'the creeps' when he pursued her after her divorce from Prince Charles.
'Trump clearly saw Diana as the ultimate trophy wife,' Selina Scott said.
'As the roses and orchids piled up at her apartment she became increasingly concerned about what she should do. It had begun to feel as if Trump was stalking her.'
Writing in his 1997 book, "The Art of the Comeback," Trump said: 'I only have one regret in the women's department – that I never had the opportunity to court Lady Diana Spencer.'
He may also regret his lewd comments about Di and Kate when he arrives for the state visit. The royals can freeze you out better than anyone. It might be a cold welcome.
Read more: What Trump's immigration moves mean for Irish ― worries about H-1B visas]]>
Kenny stepped in it last week when he seemed to offer an opening to a possible future coalition between his Fine Gael party and Sinn Féin.
The kickback from his party rank and file was fast and furious.
Kenny backtracked, but his blushes were spared more by events three thousand miles from Dublin.
President Donald Trump's executive orders on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries and the flow of refugees sucked all the oxygen up in newsrooms around the globe.
For Kenny, the narrative changed from a coalition with Sinn Féin to his travel plans for March 17.
The taoiseach has indicated his intention to travel to Washington D.C. for the annual St. Patrick's Day celebration that includes a meeting with the president, presentation of a bowl of shamrock, and a reception in the White House.
Politicians and people in Ireland are divided over this, but the shamrock summit is definitely on.
Gerry Adams is expected to make the transatlantic journey, too.
Last year, the Louth TD turned up at the White House only to be turned away by the Secret Service due to some never completely explained security snafu.
US travel ban is in breach of EU/UN obligations. T must make clear he will NOT b implementing this at pre clearance in Shannon/Dublin #Dail pic.twitter.com/r9bxFNNlbu— Gerry Adams (@GerryAdamsSF) January 31, 2017
Adams has not fully outlined his travel plans for this year, but all indications are that he will be in Washington on March 17 and while there, applying pressure on Enda Kenny to deliver some strong words to President Trump over the Waterford Crystal shamrock bowl.
Adams, in a statement, said there was widespread concern in Ireland, and across the world, about the Trump executive orders related to travel and refugees.
"The taoiseach has made clear his intention to go to the White House on St. Patrick's Day, but his visit cannot be business as usual," said Adams.
"It is incumbent on him to relay to the U.S. president, in the strongest possible terms, the opposition of those in Ireland to these measures.
"He must also ensure that Irish airports do not enforce the fundamentally unjust order of the president. I have urged him to do this without delay."
Read more: POLL: Should Enda Kenny refuse Trump's St. Patrick's Day invite?
Adams did not elaborate on the matter of airports, as opposed to U.S. immigration preclearance facilities at those same airports.
He did, however, state general support for the annual visit to Washington D.C. by the Irish head of government.
"The celebration of St. Patrick's Day in the U.S. is not the preserve of any president or political party or tradition," he said.
"It is Irish America's day and a time for our diaspora to celebrate their heritage and culture.
"It is a mark of these celebrations that they are inclusive and enjoyed by a wide range of opinion.
"Such diversity has always been a hallmark of the U.S. Developments in recent days are particularly worrying against that backdrop.
"The importance of Ireland's relationship with the U.S. is one Sinn Féin have played a role in building and supporting and will continue to do so," Adams said.
This last statement would appear to be a clear indication that Mr. Adams and/or representatives of his party, plan to attend the White House gathering on March 17.
Adams has been a regular White House attendee in the years since the Good Friday Agreement.
Just as long as the great Irishman Gerry Adams can make it- and he won't have to wait outside the White House this year! #MAGA https://t.co/8JT5uvbj3J— William J. Maloney (@drwjmaloney) January 28, 2017
Colum Eastwood, leader of the SDLP in the North, has indicated that he will boycott the White House celebration, though he is expected to attend other St. Patrick's Day events in the nation's capital such as the Speaker's Lunch.
And opposition to Kenny's visit is being voiced south of the border by the Labour Party, Green Party, and Anti-Austerity Alliance.
The AAA view on global travel also extends to President Trump.
After reports that Trump, as President-elect, was invited to visit Northern Ireland by then First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, AAA TD Mick Barry called on Sinn Féin to withdraw the invitation.
Said Barry: "The letter of invitation was issued in November after his (Trump's) victory by Sinn Féin and the DUP and was signed by Martin McGuinness and Arlene Foster.
"Since then, Trump has implemented a racist ban on Muslims entering the U.S, has pledged that he will make good on his election promise to build a wall with Mexico, and has appointed one of the wealthiest and most reactionary cabinets in history which will attack the rights of minorities, women and environmental legislation.
"The Sinn Féin leadership need to review this invitation and immediately withdraw it."
Food for thought either way for Mr. Adams who, of course, was barred for many years from the United States because of presumed links to the IRA until President Clinton revoked the ban.
This article originally featured in the Irish Echo. You can read more from them here.]]>
For Irish professionals the H-1 B visa is especially important. Between 2010-2015 approximately 3,200 H-1B visas were issued to Irish citizens, according to expert Simon Gillespie. This visa represents the only chance for many people to move legally to the US.
However, a California congresswoman is proposing that the minimum wage for a prospective H-1B employee be increased to an annual $130,000 and this would, if enacted, represent a major roadblock for skilled Irish graduates hoping to come to the United States and make a living over here.
In light of the changing landscape of immigration in the US over the past two weeks, we look at the various types of immigrants and visa-holders who are currently in or hoping to move to the US, many of which groups will include Irish citizens. Although his most recent executive orders on immigration do not look to have a large direct impact on Irish immigrants, in particular, Trump's choices now could be seen as a sign of even stricter regulations to come and these will undoubtedly have a greater effect on Irish people living and working in the US.
Here's what the Trump administration means for immigrants in America today:
Last week, President Trump signed a sweeping executive order that holds back federal funds from the nation's 140 sanctuary cities. People engaged in law enforcement in sanctuary cities, like Boston and New York, do not comply with federal rules surrounding immigration and never ask people for proof of their right to live in the United States. However, from now on, "Jurisdictions that willfully refuse to comply are not eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes by the attorney general or the secretary."
Mayors in many sanctuary cities have already said they won't comply with the Executive Order. "Our police department is not enforcing federal immigration policy," Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski told the media. "The Salt Lake City Police Department has a longstanding practice against officers inquiring about the immigration status of those they come in contact with on a day-to-day basis."
However, other cities, such as Miami-Dade are ready to comply, and from now on immigrants who come into contact with the police in those cities may be asked to prove they have the right to live and work in the United States.
Miami-Dade Mayor drops sanctuary policy. Right decision. Strong! https://t.co/MtPvaDC4jM— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2017
Donald Trump made the existence of an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants – of which 50,000 are thought to be Irish – a cornerstone of his campaign. In an interview with "60 Minutes" after his election, he said he would look to swiftly deport those undocumented with criminal records.
"What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," he said.
Anyone in the United States who entered without passing through a border inspection committed a criminal offense and as such would likely fall into the 2 million Trump wants to deport as a priority.
While campaigning, Trump said that he wanted all undocumented immigrants to leave the United States. "If they've done well they're going out and they're coming back in legally," he said. However, since then he has gone quiet on those without criminal records, instead focusing his wrath on undocumented immigrants with criminal records. Trump's Press Secretary Sean Spicer last week confirmed to the press that the plan to deport 2-3 million early on in the administration is still in place and that criminals will be the first ones targeted.
Ireland's Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan said he was aware of the new Executive Order and monitoring the situation, "Our embassy in Washington, DC and our consulates remain in active and ongoing contact with Irish immigration centers throughout the United States. My department will continue to monitor the developments in this area very closely."
Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny raised the issue of the undocumented with Irish American Vice President Pence soon after the election but has not revealed publicly Pence's thinking on the issue.
Had a really good conversation tonight with US VP Elect Mike Pence. He certainly knows Ireland and the issues that matter to our people.— Enda Kenny (@EndaKennyTD) November 18, 2016
People who were brought to the United States illegally as children, so-called DREAMers after the failed Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act that sought to give them a pathway to citizenship, are still in limbo. The estimated 750,000 such individuals have yet to be told what fate awaits them.
Trump opposed the DREAM Act as a candidate but made it clear that he sympathized with the people it targeted. "They got brought here at a very young age. They've worked here; they've gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they're in never-never land because they don't know what's going to happen," he told TIME.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer refused to comment on the issue at a press briefing, but in December the then president-elect cryptically said, "We're going to work something out that's going to make people happy and proud."
Read more: How hard is it for Irish people to move to the US today?
Trump's campaign pledged to end the J-1 visa that thousands of young Irish people use to work temporarily in the United States. College students can use it to find seasonal summer work in the US before returning home and graduates may spend up to a year interning in a field related to their degree.
The program was controversially attacked by the New York Times in 2015 as "a source of embarrassment for Ireland, marked by a series of high-profile episodes involving drunken partying and the wrecking of apartments in places like San Francisco and Santa Barbara." The newspaper's comments came after the deaths of five Irish students in Berkeley, CA, who died when they balcony collapsed in the apartment where they were celebrating a 21st birthday party. The five students were in the US for the summer on J-1 visas.
The visa has also been the subject of some criticism for the manner in which young international students can be brought to the country, paid below minimum wage and housed in sub-standard conditions, used as seasonal workers and, potentially, replace US employees. Vocativ reports that although it costs the average J-1 student around $3,000 to come to the US, many of them earn less than the minimum wage while here, with au pairs earning as little as $10,179 a year.
In 2013, NPR also reported on the poor employment and accommodation conditions of a number of foreign college students working for McDonald's, seven of whom were housed in a basement, sleeping in bunk beds and given just 25 hours a week to work but required to stay on call at all times—far from the educational cultural exchange model on which the J-1 program was originally established.
Trump's website promised voters that the visa would be "terminated and replaced with a resume bank for inner city youth provided to all corporate subscribers."
However, after he won the election the pledge mysteriously vanished from his website.
Update regarding J1 Visa... The proposal regarding the J-1 program is no longer mentioned on the Trump campaign website. @AmeriCamp #J1Visa pic.twitter.com/7fNovXIRYp— Lee McAteer (@MrLeeMcAteer) November 10, 2016
While reform may be needed to ensure that J-1 students at least receive the minimum wage while in the US, some doubt he'll follow up. Boston Lawyer Larry Donnelly told Irish radio last year, "I wouldn't put a lot of credence in what Trump says. The J-1 is a fantastic vehicle for promoting international relations."
Enda Kenny has pledged to lobby the new Administration on the issue. "I'd hate to see that go," he told IrishCentral at a press conference in New York just after Trump's election. "I think the J-1 has been an incredible opportunity and a brilliant example of connecting with different countries and cultures for young people. I'd like to think we could work together to develop that for the future."
The H-1B visa has also been earmarked for change by the new President. Now a bill introduced by Representative Zoe Lofgren of California seeks to double the salary requirements for an H-1B to $130,000. This would cause huge problems for the thousands of Irish who seek the visa.
According to Lofgren, the High-Skilled Integrity and Fairness Act of 2017 would curtail abuse of the program which has facilitated the replacement of American workers with cheaper H-1B workers. In several recent incidents, high-profile U.S. employers including Disney, Southern California Edison, and, most recently, the University of California San Francisco, have made news in this manner.
"My legislation refocuses the H-1B program to its original intent – to seek out and find the best and brightest from around the world, and to supplement the U.S. workforce with talented, highly-paid, and highly-skilled workers who help create jobs here in America, not replace them," said Lofgren. "It offers a market-based solution that gives priority to those companies willing to pay the most. This ensures American employers have access to the talent they need, while removing incentives for companies to undercut American wages and outsource jobs."
The High-Skilled Integrity and Fairness Act of 2017 prioritizes a market-based allocation of visas to those companies willing to pay 200% of a wage calculated by survey, eliminates the category of lowest pay, and raises the salary level at which H-1B dependent employers are exempt from nondisplacement and recruitment attestation requirements to greater than $130,000.
The visa is used by US employers to sponsor foreign workers with certain specific skills sets and allows users to stay for three to six years. Trump had previously used it to bring models into the country but changed his mind as a candidate. "I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions," he said in March last year.
Unlike the J-1, no one is talking about abolishing the H-1B visa but it seems likely that numbers will be slashed and the lottery system that awards it could be changed to prioritize those immigrants with advanced educational qualifications and/or higher salaries.
Trump has also toyed with the idea of no longer granting green cards to "foreign workers abroad." He never outlined his exact proposals, but that could mean he plans to end the Green Card Lottery that grants 50,000 visas to people from countries with a low number of citizens already in the US. In 2015, 157 people from the Irish Republic gained the right to live and work in the US through this program, as well as a further 41 from Northern Ireland.
It could also mean he intends to slash the number of green cards available to the relatives of US citizens.
Are you in favor of or against Donald Trump's policies on immigration? Share your thoughts in the comment section.
H/T: Vox, Fortune]]>
You may approve or disapprove. But even if you have now been confirmed in your belief that he is absolutely appalling, you cannot deny his chutzpah.
Just imagine. A leader who is doing exactly what he said he would during the election! And doing a lot of it in the first week! Such a thing is unheard of in Ireland, where failing to deliver on your election promises is almost an art form.
A leader who is willing to slice through all the red tape and get things moving on election promises within days of taking office, that wouldn't work over here at all! No, no, we would need much more time for second thoughts and unforeseen complications, which would inevitably mean lengthy delays and in the end little or no action.
But as we now know, that's not the Trump way.
Of course signing executive orders is the easy part. Following through is another thing altogether, and the jury will be out on Trump's competence on that for some time.
But like him or loath him, he certainly has lived up to his guarantee to do things "so fast your head will spin."
By far the most controversial part of his first week has been the moves to control immigration, in particular the order introducing an immediate 90-day ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries and a four-month ban on refugees. This has brought international vilification down on his head, as we said, but that appears not to bother him at all.
In fact he seems to be reveling in the uproar both at home and abroad, knowing that this plays well with the people who voted for him. And it has to be recognized that he promised during the campaign that he would take this kind of action, so it's not like there was no warning that it was coming.
Perhaps the real shock on the liberal side is that none of them expected him to actually do it.
Here in Ireland several government ministers have been expressing their "deep concern." There is a particular worry that some travelers to the U.S. from the Middle East who stop in Dublin or Shannon to do U.S. immigration preclearance here might be prevented from flying onward -- which might give the impression that Ireland was colluding with the new Trump rules for entry to the U.S.
All of the commentary here has been negative and some of the righteous outrage from Irish refugee supporters, liberal bodies and left wing groups has verged on the hysterical, as it has elsewhere. This perfect storm of angry reaction has dominated coverage on Irish TV news, with reports from the US on the demonstrations at airports, on divided families, on young children being held for hours, and foreign students and traumatized refugees, all of whom had visas, blocked by the sudden ban and left in limbo. The RTE TV news on Sunday night led with a story of one refugee child who is a cancer patient and was now unable to go to the U.S. for planned treatment.
There has been little balancing coverage here giving the Trump side of the argument about controlling immigration and reducing the threat of terror. We have now learned that restrictions on U.S. entry have been imposed by previous presidents. We have also learned that the seven countries named by Trump had already been identified as posing a risk to the U.S. by the Obama administration.
Nor has there been any reference in the media to the mass deportations carried out during the Obama years. Of course none of this would have supported the narrative of Trump as the devil incarnate.
But even among those here who believe in the need to control immigration and borders, there is a general recognition that Trump's sudden ban was unnecessarily ham-fisted and cruel. It is now being finessed into something more acceptable, with green card holders and other categories allowed in.
Read more: What Trump's immigration moves mean for Irish ― worries about H-1B visas
If it had been introduced in that way at first with immigration officials given the power to make sensible exceptions (like for the child with cancer and for others who clearly posed no threat), then the reaction would have been far less extreme.
The concern here over the ban came on top of fears generated by the Trump order to start the construction of the border wall with Mexico and how that might presage a general crackdown on illegal immigration that could eventually impact the undocumented Irish.
The wall order was greeted with disbelief and disdain by most of the commentariat in Ireland. There were withering observations about how absurd the whole notion is -- and with good reason.
Spending $20 billion on a 20-foot high wall when a lightweight 22-foot aluminum ladder that costs $150 is all you need to get over does not seem very smart.
The fact is the wall will only work if huge sums of additional money are spent on guarding it around the clock to catch climbers and tunnelers. That will mean a vastly expanded border operation, with the latest monitoring technology and thousands of additional guards, as Trump has planned.
If that does happen, then the wall can be effective. Whether it's worth what it will cost to make it effective is another question.
But the horror on this side of the Atlantic at the very idea of the wall with Mexico is a bit hard to take when many European countries are now strengthening their own immigration control systems, including building miles of border fencing across southern Europe.
Whether those on the liberal side of these arguments like it or not, the single most important factor in the election of Trump in the U.S. and the Brexit vote in Britain was immigration. The liberal consensus that has governed much of Europe, supported by a largely liberal media, has ignored the views of many ordinary people on immigration for too long and is now paying the price.
These ordinary voters are tired of being patronized and told they are xenophobic racists with irrational fears. They have real concerns about immigration and they are making their views known in the privacy of the voting booth when they get the chance.
Whether they are right or not is beside the point. In a democracy their views must count, instead of being suppressed under a tide of political correctness.
The same "populist" groundswell that elected Trump and made Brexit a reality will be a significant force in the elections in France, Germany and the Netherlands this year -- and possibly in Italy as well. At the very least the old consensus in Europe is likely to shift a bit more as the status quo political parties try to cope with this new electoral reality. Part of that shift means a more restrictive policy on immigration.
And any idea that Ireland can be entirely immune from this is mistaken.
The reaction to Trump's first week in the media here, as we said, has been entirely negative. The public reaction -- in reader comments at the end of newspaper articles and on radio phone-in shows -- is far more mixed. Some of it is surprisingly hardline, even insisting that the "undocumented" Irish in the U.S. will have to take whatever comes their way under Trump because every country has the right to deal with illegal immigrants.
Nor is this view coming just from uneducated ordinary folk who don't know any better, as is frequently alleged. The Irish Times, the favored newspaper of liberals in Ireland, recently printed an opinion piece by one of its reporters supporting the government decision to place 80 refugees in the small town of Ballaghdereen in the west of Ireland without any prior consultation with local people or their local politicians. The dozens of reader comments were about 90 percent negative, among them ones saying the writer was "naive and patronizing" and that this was "typical arrogance from those who think they know better than the ignorant masses."
In little more than 20 years immigration into Ireland has gone from not much more than zero to 20 percent of the population, a rate in such a short time that far exceeds the immigration rate into the U.S. This has caused severe pressure on schools, hospitals, housing and services which effects the lives of ordinary people rather than the better off who may have more idealistic views on immigration but live in the leafy suburbs.
In Ireland -- and across Europe -- attitudes to immigration are hardening on issues like free movement within Europe and on economic migrants from outside posing as refugees. In Britain, the failure to control the number of immigrants coming in from Eastern Europe has resulted in the U.K. leaving the EU.
In Germany, many voters are unhappy at the open door policy that allowed in a million refugees (only half of them Syrian) with minimal checking. In France, terrorist attacks have made voters far less tolerant.
Every time the Irish Independent publishes a report on another rescue by the Irish Navy of people on a migrant boat in the Med, the paper is inundated with scathing reader comments about the fact that most of the migrants are clearly not Syrian and that 90 percent of them are young men. The dozens of comments each story provokes are all negative, and many refer to the "ferry service" being provided by the Irish Navy which they say is encouraging economic migrants from all over North and Sub-Saharan Africa to risk the dangerous crossing and claim to be refugees.
There is a growing view also across this online commentary that the best way of helping those most in need due to the Syrian conflict is to target all our aid to the millions living in the refugee camps in the surrounding countries.
In this view, bringing a relatively small number of migrants to Europe -- or America -- may make us feel better but does little to alleviate the main problem. Trump has indicated in the last week that he will increase aid to the camps in Jordan (the U.S. is already by far the biggest donor in the region).
What all this means is that the anti-Trump demonstrations and denunciations we have seen on this side of the Atlantic are only telling one side of the story, the idealistic, liberal side. The other side, the more realistic, practical assessment of many ordinary people, is more in line with the Trump view on borders and immigration than the commentators and the TV news pictures suggest.
Read more: Justice Neil Gorsuch, another Irish American judge for Supreme Court]]>
It's not normal to announce a Supreme Court pick on live TV as though he or she were a new contestant on "American Idol." But there was Trump on Monday morning attempting to change the national conversation with a hurriedly sent out tweet.
I have made my decision on who I will nominate for The United States Supreme Court. It will be announced live on Tuesday at 8:00 P.M. (W.H.)— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 30, 2017
In other words, don't look at this Muslim ban mess at our international airports. Look at this Supreme Court pick instead.
Trump's tendency to counter bad news with showy, if important, distractions may be the hallmark of his administration's bait and switch style.
The thing is, it won't work. His decision to target seven Muslim-majority nations with a poorly conceived and bluntly executed executive order that legally amounted to his threatened Muslim ban was a heartbreaking debacle whose cruelty was matched only by the incompetent way it was announced and enforced.
Within hours the administration had galvanized and generated one of the largest national political protests seen since the Vietnam War. The sheer scale and passion of the counter-protests must have alarmed the GOP, whose Congressional and Senate representatives were suddenly conspicuous by their near total silence.
It is being reported that the Trump administration did not, of course, inform House or Senate leaders of their Muslim ban plan before our TV screens were filled with images of attorneys and protestors rushing to the nation's airport terminals to represent the legal permanent residents who were suddenly finding themselves detained, handcuffed and threatened with deportation, often accompanied by their small children.
Recall that visa holders from the seven Muslim majority nation's that were targeted by Trump's Muslim ban were already vetted by five different government agencies before their visas were awarded. As they were being stranded without explanation or hope at our major airports, they must have wondered what had happened to the land of the free that they had hoped to make their home in.
Ultimately, Irish American federal district judge Ann Donnelly granted a stay against the deportations at an emergency hearing in Brooklyn on Saturday night, holding that it likely violates due process and equal protection rights.
No kidding. But for the undocumented Irish living in the shadows here the news that even green card holders were being refused entry or returned to their foreign departure points created serious alarm.
Reports on Saturday confirmed that people who have legal permanent resident status here were being handcuffed, their social media feeds were being requested and reviewed and they even were asked for their views on Trump. Some who were being detained were just weeks away from their citizenship ceremonies.
This ban, in other words, was ill-conceived, threatening and bluntly executed. It betrayed a breathtaking level of indifference to the people it targets.
Then observers remembered Trump's oft-repeated campaign threat of mass deportations within the first 100 days of his administration and it all made sense. It means there could be even worse to come soon.
Trump's counselor Kellyanne Conway took to Twitter on Saturday to announce her support for the Muslim ban and to threaten that Trump was "just getting started."
Get used to it. @POTUS is a man of action and impact.— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) January 28, 2017
Promises made, promises kept.
Shock to the system.
And he's just getting started https://t.co/AoUsZWClXt
So elections have real life consequences. None of this tumult would be happening under a Hillary Clinton administration. The Irish undocumented here would not be retreating to the shadows as the Department of Homeland Security officers crack down on even legal permanent residents.
It isn't just Muslim majority nation visa holders who are being targeted either. A rash of student visa revocations began a week before the official order was signed with little explanation, even though these students had undergone vigorous government vetting before being admitted to the country.
Having traveled abroad during their winter break, they were now being denied reentry. Despite their valid visas they were then being charged with violating U.S. immigration law and subjected to five year bans. It's a mess.
Trump can try to distract us with live TV stunts, but we have already seen what his administration has in store. If you voted for him you can try to explain it to your undocumented Irish friends and neighbors, who are about to see their lives upended.
Read more: What Trump's immigration moves mean for the Irish ― worries about H-1B visas]]>
While last year he was forced to meet with Obama a few days before March 17 because, as acting Taoiseach, he needed to get back to Ireland and set about forming some kind of government, this year many members of the Irish public are calling on him to remain in the Emerald Isle on St. Patrick's Day, in protest of the moves Trump has made against immigration among other issues.
It was confirmed last week by Trump's Press Secretary Sean Spicer that an invitation had been extended to Taoiseach Kenny, to visit the White House on St. Patrick's Day and partake in the annual handing over of a bowl of green shamrock, a tradition that has been in place since the 1950s.
While the Office of the Taoiseach confirmed that Kenny was set to attend the ceremony and meet with President Trump, online petitions from the public and politicians from opposition parties immediately began to question his decision, especially in light of the Taoiseach's comments in mid-2016 that the words of Trump were "racist and dangerous."
This week, Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan is the first Irish politician having first-to-face interaction with the Trump administration since his inauguration in a three-day US visit, but for some, the thought of the Irish Taoiseach entering the White House on St. Patrick's Day looks less like a government attempting to raise their concerns face-to-face with a new administration, and more like support for Trump's policies that they believe the majority of Irish people will not stand for.
One of the largest of many petitions entitled "Shamrock for Trump: Not in my Name" has now raised over 37,000 signatures while the leaders of the Irish Green Party, Eamonn Ryan, and the Labor Party, Brendan Howlin, have both called on the Taoiseach not to go ahead with the trip.
The Office of the Taoiseach and other members of his Fine Gael party are continuing to claim, however, that St. Patrick's Day is the best opportunity to express to President Trump how Ireland feels about his anti-immigration executive order and that it remains important for our connection with the US.
What do you think? Is the St. Patrick's Day visit to the White House too large an event for Irish business and Irish-US relations for Enda Kenny to miss out on or will it be as Labour Leader Brendan Howlin put it, "humiliating to the vast majority of Irish people"?
You can cast your vote in the poll here and make sure to tell us why in the comments section, below:]]>
Ryan Clayton told the press he was forcibly choked, kicked in the head and dragged down a flight of wooden stairs by the enraged attendees. Jason Charter, who filmed much of the event, said he was thrown to the ground and kicked as his phone, camera, wallet, and keys were taken.
The violence reportedly broke out at a "Friends of Abe" event at the East 45th Street Irish bar and grill that featured controversial conservative activist James O'Keefe as main speaker.
Clayton, who runs the progressive group Americans Take Action, had recently launched a counter strike against O'Keefe's Project Veritas group, allegedly plotting to stink-bomb the DeploraBall, an inaugural ball created by the so-called alt-right to celebrate Trump's election victory.
When attendees at the Manhattan meeting were invited to ask questions Clayton made his presence known and he was quickly grabbed him from behind, he says.
Clayton told the Huffington Post that an assailant put his larynx in the nook of his elbow and began twisting his head sideways. "I felt a pop-pop-pop-pop-pop, and then there was nothing left to pop," Clayton said. "There was a moment I thought, "Oh God, this is how I die." Last night was the most terrifying night of my life."
Clayton said he tumbled down the stairs then, but a man standing halfway down helped break his fall, then someone kicked him in the head he says.
When Clayton informed his attackers they were being filmed he believes it ended the beating. He said he ran out the front door of the bar after that.
Police reportedly made no arrests at the scene. The spokesman said police were called to settle a harassment complaint, not for an assault.
"We have no information on somebody being thrown down the stairs," Sergeant Lee Jones told the Huffington Post. "That would be assault."
Pete Callahan, another activist at the event, caught the incident on video:
American-born Minister for Children Katherine Zappone stated that US immigration officers should no longer have permission to work in preclearance facilities in Shannon and Dublin Airport.
She stated she will ask her cabinet colleagues to act to remove the facilities.
"I think the Irish people would be in favor of that and certainly the Irish-Americans would be favor of that as well," she said.
"We need to determine whether our Constitution and the international treaties we have signed up to, that those laws operate in context of Irish soil in terms of prohibiting those policies of discrimination against nationalities, and also people of particular religions, that Donald Trump has implemented.
The Irish Independent reported that the "arrangement between the USA and the Irish Government is based on the understanding that preclearance procedures do not diminish the rights enjoyed by individuals" under the Irish constitution.
Removing the immigration and customs pre-clearance would be a huge setback for millions of travelers who use them every year. Another politician, Independent Alliance colleague Kevin 'Boxer' Moran has backed the idea of a legal review.
"We have a moral duty to speak out and I find events that are unfolding in America over the last 24 hours to be deeply disturbing, a view shared by our EU partners," Mr Moran said." It is my view that there should be no facilitation of such orders."
Zappone said Ireland should take its lead from the Irish-American mayors of US cities who are "out protesting."
Read more: Judge Ann Donnelly who blocked Trump - a profile in courage say colleagues]]>
The daughter of Mary and Jack Donnelly became famous as the first judge to block Trump's order.
Democratic politicians have been full of praise for her long before Saturday. "Her reputation is legendary," Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who proposed President Obama nominate her to the federal bench, said at her confirmation hearing. "When you mention her to anyone who served in District Attorney Morgenthau's Office, they will tell you that she was one of the best admired people there."
The federal judge blocked part of President Trump's executive order on immigration on Saturday night. Her decision was hailed by thousands of protestors and media outlets nationwide.
Donnelly formerly worked in the Manhattan district attorney's office, where she was one of the lead prosecutors on the high-profile Tyco International fraud trial.
That case involved the prosecution of Dennis Kozlowski, the Tyco chief executive, who was convicted in 2005 for stealing nearly $100 million from the company. He served six and a half years in prison.
Following the verdict on the executive order she received widespread praise from friends and colleagues interviewed by the New York Times.
"Today, Judge Donnelly stated in unequivocal terms that this administration – one with no apparent historical and constitutional rudder – will not go unchecked or unbalanced," said Eric M. Arnone, a criminal defense lawyer in Manhattan who formerly worked with her.
Judge Donnelly was chosen by President Obama as his nominee to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. She was confirmed by the Senate in a 95-2 vote in 2015.
Previously she worked as a prosecutor from 1984 to 2009 where she handled the child abuse and assault division. Linda A. Fairstein, who worked with her, told the New York Times: "I worked with a lot of great lawyers in public service. There is a fairness about her to the core that is just extraordinary."
Thank you Judge Donnelly !! You have upheld the constitution today and America thanks you !! #muslimban #RefugeeBan #RefugeesWelcome pic.twitter.com/KKy9VV3n4h— Guthrie Graves-Fitz. (@GuthrieGF) January 29, 2017
Judge Ann Donnelly ruled correctly and courageously. Expect the Trump gang to trash her mercilessly but know their whining will be meritless— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) January 29, 2017
YES. Brooklyn Judge Donnelly "the stay is GRANTED" in case re: #RefugeeBan #MuslimBan. Never underestimate the power of the people.— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) January 29, 2017
Daniel J. Horwitz, who worked in the district attorney's office from 1991 to 2000, described Donnelly in a message as "tenacious, exceedingly bright but eminently fair with an even temperament."
He added, "She's exactly the type of judge you want to appear in front of."
Cyrus R. Vance Jr., now the Manhattan district attorney, who worked as an assistant in the office with Donnelly was also highly complementary.
"Anne has tried every kind of case as a judge and a prosecutor, is a truly experienced and tough trial lawyer, and still remains one of the most genuinely good and nice people I know," Mr. Vance said in a text message early Sunday. "The federal bench is lucky to have her and I miss her as a state court judge in Manhattan."
Judge Donnelly, who was born in Royal Oak in the suburbs of Detroit, received her law degree from Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law in 1984. The Donnelly roots go back to Donegal and Tyrone. The name in Gaelic means "valor."
Read more: President Trump's record on refugees is way better than Obama and Bush]]>
The Donald and he are talking today for the first time since the election Putin almost certainly influenced. Word is that Trump may drop sanctions. Perhaps he'll agree to stand by when the Russian bear mauls the Baltic States like he did Crimea.
A Quinnipiac poll yesterday showed Donald at just 36 percent, one week in office, ten points less than his winning 46 per cent. Being president is hard it seems for a 70-year-old real estate magnate with no political experience. Who knew?
Here are the top five ways that the new President of the United States Donald Trump could make Russia's President Vladimir Putin very happy:
- Undermine election results - even when you've won:
No problem! Make an outlandish claim that between 3 and 5 million people voted illegally and announce a major investigation. Ignore the fact that even GOP leaders say there is no evidence.
Trump calls for "major investigation" into voter fraud after alleging, without evidence, millions of illegal votes. https://t.co/xkOTO3kTt0 pic.twitter.com/eFJtzW0vfS— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) January 25, 2017
Ignore the fact that the first person found double dipping, enrolled to vote in both Florida and New York, is your key aide Steve Bannon.
Also, find out that your own daughter, Tiffany Trump, and your new Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, your lady in waiting Kellyann Conway your son in law Jared Kushner are also able to vote twice.
- Try to destroy the credibility of the free press:
Slam them at every opportunity, imitate and ridicule a disabled journalist.
When they report from impeccable sources that your crowd was smaller than Obama's first inauguration demand apologies, order an investigation, refer to yourself in the regal third person.
Early estimates put the crowd gathered for Trump's inauguration at about one-third the size of Obama's in 2009 https://t.co/v0rGLZv00N pic.twitter.com/97elpXg1CS— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) January 20, 2017
Slam the media at every turn seeking to blunt their inquiries.
- Announce you are dissing your neighbor, Mexico, your second largest trading partner and ally:
Do so when their president is about to visit give him no choice but to refuse to come. Ensure the worst relationship since President Polk declared war on Mexico in 1846. Bring back the "Ugly Gringo" image.
JUST IN: Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto says he won't attend meeting with Trump https://t.co/Db22hLgqpK pic.twitter.com/sKsflj2hEt— Bloomberg (@business) January 26, 2017
- Build a wall to nowhere costing $ 20 billion:
Ignore the fact that when you go high they will go low and tunnel under your wall. Ignore the fact that you depend on Mexican cooperation for drug and terrorist threats, that the number of illegals crossing is at its lowest in decades. Ignore the fact that announcing the wall has brought tens of thousands flooding to the border to get over before the wall is built.
As Donald Trump orders a wall, fewer and fewer people are arrested at the US-Mexico border https://t.co/mHWURnq1QS pic.twitter.com/OCyTvcNmK6— The Economist (@TheEconomist) January 27, 2017
Don't inform your own cabinet members with responsibility for the wall about your decision. Ignore that eminent domain cases will tie up your wall in court for years, not to mention Indian reservation leaders will tell you that they will refuse to build a wall on their property.
- Defy state's rights and pull funds from sanctuary cities:
Make sure, therefore, you are ensuring that undocumented immigrants will be afraid to report crimes such as rape and robbery committed against them. Ignore the overwhelming will of the voters in those cities that immigrants have those safeguards. Play the federal bully.
And an extra bonus. Compare yourself to President Lincoln after a week in office. That will win you credibility.
As Putin might say: "Da, a very good start Comrade Trump. And not even a week gone by....! "Na Zdorovje" (Cheers!)
Read more: What life is like for an Irish illegal immigrant in this era of anti-immigrant furor]]>
Lots has happened over the past seven days: Trump gave perhaps the most nationalist presidential address in American history, Micheal Flatley performed at Trump's inaugural ball, historic women's marches flooded the streets in DC and around the world, Trump and his team spent a lot of time arguing about the size of the crowd at his inauguration, and Trump issued a flurry of executive actions on the Affordable Care Act, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines, the border wall against Mexico, the persecution of undocumented immigrants, and much more.
So, how do you think he's doing? Take IrishCentral's poll, below, and share your thoughts in the comment section.]]>
The annual St.Pat's Day ceremony, followed by a reception for the Irish American community, has been in place for every president since Bill Clinton started the tradition in 1993. The advent of a new president is always a fraught time for the Irish until he agrees to an event.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer confirmed on Tuesday that a formal invite had been extended to Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Enda Kenny. The taoiseach traditionally makes an official visit to the US President around St. Patrick's Day to engage in the shamrock ceremony as a symbol of the close ties between the countries. The presentation dates back as far as the 1950s to the presidency of Harry Truman, but the White House reception was begun with President Clinton.
This year, however, the taoiseach has faced criticism in Ireland for his congratulations to the 45th President and has been called upon to not attend the annual ceremony, despite the importance it is said to hold for Irish relations and business in the US.
In the lead-up to the presidential election, Kenny was publicly critical of candidate Trump, referring to the language used in his campaign as "racist and dangerous." While not expressing regret for his previous words, the taoiseach did later say that his words were said in the "heat of battle" and that Ireland would be happy to work with the elected president.
Kenny was the first EU leader Trump spoke to after his election, a move that was said to have a slight to British Prime Minister Theresa May and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. It is believed Rudy Giuliani and the Irish Embassy set up the first call.
While the possibility of the taoiseach being present in the White House on March 17 was discussed during the 10-minute congratulatory phone call, the invite was not formally announced until this week. Spicer, himself an Irish-American who wore emerald green pants imprinted with shamrocks last St. Patrick's Day, referred to the event during a press briefing on Tuesday as "an issue that's near and dear to me."
"I was asked about the status of the invitation of Prime Minister Kenny, from Ireland, to visit the United States on St. Patrick's Day and I'm pleased to announce that the President has extended that invitation," Spicer said.
"It happened, actually, during the transition period [from Obama to Trump administrations] and we look forward to the Prime Minister attending."
The taoiseach's office has since welcomed the offer, although Keny himself has not spoken of it.
"The St. Patrick's Day events provide a valuable opportunity for the Government to discuss, at the very highest levels of US politics, our priorities and concerns," a spokesperson for the taoiseach told the Irish Examiner.
"The relationship between Ireland and the US is complex and multi-layered. The government's priority is to ensure that the long-standing relationship between Ireland and the US is protected in the interests of Irish citizens on both sides of the Atlantic. The taoiseach looks forward to visiting the White House on St. Patrick's Day."
The official announcement came just a day before President Trump began to act on the anti-immigration policies that attracted many supporters to his side while campaigning but continue to strike fear into the heart of millions of other Americans and immigrants, both legal and undocumented.
On Wednesday, he signed an executive order that readies the ground for a wall on the Mexican border. He also threatened to cut federal funding to sanctuary cities that harbor the undocumented. An estimated 50,000 undocumented Irish are believed to be living in America and the Dáil [Irish Parliament] heard how Taoiseach Kenny must work on behalf of these people and on behalf of the cause for equality in any dealings with Trump.
"We need to hear the taoiseach raise a voice for equal treatment of all irrespective of race, gender, or sexual orientation," Sinn Fein TD Mary Lou McDonald stated, highlighting the concerns of Irish immigration organizations in the US.
Earlier this month the left-wing Anti-Austerity Alliance-People Before Profit party held a press conference during which they called on the taoiseach to avoid Washington this St. Patrick's Day.
Referring to Kenny's previous words on Trump being racist and dangerous, AAA-PBP TD Richard Boyd-Barrett said it was an "absolutely accurate statement'.'
"He should not go to Washington and essentially play the stage Irishman and legitimize what Donald Trump represents,'' Mr. Boyd Barrett added, although he accepted that the Irish state should engage in "business-like" meetings with the Trump administration.
"It would be a very powerful statement to say he would not offer a symbolic gesture of friendship when Trump has set out such a dangerous and divisive agenda,'' he added, referring to Trump as "the vile face of the most right-wing part of the political establishment.''
There's 3 petitions against Enda going to Washington on Paddy's Day:https://t.co/fGjE8TS1Auhttps://t.co/kEloa2HOt0https://t.co/w27JA02oJP— Gráinne Lynch (@gronya) January 24, 2017
An online petition was also started this week by a New York resident calling on Taoiseach Kenny to boycott the shamrock ceremony this year as a sign of respect to Native Americans. Citing the help and funds provided to the Irish by the Choctaw Nation during the Great Hunger the petition asks for the taoiseach to remain at home in solidarity with those protesting at Standing Rock in North Dakota.
"In solidarity with the the Choctaw People, who fed our own ancestors during the Great Hunger and who are presently participating protests in Standing Rock, North Dakota, we ask the taoiseach Enda Kenny to stay home in Ireland on Saint Patrick's Day and not to offer a bowl of shamrocks to Donald Trump," the petition reads.
Three other online petitions started earlier this year requesting a boycott.
Should Taoiseach Enda Kenny refuse to visit the White House this March 17 or should the tradition continue throughout President Trump's term in office? Let us know your thought in the comments section, below.]]>
"I think it's good for Irish companies," Sinnamon told IrishCentral in an interview held at the Enterprise Ireland offices in New York on Inauguration Day, January 20.
"What happens on the trade front it's too early to say, but I do believe that there's a great fit between the product we have and what is being demanded in this market. We've great technology companies and we really need to make sure that they're maximizing their position here."
On the impact of Brexit, Sinnamon says Irish companies need to prepare for the worst case scenario and redirect their energy toward the US market in the event of harsh Brexit terms.
"In fact, the reaction from many of the companies in Ireland to the UK [leaving the EU] is that there is a really open market in the US in that people here like dealing with Irish people," she said.
"They see them as having really good quality products. It's a very accessible market and people should look west as opposed to looking east."
Since IrishCentral spoke with Sinnamon, President Trump has met with various US business leaders to discuss taxes and regulations and how these can be altered to ensure future job creation, relocation of the production bases abroad back to the US, and a commitment to staying within the country in the future. At the meeting on Monday, January 23, were Michael Dell of Dell Technologies and Alex Grosky of Johnson and Johnson, both companies have extensive operations in Ireland and employ several thousand people between them.
Trump also warned the business leaders of the costs his administration would impose on those companies that do not relocate to the US. This threat has caused worry for many in Ireland who fear that American multinationals may abandon Ireland.
While US companies employ around 140,000 people in 700 companies throughout Ireland, Irish companies based across the 50 states of the US employ around 120,000 through over 200 companies.
pic.twitter.com/tKLKhX0LTb— EI theUSA (@EI_theUSA) January 13, 2017
IDA Ireland, which is the government agency responsible for luring foreign direct investment [FDI] to Ireland, is bracing for a drastic cut in America's corporation tax to a level that will challenge Ireland's 12.5 percent rate.
Equally, Enterprise Ireland is readying itself for Brexit and on the lookout for opportunities in the US that could possibly lessen the dependence of Irish companies on the UK market.
"We're working with 5,000 [Irish] companies, Sinnamon tells IrishCentral, adding that with three strong years of growth behind them, Enterprise Ireland-affiliated companies now employ over 200,000 people.
"There are more people employed in those [Irish] companies than there are in multinationals companies," she adds, "which actually doesn't always get known within the companies. The key thing is that those two groups of companies [FDI and native] working together both in Ireland and globally are really where Ireland will get the maximum impact."
Enterprise Ireland has just unveiled its new four-year plan, which is built around Ireland and Irish companies' responses to Brexit.
"What we have to do now is to broaden that footprint outside of the UK," Sinnamon explains
"The target is to grow exports outside the UK for this period of four years by 50%. That's really ambitious, but it's about continuing to further decrease the dependence on the UK market.
"We're not going to walk away from the UK market," she added. "We still intend to maintain our position there,. but that requires us to be more innovative and more competitive within the UK and to go after different opportunities. There are still big spending programs going on in the UK. Some companies might be focusing on the south east of England whereas they should be looking at Scotland and the north of England so it's about looking at every sector and company and what their needs are and what they need to do."
For Sinnamon, the US could be one of the solutions in the future, however.
"We have to continue to get success in the US market," she believes.
"We have a great group of companies coming into this market. There are companies that are not in it at present and the reason why I'm here with all the US staff in the last two days is to make sure that we're doing as much with companies that should be in this market, to make sure that people are aware of them and are actually helping them."
Will be meeting at 9:00 with top automobile executives concerning jobs in America. I want new plants to be built here for cars sold here!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 24, 2017
Will be meeting at 9:00 with top automobile executives concerning jobs in America. I want new plants to be built here for cars sold here!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 24, 2017
Yet it's not just Irish charm that will take them there. While Sinnamon agrees that the Irish are thought of as nice people, she thinks nice can only get you so far and that the quality of Irish companies is what will stand to the country in the next few uncertain months and years.
"I think a lot of these companies are operating in towns and villages in Ireland and people don't appreciate the fantastic companies that they are," she declares.
"For example, Combilift [a company based in Co. Monaghan] … they employ hundreds of people and are exporting to 75 countries around the world on a massive scale and are really successful. They most enjoyable part of my job is doing trade missions with these Irish companies with fantastic products that are competing against the strongest competition in the world and seeing that they're able to grow their business because of the quality of the products.
"I always say people don't buy Irish products because we're nice people even though we are. People being nice will take you so far but you need to have excellent products and services and the investment in R&D [research and development] is key. That's something that we want more of but that has really been a big driver of that success."
Could Donald J. Trump's presidency be of benefit to the Irish economy? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section, below.]]>
They are: consideration, compassion, dignity, equilibrium, friendship, generosity, humility, idealism, modesty, respect, tact, tolerance and wisdom.
They are conspicuously missing in the life of the new administration because they have been conspicuously missing from the life of their now 70 year old leader. There's no mystery about why this would be so.
To Trump these qualities have always looked like weakness because he has an incurious intellect and a Manichean world view. He has never understood that instead of making you look timid, these qualities are the bedrock of the every culture and civilization that ever flourished.
There is more to empire building than bricks, mortar and business deals. Winston Churchill was never in any doubt about it. Famously asked if he wanted to cut arts funding to help the war effort he replied that he did not. "Then what are we fighting for?" he barked.
But Trump has no interest in the arts, of course. One of his team's first objectives is to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.
Trump plans to stop funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA budget is $148 million. Trump's inauguration cost $200 million.— Jamie Ford (@JamieFord) January 20, 2017
It's because the arts bring people together, they force them to confront complex issues and ask searching questions; it's no wonder authoritarians fear them. They see them as coded threats to their own power (the administration also plans to cut the funding to Public Broadcasting for similar reasons). Informed and engaged citizens are simply not wanted.
PBS awaits Trump's impact on funding for public broadcasting https://t.co/lD2yB7hsg5 pic.twitter.com/hSCJWLOVf8— WBZ Boston News (@cbsboston) January 16, 2017
So the Trump administration may have returned Churchill's bust to the Oval Office but they forget to bring along his idea's. It's really style and not substance that matters most to this administration.
Just ask Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Trump's growing disdain for his hair trigger new spokesperson is said to stem from what he calls Spicer's cheap suits, not his political statements.
When you're obsessed with how things look - for 30 years now Trump's life has been one long infomercial to camera - you can lose interest in how things are. The Achilles heel of this administration will be its obsession with saving face. For the next four years the questions that will obsess Trump most will be the ones that threaten to delegitimize him or make him look bad.
It's already happening. On Monday he spoke to bemused Congressional leaders and assured them he would have won the popular vote if 3 to 5 million illegal immigrants had not voted in the election. This is, of course, delusional. It's easily disproved (and already has been). But to protect his legitimacy we have learned that Trump will say or do anything, even lie blatantly to your face.
Trump's promised investigation of voter fraud, if it ever happens, will simply be an effort to disorient the public, not support his claims. It will be style over substance. He'll hold a shiny thing up to our eyes and hope we'll be distracted by it. There's going to be a lot of this.
But perhaps the most tragic and infuriating aspects of Trump's lamentable rise is that the GOP has clearly made the calculation that by indulging this entitled man-child they can simultaneously achieve their longed for policy agenda. That's why their most eminent and civilized commentators have all but withdrawn from public life.
Republicans denounced Obama's use of executive orders, but they're fine with Trump's—so far. @russellberman reports: https://t.co/zeqOZAhq2h pic.twitter.com/Sxp1cBZRl3— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) January 26, 2017
In the age of Trump they think that what the public want is Reality TV showmanship. For them consideration, compassion, dignity, equilibrium et al - all belong to an age that's passing. The grownups have decided it's much more effective to let the toddler tantrum.
But empires crumble when they concede their own fitness to govern. By enabling Trump the GOP have imperiled the country - and they know it. They have picked the good of the party over the good of the nation. We can't let them off the hook for it.]]>
Councillor Tom McEllistrim from the Fianna Fáil party proposed that the Council send the 45th President a letter of congratulations on behalf of the people of Kerry and, subject to his treatment of undocumented Irish people in the US, ask him to visit the Kingdom when he gets the chance.
In proposing his motion, McEllistrim said that a visit by a sitting US President could shine global attention on Kerry in a similar way that Kennedy and Obama's visits to New Ross, Wexford and Moneygall, Offaly did for those places.
Whilst the motion passed it was not without opposition; when McEllistrim first proposed the motion in December it proved to controversial he withdrew it "in the interest in peace." In the same meeting the council unanimously backed a similar motion asking for Pope Francis to visit Kerry when he comes to Ireland in 2018.
The Christmas season behind him, McEllistrim reintroduced his motion, citing the Kingdom's world renowned golf courses as a good reason for Trump to visit the tourist hot spot.
"Obviously, I think there would be huge economic benefits in the visit of the president and he wouldn't be the first. President Bill Clinton previously played golf in Ballybunion," the Irish Independent reported him saying.
"The publicity it would get would put Kerry on the map and also from a tourism point of view, it would enhance our tourist numbers.
"The priority is Kerry and it's from a Kerry perspective I'm putting down the motion and I think it would be good for business, jobs and tourism and it would also be good for the undocumented Irish."
Independent Councillor Donal Grady from Killarney said he was against Trump visiting Kerry "full stop" because of his past treatment of women.
Cllr Tom McEllistrim is proposing that @countykerry "invite @realDonaldTrump to Kerry". Would you like to see Mr Trump come to the Kingdom?— The Kerryman (@kerryman_ie) January 18, 2017
County Kerry was the fourth most visited of Irish counties in 2015 and tourists spent a sizeable quarter of a billion dollars whilst on vacation there. It's expected that after the filming of Star Wars in the county that visitor numbers will increase significantly this summer, so if he does visit, President Trump will find he's certainly not the only American visitor in town.
Read more: Donald Trump's "alternative facts" isn't just anti-democratic it's anti-American]]>
Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order that will aim to strip federal funding from "sanctuary cities", the some 300 cities, towns and counties across the US that shield undocumented immigrants by various means from the federal immigration authorities, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), who have the power to detain and deport them.
New York, where an estimated 30,000 of the undocumented Irish reside, as well as other cities with a high Irish population such as Boston and Chicago, are already fighting back, however, with the Attorney General of New York Eric Schneiderman releasing a report outlining how other immigrant sanctuary areas can protect their anti-deportation ethos in the light of Trump's threats.
"Our embassy in Washington, DC and our consulates remain in active and ongoing contact with Irish immigration centres throughout the United States. My department will continue to monitor the developments in this area very closely," Minister Flanagan said yesterday following the signing of the executive order. (It should be noted that an executive order does not change the law but advises the relevant department to take action.)
This is the American Dream right before your eyes and we are not going to allow it to be undermined. pic.twitter.com/xKAMQBd5bh— Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) January 26, 2017
According to Trump's Press Secretary, Irish American Seán Spicer who addressed immigration policies in a press briefing on Monday, initial plans look to deport 2-3 million swiftly, focusing on those who have previously been convicted of other crimes.
According to the Irish International Immigration Center based in Boston, this has left some undocumented Irish scared to even report crimes for fear they will be turned over to immigration authorities.
"People are tuned into this and worried that if you run a red light or have a broken tail light on your car it puts you under the radar of law enforcement agencies," head of the organization Ronnie Millar told the Irish Independent.
"Even victims of crime who are undocumented won't go to the police. There's definitely an anxiety."
MEXICO WILL PAY FOR THE WALL— DeplorableLeft #MAGA (@Deplorable_Left) January 25, 2017
Sean Spicer Details President Trump's Immigration Policy including a 1 way ticket out of America for Criminals pic.twitter.com/XWdA3uW879
The Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform continues to call for calm, however, as Trump's administration continues to target other groups of undocumented people. While 33 Irish removed from the country by authorities in 2014, 177,000 Mexicans were deported. There are an estimated 5.8 million Mexican unauthorized immigrants living in the US, as of 2014.
"I said before that people shouldn't be alarmed," ILIR chair Ciarán Staunton said to the Independent.
"He is targeting criminal aliens. My opinion hasn't changed. Irish people shouldn't be alarmed or respond to alarmist or sensational headlines."
Today's Executive Orders's re: immigrants are a direct attack on Boston's people, Boston's strength & our values. We will not stand for it pic.twitter.com/Cw4RIE9lLc— Mayor Marty Walsh (@marty_walsh) January 25, 2017
As protests gathered Wednesday evening in response to Trump's orders to begin the process of building a wall along the Mexico-US border and cut funding to sanctuary cities, the mayors of New York and Chicago prepared themselves to act in defiance of the President's orders.
"We're going to defend all of our people regardless of where they come from, regardless of their immigration status," announced New York Mayor Bill De Blasio.
Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel also stated: "I want to be clear: We're going to stay a sanctuary city. There is no stranger among us. Whether you're from Poland or Pakistan, whether you're from Ireland or India or Israel and whether you're from Mexico or Moldova, where my grandfather came from, you are welcome in Chicago as you pursue the American dream."
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto this morning canceled his meeting with President Trump scheduled for next week after a warning from Trump sent via Twitter that the Mexican government should do so if they were unwilling to pay for the proposed border wall.
Peña Nieto responded in kind via Twitter stating: "This morning we told the White House we won't attend next Tuesday's meeting with @POTUS. Mexico reiterates its will to work with the US to achieve agreements for both of us."
The Mexican President also released a video on Wednesday evening confirming "Mexico will not pay for a wall."
BREAKING: Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto cancels meeting with Trump following border wall executive action https://t.co/buv8sAl5mf— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 26, 2017
Trump continues to defend his policy, however, arguing that in the long-term it will be of more benefit to both countries.
"You have to understand what I'm doing is good for the United States. It's also going to be good for Mexico," Trump told ABC News.
"We want to have a very stable, very solid Mexico, even more solid than it is right now. And they need it also. Lots of things are coming across Mexico that they don't want. I think it's going to be a good thing for both countries. And I think the relationship will be better than ever before."]]>
A senior agent in the Denver field office, Kerry O'Grady, 46, is required by the Hatch Law to resist from airing her political leanings publicly and is banned from sharing any partisan content. The agent is alleged to have announced on Facebook she was willing to break this ethical code to share her opposition to Donald Trump, although she did not directly address him by name.
In a series of now-deleted Facebook posts dating from October 2016 right up to Saturday's Women's March, O'Grady repeatedly spoke of her support for Hillary Clinton, declaring Trump's presidential candidacy a "disaster" for the country, and even changing her cover photo on social media to the logo for Saturday's Women's March.
According to the Washington Examiner, a conservative newspaper which first reported her postings and spoke with O'Grady on Tuesday, she first took to Facebook in October to write, "As a public servant for nearly 23 years, I struggle not to violate the Hatch Act. So I keep quiet and skirt the median.
"To do otherwise can be a criminal offense for those in my position. Despite the fact that I am expected to take a bullet for both sides.
"But this world has changed and I have changed. And I would take jail time over a bullet or an endorsement for what I believe to be disaster to this country and the strong and amazing women and minorities who reside here. Hatch Act be damned. I am with Her."
This post was removed several days later. O'Grady reportedly reflected on her words and decided they were not something she needed to share, claiming she had initially been angered and drawn to speak by the "Access Hollywood" "grab them by the p***y" video.
"There was a very emotional reaction to what was said," O'Grady told the Washington Examiner, further adding that she had experienced sexual assault in college.
"But I recognize that the agency is the most important thing to me. My government is the most important thing to me," she said.
"I serve at the pleasure of the president, but I still have the First Amendment right to say things."
As a secret service agent, O'Grady's primary mission is to protect the lives of both former and past Presidents as well as the Vice-Presidents, their immediate family and other high level elected leaders. According to the New York Times, O'Grady, in particular, was responsible for the Secret Service's investigative, intelligence, and protective missions throughout Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho.
Though she deleted her first post, O'Grady later shared links online to articles from the Huffington Post and Vox in which she criticized the nomination of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General and commented "Douche" on a defense of Trump's actions.
"We are moving our civil rights into a period of bigotry, misogyny, and racism that this country has not tolerated for decades. Dark ages. I am horrified and dismayed beyond words," O'Grady is reported to have written.
On Saturday, January 21, she posted the logo for the Women's March as her cover photo, later declaring herself as "nasty," a phrase adopted by female supporters of Hillary Clinton after she was labeled such by Trump during the final presidential election debate.
O'Grady followed this by placing an image of actress Carrie Fisher as the iconic "Star Wars" character Princess Leia as her Facebook profile picture stating: "A woman's place is in the resistance," an apparent approval of the growing movements opposing the Trump presidency.
The agent, who is believed to be the person who would oversee coordination with Washington-based advance teams for all presidential candidate and presidential trips to the Denver area and as such, any future visit by Trump, has deleted all posts following her interview with the Washington Examiner on Tuesday and has declined to comment further on the matter.
CNN reports that the secret service made a statement Tuesday in which they said they could not comment on a personnel matter but that it was "aware of the postings and the agency is taking quick and appropriate action."
"All Secret Service agents and employees are held to the highest standards of professional and ethical conduct," the statement said. "Any allegations of misconduct are taken seriously and swiftly investigated."
During operational service training for the Secret Service, would-be agents are warned about their social media usage and told that to expose personal information could make them vulnerable to threats.
O'Grady herself stated in her defense: "I serve this country with pride and I proudly, diligently and fiercely protect and support the institutions and pillars of our republic established by the very same document that allows my free expression.
"I do so with every fiber of my being for the very reason that those institutions are in place to guarantee my right and the rights of all our citizens to voice and express our opinions and beliefs even when – and especially when – those values may be contrary to those of the party in power.
"My devotion to mission and country is only strengthened by the fact that the founders recognize the value of dissent and the freedom to assemble and voice those opposing convictions.
"They enshrine those rights for future generations so we avoid the path of authoritarian regimes that shackle their people with fear."
Should secret service agents be banned from airing any personal political preferences or grievances publicly? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section, below.]]>
That's not what his spokespeople might call an "alternative fact." It's a straight up fact backed by the United States Department of the Interior.
The government agency's photographs on the day clearly show the crowds were thin on the ground along the National Mall, and that had it not been for the arriving protestors preparing for the Women's March the next day, the city would have had no real energy to speak of.
You see, the thing about facts is that they are indifferent to your opinion. They're simply facts. The new Trump administration's press secretary Sean Spicer could have saved himself a lot of public embarrassment last weekend if he had remembered that.
At his first press conference as press secretary, setting the tone for the incoming Trump administration, Spicer angrily blasted the assembled reporters for reporting the news.
"Some members of the media were engaged in deliberately false reporting," he charged, naming no names and offering no proof. "Photographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way, in one particular tweet, to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall."
Inauguration Day crowds for President Trump in 2017 and former President Obama in 2009: https://t.co/9QtzNWgfTT pic.twitter.com/KY0wBcAaRn— Good Morning America (@GMA) January 20, 2017
Here's the thing Sean. If no one is standing on those great stretches of lawn that is not the fault of the press, who are paid to write about what they hear and see. Shouting at them won't change that.
"The president is committed to unifying our country, and that was the focus of his inaugural address," Spicer continued. "This kind of dishonesty in the media, the challenging -- the bringing about our nation together is making it more difficult."
It was not dishonest to say that the crowd size for the inauguration had noticeably dropped from the Obama era. It was a simple fact.
Read more: Who are the Irish allies for immigration reform in the Trump era?
The press are the people's voice in the corridors of power. Their questions are asked in the public interest, so politicians don't get to decide which they will be asked, but Spicer was clearly going down that unwise road.
"There's been a lot of talk in the media about the responsibility to hold Donald Trump accountable," Spicer continued. "And I'm here to tell you that it goes two ways. We're going to hold the press accountable, as well…"
Penguin prints 75,000 more copies of #1984 after #AlternativeFacts claim https://t.co/CDff2l593R pic.twitter.com/jWscCq48iK— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) January 25, 2017
If you hear an ominous threat in that utterance it's because you're supposed to. Spicer is saying that if the press doesn't comport itself or its questions in a way the Trump administration likes, then they could lose their ability to ask any questions at all.
If that thought doesn't alarm you then you have probably already bought into Trump's relentless propaganda campaign to undermine journalism and make his life a lot easier.
But if it does alarm you then you are already learning how politics will work in the new Trump order. Trump doesn't govern. He rules. And he rules like an autocrat who will reward his supporters and punish his enemies. It's a tactic that was developed in the ancient world, where it was called divide and conquer.
The real shock of Donald Trump was and still is that you're writing about him at all, of course. From the start it seemed like a ridiculous satire, something inconceivable, something so glaringly silly that it would take care of itself.
Read more: Trump is "despicable" says former CIA Director John Brennan after CIA visit
The most tirelessly self-promoting of America's self-promoters, his appearance in the presidential race seemed like a momentary distraction to most commentators.
I was never one of them. I discerned his threat in July of 2015 and I was the first to notice how his campaign was making subtext text, making racially charged statements that had until then been the third rail you never touch in American political life.
But the biggest shock of Trump's win is being experienced by Republicans themselves, however. They have the presidency, they control the House and Senate, but what should be an era of triumph still feels hollow and provisional, hence all the high dudgeon over inauguration sizes.
This is not Reagan's GOP. It's not even Bush's, as the journalists who report on these things were the first to discover. When CNN's Jim Acosta tried to ask a question at Trump's first news conference in over six months two weeks ago, Trump exploded.
"Not you," Trump said, looking away like an angry monarch. "Your organization is terrible," he continued. "Quiet. Don't be rude. No, I'm not going to give you a question. You are fake news."
Trump and his administration think they will decide what they're asked and who can ask them it. But remember when they do hat's not just anti-democratic, or anti-press. It's un-American.
Read more: Could Caroline Kennedy be the next Hillary Clinton and run for president?]]>
The legislation had significant effects, not least the spurring of a national campaign on behalf of undocumented Irish immigrants to secure legal status in a United States that was much less of an open door to Ireland since the enactment of an earlier reform act in 1965.
The '86 measure included an amnesty provision, but most of the "80s Irish" arrived in the U.S. after the amnesty cutoff date.
The result was the birth of the Irish Immigration Reform Movement and a campaign for green cards that witnessed the naissance of the Donnelly, Morrison and Berman visa programs, as well as a diversity visa provision that would be associated with then congressman, and later senator, Charles Schumer.
Schumer's name would be front and center in congressional efforts to reform immigration law in subsequent years, and his name will be prominent again in the new 115th Congress.
But in what capacity?
Will the new Senate Democratic Leader be a crafter of legislation that will bring relief to the plight of the undocumented and the so-called "Dreamers" - those who were brought at very early ages to America by parents who lacked legal status?
Or will Schumer be leading a rearguard action against efforts by a combined Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress to not only put even more pressure on the undocumented and illegal but also to curb legal immigration?
Not a few incoming Capitol Hill legislators would like to see restrictions on even legal immigration, and more than a few are lining up to make life even more difficult for the undocumented (those who arrived legally in the U.S. but overstayed) and illegal (those who arrived in the U.S. without a visitor, or temporary visa, that was checked at a point of entry).
But, as is always the case, the Irish can count on some Congress members as being sympathetic, or at least less than harsh.
And in some cases, they can count on members who could be described as friends - even be they friends on opposite sides of the political fence.
Shortly after the incoming Trump administration named South Carolina congressman Mick Mulvaney as its nominee for budget director (Mulvaney was answering Senate committee questions Tuesday) and the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform welcomed the move.
"Congressman Mulvaney has been a great friend of ours since he arrived on Capitol Hill in 2010.
We look forward to working with him," said ILIR Chairman Ciaran Staunton.
"Working with him" depends on Senate confirmation and in a twist with a tinge of irony - at least in an immigration context - Senator John McCain – the Republican half of the McCain/Kennedy reform bill of a decade ago – has stated that he is leaning against voting for Representative Mulvaney.
ILIR is bipartisan in its outreach, so any member of the House or Senate is seen as a friend if his or her view on greater legal access to the U.S. for the Irish – and/or the lifting of the three and ten years bars that keep the undocumented Irish fenced in - is deemed positive.
In this regard, House Speaker Paul Ryan is a friend of the ILIR, and indeed, in recent days, Ryan has sought to pour balm on waters troubled by immigration pronouncements made by President Trump during the campaign.
Ryan has a hurley stick in his Capitol Hill office that was presented to him by ILIR's Ciaran Staunton.
Congressman Mulvaney might be getting one too for his new office should he be confirmed as budget director, or to give the job its full formal title, Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
But in one of those political twists that abound on Capitol Hill, Senator Charles Schumer - arguably Washington's greatest champion of immigration relief for the Irish since the death of Senator Edward Kennedy in 2009 - has problems with the Mulvaney nomination.
CNN reported that Schumer has floated the possibility that Republicans should block Rep. Mick Mulvaney from the budget post over his failure to pay taxes on a household employee, comparing it to a scandal that sunk President Obama's initial Health and Human Services pick.
"If Tom Daschle couldn't become a cabinet member for not paying taxes for a household employee, then the same standard ought to apply for Mick Mulvaney," Schumer told reporters.
"We say to our Republican colleagues, what's good for the goose is good for the gander."
As CNN further reported: "Mulvaney said he has since paid the $15,000 in taxes as well as penalties and the Trump team dismissed criticism noting the congressman has already taken 'appropriate follow-up measures.'"
Daschle withdrew his 2009 nomination amid reports that he had failed to pay nearly $130,000 in taxes.
His subsequent retirement from national politics was a blow to Irish immigration campaigners as the onetime Senate Majority Leader had been a strong supporter of reform.
Indeed, back in 2004, Daschle was the prime Democratic sponsor of a reform bill along with then Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.
If it is the case then that Irish reformers need every possible friend on Capitol Hill, they will be hoping that Senator Schumer, now the Senate Minority Leader, grumbles and growls over Congressman Mulvaney, but leaves it at that.
That said, Mulvaney, a father of triplets, is a fiscal hawk rooted in the Tea Party and a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus.
Schumer might feel inclined to go beyond mere growling.
Thus far, President Trump's most obvious stances on immigration have been focused on building a wall along the border with Mexico and deporting illegal immigrants who are convicted of crimes in the United States, a process that is carried out on a regular basis anyway.
Today, Mr. Trump sets about signing executive orders aimed at constructing a wall along the border with Mexico, restricting the inflow of refugees, and reducing the numbers of immigrants from some Muslim majority countries.
These moves are based on repeatedly proclaimed campaign promises.
Beyond these executive orders, the new president's deeper and more detailed feelings on the immigration issue could well emerge into sharper relief when it comes to dealing with DACA.
The acronym denotes the relief granted young people under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Last week, hundreds of religious, civil rights, ethnic and immigrant rights organizations who work on behalf of immigrants and their families signed on to a letter urging President Trump to protect the more than 740,000 individuals who are currently covered by DACA.
In the letter, according to a release, 863 national, state and local organizations said that DACA "has become one of our nation's most successful immigration policy initiatives...fostering economic growth and strengthening national security."
The letter asked Trump to continue DACA, despite his campaign promises to immediately end all of President Obama's executive actions on immigration.
.@Ciaran_Staunton urges Undocumented Irish living in the US not to make "any rash decisions" @ILIR_Tweets https://t.co/GENZHkctHs— Irish Undocumented (@IRLUndocumented) November 14, 2016
Added the release announcing the letter: "There has historically been bipartisan support for protection from deportation for the population which benefits under DACA.
"In June 2012, President Obama announced DACA as an initiative to provide work permits and relief from deportation to young adults and children who arrived in the United States before the age of 16. Applicants must submit to background checks, pay a fee, and meet certain educational requirements.
"Besides enabling them to increasingly contribute to the economy, DACA has made it easier for those immigrants to attend college and to join the military.
"However, DACA remains limited in that it offers no pathway to permanent legal immigration status or citizenship."
A few, though not many, who come under the DACA umbrella are Irish.
Since his inauguration last Friday, President Trump has been signing executive orders at a rate that would, in other times, have brought howls of "imperial presidency" raining down upon the White House.
But it is the seemingly mercurial nature of the 45th president that gives Irish reform advocates cause for continued hope, even when prospects for comprehensive reform look bleaker than they have done for years.
This story originally featured in the Irish Echo. You can read more from them here.]]>
I've never met as many Republicans in my entire life as I did Friday in Washington for Donald Trump's inauguration. I've clocked up six months total in America – all of which I've spent in New York City – and I'd met one solitary Trump supporter so far. Before I came out here I worked as a tour guide at Oxford and met dozens of Americans, none of whom had a nice word to say about the 45th President. Either Trump supporters don't travel or they were too embarrassed to admit it in Europe.
At Washington's Union Station it was clear this was Red America's day and there were plenty of Make America Great Again caps bobbing through the crowds. It felt very different from New York City, to put it lightly.
In a shop selling souvenirs excited Trump supporters asked me to take a picture of them with a cardboard cutout of their hero. They asked me if I wanted one but were shocked when I pulled a smiling Obama towards me. I did, however, buy a Make America Great cap for a liberal friend in Dublin which I'm sure he'll treasure forever. I looked terrific in it – red definitely suits me – but just couldn't bring myself to wear it long; usually I find it easy to get hyped up by big national events, but with Donald Trump it's different. I just think he is a dangerous and bad man.
Outside Union Station I bumped into a crowd of socialists protesting. As a student I always thought most protests in Ireland seemed to be about austerity, so a socialist demonstration in the rain made me feel right at home, solidarity with the lads with a Palestinian flag and a sign asking Trump not to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem. I presume there wasn't the space to add, "Or at least not until there is a peace agreement that sees a two state solution with joint authority over Jerusalem."
I interviewed two of them for IrishCentral and it was pretty clear that even in Europe they would be considered on the left of the spectrum. If the Democrats start advocating for completely open borders then they can kiss the White House goodbye for at least another generation, at which point US tax rates will will resemble Monaco and Medicare and Social Security will be as private as Trump's pool in Mar-a-Lago.
Live in DC for the Inauguration! 🇺🇸Posted by IrishCentral.com on Friday, January 20, 2017
The next couple were Trump supporters and I thought they were lovely. All the way from the Carolinas, one was an Irish American and the other other a Hispanic pastor who assured me her flock were full square behind the new President. She actually felt that there was a far higher chance of immigration reform happening under a Republican Administration than with a Democrat in the White House. She didn't agree with his comments about Mexico, nor did she think much of his pussy grabbing past which she declared a "sin," but she was hopeful that a Trump Presidency would see restrictions on abortion and an end to gay marriage. For sure Vice President Mike Pence agrees with with her.
Hispanic Pastor and Irish American Trump supporters tell us why they're in DC today! 🇺🇸Posted by IrishCentral.com on Friday, January 20, 2017
Another set of Trump supporters I found in an Irish bar – where else would I go to find Irish Americans? A father and his half-Mexican, half-Irish son from Texas told me confidently, "No more hope, [he's] actually going to make a difference." When I raised the fears of the undocumented Irish I was confidently reassured by Dad, "Irish Americans shouldn't be concerned at all." He had a problem with illegals, working in construction and other low paid jobs, holding down wages (which is exactly what thousands of Irish illegals do), but the educated Irish would still be able to come to America.
Irish American Trump supporters
Irish American Donald J. Trump supporters in DC for the inauguration weigh in on illegal immigration and the 'grab-em' recording:Posted by IrishCentral.com on Friday, 20 January 2017
Two ladies in town for the Women's March the next day, both wearing identical pink "pussyhats" were next. I didn't put it to them that using women's genitalia to symbolize feminist resistance to the new President was "trans exclusionary feminism" because I'd been out of my liberal Twitter bubble all morning and just didn't think.
Irish American Jane and her sister in law are here to protest the new President!Posted by IrishCentral.com on Friday, January 20, 2017
Moving through the crowds in central DC I was struck by two things: firstly there were nearly as many protesters as supporters and secondly, they were all just letting each other get on and do their own thing. What saddened me most when I heard later about the small outbreaks of violence was that I felt so impressed by the strength of America's democracy at that point. Even if Russia hacked the election, in plenty of countries having so many ordinary citizens with such opposing views in one place would be a recipe for riots, or at the very least insults, but I saw nothing but Americans treating each other with courtesy and respect. If it hadn't been for the caps and the signs it could have been just a busy day in DC.
Due to road closures what should have been a half hour walk across town turned into an hour and a half tour of Washington, DC. I missed most of the swearing in and President Trump's rambling speech but was passing by loudspeakers when Trump took the oath of office. My deeply buried inner Catholic stirred and I crossed myself. I hope my worries for the future are confounded.
Passing the back entrance of the White House was when I really felt the guard had changed. A black car drove in and, rightly or wrongly, I assumed he was a GOP staffer eager to start undoing eight years of work by Obama.
At a dinner hosted by the Ireland Fund to celebrate the inauguration I sat by a couple whose family hailed from near my own in Kerry. I asked whether they thought the right candidate had won. "Yes," the husband bluntly informed me. I assumed from the irritated tone this was a position that had earned him a lot of slagging in his liberal hometown.
Watching the parade out the window I felt must have been a curious exercise in restraint for most of the Fund's employees. Most were Irish born and, like me, I'd say would have been rolling their eyes and making despairing comments if it hadn't been for the presence of the event's Republican guests. Still, as the presidential limousine passed by, we snapped away on our phones as eagerly as we would have had it been JFK back from the dead. Inauguration Day is Inauguration Day and a like on Instagram is a like on Instagram.
Chatting to guests I was struck, as always when I speak to Irish Americans, how sincere their love of Ireland is but how different the political realities of our two nations are. The husband I was chatting to told me that he had been a Democrat since 1952 but last year changed his registration to Independent and voted for Trump. He said Obamacare was a disaster and his wife told me she really didn't understand what her liberal friends could be worried about. Neither of which would count as views within the Irish political mainstream.
Afterwards I interviewed Congressman Mark Meadows who represents North Carolina's 11th District and is as gracious a politician as I have ever met. He told me that there would be a vote in Congress on repealing the Affordable Healthcare Act sometime within the first three weeks of February at which point the GOP would have a replacement ready.
Live with Congressman Mark MeadowsPosted by IrishCentral.com on Friday, January 20, 2017
I wished him a goodnight and began my walk back to Union Station. I doubt they'll be many others for Trump supporters. With an approval rating already in the low 40s and an apparently sincerely held view that "the President can't have a conflict of interest" I expect the Trump Administration to rapidly hit the rocks.
But then again, what do I know about middle America? I'm just another liberal journalist living in a New York bubble.
Read more: Trump support sinks faster than the sun on Galway Bay]]>
But if the difficulties now facing the Northern Ireland peace and political process are not exactly at the forefront of the new president's mind, there will be those who will remind his administration that, as in so many policy areas, there is indeed a baton to be picked up afresh.
In the waning hours of the Obama presidency, the administration issued a statement urging a rapid resumption of power sharing in Northern Ireland, this despite the turbulent backdrop of the emerging election campaign and an election that could well end up leading to an impasse resulting in a return to British direct rule.
Said that final Obama administration statement: "The United States remains committed to supporting a more peaceful and prosperous Northern Ireland.
"To this end, we urge all political parties to focus on quickly finding a way forward to the resumption of stable devolved governance.
"We also encourage civil society leaders to continue their vital work building a better, shared future.
"Restored devolved democratic institutions and an engaged, constructive citizenry can best take Northern Ireland forward."
The statement occurred in the absence of a U.S. envoy to the North.
Former senator Gary Hart, who was Secretary of State John Kerry's "personal representative" to the peace process, took leave of that post last month, this after a final swing through Belfast, Dublin and London during which he spoke in support of continued implementation of the December 2014 Stormont House Agreement, and the November 2015 Fresh Start Agreement.
Since Hart's visit, the idea of agreement in North politics has become rather more tenuous.
The air of deep uncertainty following the breakup of the power-sharing executive, and the setting of an election date of March 2 has been compounded by the decision of outgoing Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness not to stand even for an Assembly seat, this due to his present state of health.
McGuinness, who will be replaced by Michelle O'Neill, has been a dominant and stabilizing figure in the evolving politics of Northern Ireland for years and his absence will be keenly felt.
Watch @moneillsf – new Sinn Féin leader, Stormont Assembly: "Partnership government must mean exactly that." https://t.co/9V56Xxvirz pic.twitter.com/JJu2UM330x— An Phoblacht (@An_Phoblacht) January 23, 2017
It is against this backdrop of absence and uncertainty – not to mention Brexit - that Washington's role as an encourager and enabler in Northern Ireland now finds itself needed, arguably more than ever.
And the man presiding over that role is the 45th President.
Mr. Trump now owns Washington's Irish policy, along with so much else.
What he does next regarding Ireland, all of it, and in more than one context, will be watched and studied closely by Irish America.
But the peace process and its underpinning, the Good Friday Agreement, is the undoubted primus inter pares.
This story originally featured in the Irish Echo. You can read more from them here.]]>
Boyle boycotted the event on the steps of the Capitol.
Boyle, whose congressional district covers part of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania's Montgomery County, said that he was joining over sixty fellow Democrats in the boycott of Trump's swearing in as the 45th President.
"As much as I cherish this day, can I in good conscience celebrate that which I believe is a grave mistake?" said Boyle in a statement posted on social media.
"Can I sit by mere yards away and applaud the desecration of the most important office in the history of the world?
"After wrestling with this question for the last two months, I have concluded I cannot participate in this Inaugural celebration."
Boyle said that he did not question the legality of Trump's election to the presidency, his having captured more than the required minimum of Electoral College votes.
But he characterized Trump as "a unique threat to the Constitution and our country."
Said Boyle, who is 39: "I accept the decision of the people. I respect it. But I will not celebrate it."
Boyle, now in his second term in the House of Representatives, is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and in the run-up to the November election began to appear as a speaking guest on TV networks such as CNN.
Boyle is also a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
His father, Francis, is an immigrant from County Donegal while his late mother, Eileen, was the daughter of immigrants from County Sligo.
This story was originally published in the Irish Echo. You can read more from them here.]]>
Check back later for more updates!
Irish American sisters in DC to protest:
Father and son Trump supporters:
More protesters:
Trump supporters arrive in Union Station:
Whose words are these? A rabid Democrat? A dyed in the wool Trump hater?
No. It's columnist David Brooks, a Republican writing in the New York Times this morning, inauguration day.
Those are powerful accusations. Have we elected a loon? Brooks seems to think so.
I watched the inaugural speech and thought Roy Blount, the Republican senator who was master of ceremonies, made by far the best remarks, putting in historical perspective the remarkable transfer of power we were witnessing. Since 1789 every four years without fail. No other country can come close.
There was a wonderful moment for Mike Pence, grandson of an Irish immigrant who drove a bus in Chicago and is now inaugurated as vice president.
But then came the main course. Trump' speech was straight off the campaign trail, but extra disturbing in the use of one phrase --America First, the 1930s fascist slogan.
Whoever gave him that America First slogan knew well what he was doing. It is just short of Sieg Heil in its symbolic inference. The alt-right are on the march, we could hear their footsteps on Pennsylvania Avenue today.
Blount Quoted Lincoln with "malice towards none and charity towards all." After his remarks Trump looks like the embodiment of the opposite, malice towards everyone. charity towards none. No handshake with the Clintons? How mean spirited was that?
Remember that this is the man who began his campaign calling Mexicans rapists and has refused to put an Hispanic in his administration and has but one token African American. It looks like America -- of the 1930s.
If I was gay, black or in need I would now fear this presidency. Lincoln appealed to the" better angels;" Trump appeals to the worst devils within us.
Will I be proved wrong? For the sake of the country I hope so. I really do. But based on his first day in office it looks an awful lot like the last days of his campaign: fiercely partisan, vindictive and lacking grace. Suddenly it seems the enemy is within.]]>
That said, there is also a strong smell of hypocrisy wafting from those who have very vocally opposed Trump within the entertainment industry and are actively boycotting the event.
As noted by Brian Boyd in the Irish Times earlier this week, while many major performers were quick to refuse to perform for the president-elect, some of the very same artists did not refuse to perform for dictators and despots when there was money involved and a chance that nobody would notice.
In fact, they didn't refuse at all.
From Beyoncé receiving an estimated $2 million for a private performance for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's family in 2009 to Elton John receiving money to play for the elite of apartheid South Africa during the '80s, it appears that hypocrisy is at work.
Sting, for instance, received $2 million performing for the president of Uzbekistan.
As the Irish Times pointed out, "At the time Uzbekistan's president, Islam Karimo … was boiling his enemies, slaughtering his citizens when they protested and conscripting armies of children for slave labor."
Just a few weeks ago Meryl Streep waxed lyrical about inclusivity in America in her Trump-targeted Golden Globes speech and she praised the diversity of Hollywood, a Hollywood that less than a year ago was shamed with #OscarsSoWhite.
And as for us not famous folks, thousands of young music lovers will descend on popular music festival Coachella this year, caring little that the owner of its parent company is a "Trump-loving, billionaire businessman who donates to eye-wateringly right-wing groupings," as Boyd put it.
For his part, Flatley has, as of yet, given us no indication of his support for Trump other than the report on Wednesday evening that his dancers were to participate in the inaugural festivities.
Of course, Flatley should remember his immigrant roots, the history the Irish people moving to America, and how Trump's rhetoric towards immigrants would have all but cast us out of the US altogether if this was the 1840s.
In no shape or form should he support the anti-woman, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant language of President Trump as any kind of representative of Ireland or Irish America; but neither should Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon, or General John Kelly, nor the host of other Trump staffers who claim Irish heritage.
As with Conway and Co., as well as the tons of other Irish-American voters who backed The Donald on November 8, they are entitled to their political beliefs until their beliefs encroach on the human rights of others.
For anybody unhappy with the election result, we've all dealt with it in different ways. Some are refusing to accept it to this day, some are protesting every opportunity they get, some are quietly settling in for the ride while others are determined to work as best they can with the hand we've been dealt.
To crucify Flatley without taking into consideration that others have been far more egregious and played for tyrants is wrong.
I can only hope that he decided to participate in the Trump celebrations in the hope that by doing so he will ensure that the arts have a place in Trump's Washington during the next four years and that he's not just doing it for the paycheck.
We have a long four years ahead of us. Save some good, proactive energy and redirect that outrage to Enda Kenny at the shamrock ceremony in the White House on St. Patrick's Day. Kenny has previously called Trump out on his racism and now isn't willing to stick to his guns.
Do you think Flatley has a right to perform at the inauguration if he so wishes? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section, below.
Read more: Irish bookies offer yuuuge odds on Trump impeachment]]>
The odds being offered are not high so if either if one of those bets pays off, you would probably take home an amount small enough to fit in even Donald Trump's hands. For many in the country, however, it be just the fact that their dream has come true which would be the best prize of all.
The odds of him not completing his first term in office currently stand at 7/4, while the offer is 4/1 that Trump will be impeached within the first six months of his presidency.
That's if he makes it that far. It's a bit of a long-shot, but Paddy Power is offering odds of 20/1 that he won't be inaugurated as the 45th President later this morning.
Other Donald Trump special bets on the bookmaker's site are slightly more whimsical and far-fetched: 5/1 odds on Golden Shower in Russia footage appearing on RedTube; 16/1 odds on a split from the future First Lady Melania some time this year, and 500/1 on Trump transforming his official residence into the Gold House.
While Russia is predicted to be the country where the next President will make his first state visit, Ireland comes in second at 6/4, followed by Canada, Mexico, and China.
For the inauguration ceremony itself, there are plenty of places where you can make a pretty penny if you're willing to take a flutter on the president-elect. From the color of his tie, the length of his speech, how many viewers will tune in, right down to whether Trump's skin shade will reach Tiger's Eye or a Vivid Tangelo, there is a whole range of bets on how today will pan out.
One of the favorites is what word/phrase Trump will use first in his inauguration speech from "Make America Great Again" at 5/4, right down to Father Jack's favorite "Feck, Arse, Drink, Girls" at 500/1.
While Trump's not yet officially the president, the Irish bookmakers are already looking ahead to 2020 and who will run during the next election.
Trump is currently at 9/5 to run for a second term while House Speaker Paul Ryan and Vice President-elect Mike Pence both come in at 7/1. Other names thrown in the hat include Michelle Obama, Tim Kaine, Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders as well as Leonardo Di Caprio, Kanye West, Ivanka Trump and Kim Kardashian.
While some of the odds advertised by Paddy Power may seem attractive, it should be remembered that the company was forced to make a massive U-turn last November 9 after they rashly paid out to those who bet on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton before all votes were even cast, so sure were they of a Clinton victory. They also offered 100/1 odds on Trump winning the presidency back in 2012, so one of the long shots could be worth a few quid either way.
Imagine if you missed out on this opportunity and went away empty-handed? Sad!
Do you think Trump will make it through the four years? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section, below.
Read more: Trump support sinks faster than the sun on Galway Bay]]>
This is not, as one Scottish newspaper listed the televised ceremony, a reboot of "The Twilight Zone," but the unexpected result of an unprecedented US election. And for the occasion, as a dual citizen, one of the things that's helping me cope is to look back at all the many ways, from the political to the humorous, Ireland and Irish people tried to send some sense across the Atlantic to prevent a Trump presidency.
Thanks for trying, lads, and please don't keep quiet these next four years.
Café Soul on Guildhall Street in Derry incurred both the wrath of online Trump trolls and the admiration of his detractors in their attempt to play a part in ensuring The Donald would not become President of the United States.
Some good deals in Derry. #dumptrump pic.twitter.com/OHcebuCEhx— Bill Gunter (@tulanian) August 6, 2016
Taking advantage of the large number of American visitors to Northern Ireland during the summer months, Café Soul displayed the large message "American visitors? 10% off if you Dump Trump" in the window. The cafe's social media accounts added, "The world is mad enough, let's not add to it."
In an extraordinary intervention in the US presidential election Ireland's president Michael D. Higgins slammed GOP candidate Donald Trump for fomenting racism. In an interview with Ireland's Sunday Business Post, Higgins sided with United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, who had warned that Trump was "playing on popular prejudices and fears about migrants in order to win power." Higgins stated that targeting the most vulnerable was utterly wrong and the Irish especially knew all about it from their history.
"I think the UN representative has been explicit in actually naming the people who have been using this demagoguery, and I'm very pleased that he has," Higgins said. "It has to be challenged, the notion that you can whip up fear of the stranger with total impunity. Those seeds that are being sown are ones that have disastrous consequences."
Higgins also saw the writing on the wall of the 2016 election much earlier than most, warning that with the rise of poverty in the US, politics of inclusion must make a strong case lest the politics of fear win out, which it ultimately did.
Read more: Irish bookies offer yuuuge odds on Trump impeachment
Created by Clisare, stage name for YouTube personality Clare Cullen, the video "Dear America" showed her talking to America from the point of view of "Ireland" as a concerned friend who does not approve of America's choice in boyfriends. The video began with Clisare saying, "I've just been chatting with all of the other countries, and we just really think that Donald is not right for you. We'd hoped that you'd come to this conclusion by yourself, but it's looking like it needs to be said."
It was viewed over 5.5 million times.
Though he initially maintained a neutral stance during the 2016 election, Ireland's Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny eventually did call out Trump for his racism and potentially dangerous platform. When pressed in a Dáil session regarding Trump's comments on Muslims, Kenny eventually said, "If Trump's comments are racist and dangerous, which they are, there is an alternative to vote for."
When asked, post-election, whether he regretted that remark, Kenny said, "I don't. I made my comment in the Dáil on comments that had been made by the then candidate." At the same time, he has been painting a rosy picture of faith in the security of Ireland's bond with the US during a Trump presidency, though it seems unlikely we'll be getting any Is féidir linn moments from The Donald, let alone the immigration reforms sought by the 50,000 undocumented Irish in the US. Here's hoping Kenny will take that no regrets attitude to the White House for St. Patrick's Day 2017, or, at the very least, will be pushed by his Dáil colleagues into taking a harder stance.
Just as the British Parliament did before them, Irish lawmakers heard a petition - actually, make that two petitions - to ban Donald Trump from entering Ireland. The petitions circulated in December 2015, following Trump's proposal to ban on Muslims in the US, and were discussed by lawmakers in January 2016. The two petitions Two petitions were considered by the Joint Committee on Public Service Oversight and Petitions, which meant that both the Dail, the lower house, and the Senate took part.
While Bono has traditionally refrained from taking sides in American politics, preferring instead to garner widespread support for his charitable initiatives, he refused to sit idly by in the 2016 election.
It started with him hinting that he would continue to respect the Republican party despite Trump being their nominee, shifted to him calling Trump "potentially the worst idea that ever happened to America," and escalated to a full-on musical take-down of Trump, projected on a jumbotron at a 16,000-person capacity arena in a performance piece entitled "Liberty…"
It was… perhaps a bit much. But it was nonetheless interesting and in some ways refreshing to see U2 try to get involved.
This one verges on the unsavory (and takes on a slightly weightier meaning given the recent unverified allegations that Trump has a penchant for politically-motivated water sports).
The Adelphi Bar, on Dublin's Middle Abbey Street, took aim at Trump by decorating their urinals with photos of his face. The bar claimed that The Donald preached hate in his colorful statements. Tony McCabe, the manager of the bar, said that Trump at the time was playing a central part in political debates taking place in pubs across Dublin, which was the reason they decided to put Trump's face "where it mattered."
He stated "I just felt that it was a way for some people to express their feelings towards Mr. Trump's views and to make their trip to the bathroom a 'wee' bit more entertaining."
A Scottish busker on the streets of Killarney, Co. Kerry, had the crowd cackling over the summer at his take on the Republican presidential then-nominee Donald Trump.
Sporting a blond wig looking remarkably like Mr. Trump's own locks, Eric Gudmunsen used Paul Simon's "The Boxer" to tell passing shoppers about the real-estate mogul's run for the Presidency and had some harsh words for the Oval Office wannabe, who also shares Scottish roots through his mother.
Describing the billionaire as a "hookster to the core" and having a go at the "haystack on my head," the singer reworded the iconic chorus to explain what he thinks comes out of Trump's pouted lips: "Lie, lie, lie - lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie …"
Given the political events coming up in the U.S. on Friday, and for some time past, that possibility for me, and for many over here in Ireland too, is a valid enough concern. We will leave that worry aside for the time being. There are amazing linkages and connections around us always, are there not, especially in the jungle that is big business internationally. Do any of you wise people over there, in the midst of your travails, see any linkage like that at all between your current political situation and the fact that the astute Ringling Brothers circus bosses announced a few days ago that they were closing down their world-famed circus, once billed as the greatest show on earth, after something like 140 years on the road?
During tonight's #CircusXTREME show in Orlando, Kristen Michelle Wilson made her debut (and history!) as Ringling's first female Ringmaster pic.twitter.com/MPL73cQp8u— Ringling Bros. (@RinglingBros) January 13, 2017
I was surprised for a little while but then realized that the Ringling Brothers were showing really smart thinking under the circumstances. I would like to compliment them on that. You see, as they stated in their release, keeping a huge circus on the road is a very expensive operation altogether at the best of times. And they are smart enough to realize in good time that they cannot compete at all in 2017 against a multi-billion circus opening up in the White House this very week at the taxpayers' expense. Is that not a fact? The new circus in the White House has already assembled a program featuring the largest elephants and mammoths the world has ever seen. They will be backed up when they perform by numerous supporting acts including a mad dog, linguistic tumblers and acrobats, ravenous hyenas and chimpanzees and other performing animals of that ilk, all led and driven by what could be called the Trumpling Brothers.
Trump wants you to come to the inauguration so bad he's buying Facebook ads https://t.co/lDLYhN3sD1 pic.twitter.com/Rz8MwlIcQz— Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) January 17, 2017
And the entire show will be dominated for as long as it lasts by a ringmaster that, beyond any doubt, the poor Ringling Brothers could not hope to compete against. So they are cutting their losses, like the sensible men and women they are, and hightailing it out of town. It is early days yet, but I surmise that the new White House circus, unlike our European circus fraternity, will not feature any Muslim performers at all no matter what reputation they have earned in their lives.
It is possible that the strongman will be Russian. It is even possible there will be a Chinese acrobat on the show.
There will be an almost invisible Afro-American presence, except perhaps in the very back row of the brass band. No German artistes will feature; there will be no paddies either.
That brass band, incidentally, will be very loud and will be dominated by the Trumpet section. There will be many performances when the ringmaster will actually not be physically present at all but will be cracking his long whip on Twitter in the early hours of the following morning. Anyway, that is the way that the Ringling Brothers and myself and many more over here see your situation today. Maybe we are wrong and you have bright days ahead, and I hope and pray that is the situation. Meanwhile, for those of you who are like Robert De Niro, contemplating an exile far from the White House and it's circus, I again promise that you will be keen to read by world exclusive in this space next week. If there is a next week!
Read more: Barack Obama will be missed in the White House]]>
IrishCentral has an exclusive sneak peek of tomorrow's exquisite performance:]]>
As the President-elect prepares for tomorrow when he will become the 45th President of the United States amid much controversy and a divided nation, we look back at all the signs we missed from some classic movies and TV shows that predicted this very outcome.
1. The "high priest of fraud" visits "Trackdown" with plans to build a wall
In a 1958 episode of TV Western "Trackdown," a man named Mr. Trump visits the town informing its residents that the only way to save themselves from the end of the world is to build a wall.
While some regard him as a "high priest of fraud" looking for the town's money, others are described as "sheep running toward the slaughterhouse" in their adoration of this savior who will protect them from a deadly meteor shower.
"It's funny how a big lie can make us all kids again," in particular seems like a fitting line in this the era where Trump's Twitter squabbles and fake news are discussed daily.
This fictitious salesman is not quite as successful as our real-life version, however, and he ends his time in the town hearing the words half the current US population would love to hear sometime soon: "You're under arrest Trump."
2. The billionaire businessman, recording artist, and senatorial candidate Bob Roberts
"Vote first, ask questions later," is one of the taglines for 1992 political mockumentary "Bob Roberts," which tells the story of billionaire businessman, fencing enthusiast, recording artist and senatorial candidate Bob Roberts played by Tim Robbins.
Parallels are now being drawn between Roberts and Trump (although the shots of Roberts's harmonica playing do remind us of Senator Tim Kaine), as Roberts appears at a beauty pageant and he also insults a reporter by asking her if she is a Communist.
"America is a mess. We need someone to clean it up," says this wealthy man with political aspirations, as he performs the "Wall Street Rap" and informs people that he is the man with the solution.
3. Andy Griffith plays a TV man who gets caught on a hot mic
In this 1972 interview with Morning Exchange, Andy Griffith speaks about his character Lonesome Rhodes in the film "A Face In The Crowd." The actor describes Rhodes as a TV personality who realizes how much influence he has over the public and, so, he decides to chance his arm in politics, a description that we also readily give to the President-elect.
"He became accepted by people and he became their hero and then he started to manipulate them and tell them how to think and they would do what he said to do," Griffith said.
"Then he began to realize how much power he really had and he started to influence the politicians."
Making use of punchy catchphrases and plenty of glamor, the politicians Rhodes supports climb their way to the top with his aid. "You've gotta be loved, man, loved," they say of the "product" of a politician, in the clip below that could itself be talking about the conflict between Trump, Clinton, and their campaigning styles.
And how was Rhodes caught out? Well, a sound engineer left his mic open at the end of the show and heard him using derogatory language about his fans – locker room-style – who then decide they've had enough of him. Our own Donald Trump managed to survive his brush with a hot mic, however.
4. Lisa Simpson takes over from President Trump in "Bart To The Future"
In an episode of hit comedy "The Simpsons" that first aired in 2000, viewers were taken into the future where Lisa Simpson is now all grown up and now serving as the new President of the United States.
Unfortunately for Lisa, she's inherited a country in massive debt and financially unstable thanks to the reign of President Trump, from whom she's is taking over.
"As you know we've inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump," Lisa states. "How bad is it Secretary Van Houten?"
"We're broke," she hears. Start saving your pennies, friends!
Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter in March 2016, "The Simpsons" writer Dan Greaney stated that the episode had been a "warning to America."
"And that just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom. It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane," he said.
"What we needed was for Lisa to have problems that were beyond her fixing, that everything went as bad as it possibly could, and that's why we had Trump be president before her."
If the hit TV show's predictions are completely true, however, then we're looking at just one more President before a woman will take to the Oval Office, some solace for those disappointed in Clinton's loss.
5. Biff Tanner in Back to the Future 2
Hotels with his name branded on top for all to see? A string of casinos, a strange blond hair style, a line of attractive women who seem unsuited to him? Three marriages? It's hard to differentiate between the president-elect and the fictional character of Biff Tanner in "Back to the Future 2" at times.
Biff cheats and lies his way to the top and turns life, as the main character Marty McFly knows it, upside down, destroying his town in the process. Nice to know that if things start to go drastically wrong in the next four years that only a flux capacitor can save us!
This 1989 second installment of the "Back to the Future" trilogy jumps thirty years into the future to 2015 and, obviously, offered the audience a pretty good glimpse of what was to be. Last year the scriptwriters revealed that Tanner was modeled on the current president-elect.
"We thought about it when we made the movie!" writer Bob Gale told the Daily Beast.
"You watch Part II again and there's a scene where Marty confronts Biff in his office and there's a huge portrait of Biff on the wall behind Biff, and there's one moment where Biff kind of stands up and he takes exactly the same pose as the portrait? Yeah."
As we know, Trump was accused of using money from his charity foundation to buy a self-portrait so the resemblance really is uncanny.
Have we missed any? Let us known in the comments section, below.
Read more: Michael Flatley's "Lord of the Dance" will perform at Trump's inauguration]]>
TMZ announced in a major exclusive that Flatley and his "Lord of the Dance" troupe has agreed to perform at the Liberty Ball on Friday night.
Dozens of performers and a host of big names have refused to take part in the inauguration, citing their opposition to Trump's political stances.
The Presidential Inaugural Committee announced this week that Donald Trump and Mike Pence will be attending the Liberty Ball and the Freedom Ball, which will both take place at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on the evening of Friday, January 20.
Read more: Flatley's 'Lord of the Dance' dazzles at Trump inauguration ball (VIDEO)
Though they're in the same building, those are two separate events occurring at the same time on different floors of the convention center.
TMZ says The "Lord of the Dance" creator and his Irish dance troupe are the latest act to be added to Friday night's Liberty Ball lineup, according to their Inaugural Committee sources. TMZ says, "We're told they've been wanting to book him for a while, and finally confirmed on Wednesday."
Flatley's decision may cause some rancor in entertainment circles as he is by far the biggest act so far to announce that he will take part in the inauguration celebrations.
A close friend of the Clintons, Flatley has also been friendly with Donald Trump in the past and the president-elect has attended his shows.
It is unlikely Flatley himself will come out of retirement to perform, but his dancers from "Lord of the Dance" will definitely take part.
Flatley has previously done The Oscars, a Broadway Show and toured in many different countries.
Flatley's crew joins entertainers such as Sam Moore, Travis Greene and more at the balls.
IrishCentral reached out to Flatley for comment, but did not receive one by the time of publication. We will update this story if we do.]]>
"I own a big property in Ireland, magnificent property called Doonbeg," he said after the discussion turned to the EU's notorious bureaucracy.
"What happened is I went for an approval to do this massive, beautiful expansion – that was when I was a developer, now I couldn't care less about it … but I learned a lot because … they were using environmental tricks to stop a project from being built. I found it to be a very unpleasant experience.
"To get the approvals from the EU would have taken years.
"I don't think that's good for a country like Ireland.
"So you know what I did? I said forget it, I'm not gonna build it."
His comments delighted campaigners in Clare who have attempted to thwart Trump's attempts to develop the picturesque resort. In a statement on their Facebook page, Save Doughmore – Doonbeg beach, they said, "Seemingly Mr. Trump was upset when we stopped his first plans for a giant wall on our Irish beach, let's make sure we upset him a bit more and stop his latest plan. Objections to be made to Clare County Council before February 3."
While in December Trump withdrew the application to build a wall spanning over two miles to protect the property from coastal erosion, a second application for a smaller wall was submitted soon after.
Their proposal to the county council states, "Doonbeg Golf Resort proposes to seek, at the soonest, planning permission from Clare County Council to place coastal protection at a number of locations on the seaward edge of the golf course at Doughmore Bay.
"Protection would be afforded to the golf course hole numbers 1, 9 and 18. The works would be wholly within lands owned by the golf course. There would be no material effect upon the adjacent SAC areas."
Campaigners had pledged to oppose it, too, although John O'Dea of Doonbeg Community Development told the Journal.ie that most of the people against the project in his experience were not from the local area.
The reference to Doonbeg was the only mention Trump made to Ireland in the hour-long interview. He did, however, make it clear that he was no great fan of the European Union.
Britain leaving the EU "is going to end up as a great thing," he said, and he predicted that other countries would soon follow.
"Have a golf course/trade deal on my terms – or not at all" says Trump to Gove (in so many words). #Doonbeg #Brexit https://t.co/HW6zx5FEw4— Steve Howell (@FromSteveHowell) January 16, 2017
And while he said he had "great respect" for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he took the highly unusual step of criticizing her domestic policies, insisting that her decision to admit refugees from Syria had been a foolish one.
"I think she made one very catastrophic mistake and that was taking all of these illegals, you know taking all of the people from wherever they come from. And nobody even knows where they come from."
Ireland's Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan dismissed the interview as "a color piece" and attacked Michael Gove – the Scottish interviewer and prominent Brexit campaigner – as not an "impartial or, indeed, disinterested reporter."
Donald #Trump on #Doonbeg #Clare #Ireland pic.twitter.com/f6Ije5dzeG— Michael Mahony (@MJMAHONY) January 16, 2017
Read more: Irish leader doesn't regret calling Trump "racist and dangerous"]]>