Category: Donald Trump

Michael Martin’s @WhiteHouse Visit: Navigating Complex Diplomatic Waters

by dsmooney, posted in Defence, Donald Trump, Micheal Martin, Middle-East

As Taoiseach Michael Martin prepares for his upcoming visit to the White House for St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, he faces a diplomatic landscape fraught with challenges. The visit comes at a particularly sensitive time in US-Ireland relations, with trade imbalances, defense spending, and international policy differences creating potential friction points. In this article I consider some of those friction points, but refrain from offering advice.  This article expands on many of the points i raised in my recent podcast: 

Mulvaney’s Controversial Advice

Former Trump Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney recently suggested that Martin should consider “sitting out” the White House trip, arguing that the downsides might outweigh the upsides 1. This advice, while coming from someone with deep Irish connections and experience as a special envoy on Northern Ireland, misses a crucial diplomatic reality: declining the invitation at this stage would inevitably be perceived as a snub by the White House.

Mulvaney’s concerns stem from Ireland’s positions on Gaza, its EU membership, and potential trade disputes. The Trump administration has consistently viewed Ireland as benefiting unfairly from its low corporate tax rates and the reporting of profits through Ireland rather than the United States. 1. 

However, canceling the visit would only exacerbate tensions rather than resolve them. Continue reading “Michael Martin’s @WhiteHouse Visit: Navigating Complex Diplomatic Waters” →

Challenging the pro #Trump #Fakenews

by dsmooney, posted in Donald Trump, Elections, Fake News, Joe Biden, US politics

During RTÉ Radio One’s Late Debate show coverage of the US election results, I challenged #Trump supporter and American Greatness editor Chris Buskirk on his bizarre assertion that the violence we have seen on US streets over recent months has been caused by anti-Trump groups alone. His claim that shops and offices in Washington, New York and other big cities were being boarded up beacuse they feared violence by anti-Trump protesters has been proved untrue in recent days with the arrest of several armed pro-Trump supporters at various count centers – AP News.

Pic via Arjen van der Horst on Twitter, taken in Washington DC 5 days before polling day:

A week of important questions… and hopefully some answers

by dsmooney, posted in Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Leo Varadkar, Micheal Martin, Sinn Féin, Tanaiste, Taoiseach, US politics

This week’s column is a bit longer than usual as it looks at two separate topics that are only connected by timing. This piece appeared on Broadsheet.ie yesterday (Monday Nov 2nd) as two columns. The first was on the allegations of leaking that beset the Tánaiste:   https://www.broadsheet.ie/2020/11/02/derek-mooney-best-practice/ and the second as an eve of polling day assessment of the US presidential election with a guide to the key states to watch out for on the night: https://www.broadsheet.ie/2020/11/02/a-referendum-on-trump/

NB  Since I wrote this column Prof McDonald has revised his estimate of the total voter turnout to 160.2 million (67%)

Store windows in downtown Washington DC being boarded up last week in anticipation of violence as the results emerge – Pic via Arjen van der Horst on Twitter

Late last Friday I pulled together some quotes and stats in anticipation of today’s column being just about the US presidential election. Then came Saturday morning and that Village magazine exposé. So, while today’s piece will still consider the U.S. election, I will first address the domestic elephants in the room.  

The allegation that Leo Varadkar leaked a confidential government document to a friend is serious. Very serious. To describe the leak as “not best practise” is akin to Sinn Féin saying three £10,000 office grants ended up in their bank accounts “in error”. Using passive language does not make it better.

If anything, it makes it worse. It is like a poker player’s tell that shows the miscreant knows they did wrong, no matter how much they tell themselves otherwise.

To their credit – and this is not a phrase that flows easily from my keyboard – Sinn Féin have tried to deflate their problems with resignations from four party officials, including a Senator and an MLA.

Continue reading “A week of important questions… and hopefully some answers” →

Biden will win. #Bigly. Trump is going down… but not in a way he’d like!

by dsmooney, posted in Covid-19, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Micheal Martin, presidency, US politics

This column appeared on Broadsheet.ie on Oct 12th 2020. Here I take my courage in my hands and predict – three weeks out from the official US Presidential polling day – that Joe Biden will win the presidency… and win it comfortably.

This is less based on polling, though national polls continue to show Biden with a clear 7 – 9 pt lead over Trump, and is more predicated on the evidence from the Trump side that it knows its man is beaten and is now focused on challenging the authenticity of the result. The Trump campaign is spending billions so Trump can sit in his Maralago golf resort this time next year and tell himself: I didn’t lose, I was robbed!

When trying to forecast an election result a few weeks out from polling day political pundits protect themselves by saying well, this would be the result if people were voting tomorrow, but there are still a few weeks to go and anything could happen.

But, when it comes to this American presidential election, people are voting tomorrow, just as they were voting today, yesterday, last week and even back to mid-September.

According to Vote.org, 27 States are already voting in person and/or have totally mail-in ballots. 9 out of the 50 States have been open for early voting from six weeks before the November 3 polling date, including Pennsylvania, Illinois, Virginia and New Jersey. Early voting started in California a week ago.   

Over 9 million Americans have already voted, this is 8 – 10 times as many as voted this early in 2016. In five states the number of ballots already returned is more than 20% of the 2016 turnout.

Continue reading “Biden will win. #Bigly. Trump is going down… but not in a way he’d like!” →

CoronaVirus and DonaldTrump: It’s A Virus, Not A Political Tool. Call It By its Name

by dsmooney, posted in China, Donald Trump, Politics, US politics

This column first appeared on Broadsheet.ie early on Monday March 23rd and looks at how President Trump narrow politicking by refusing to call the Covid19 Coronavirus by its name is, conversely, distracting from the responsibility the authorities in Beijing should be bearing for their negligence in allowing the global spread of the pandemic.

China 2
Pic via Washington Post

According to the haggard old proverb: “even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

The current U.S. President can only dream of attaining even this level of accidental consistency. After months of denying the threat posed by Coronavirus, even to the point of putting the blame for its arrival in the U.S. on “the Democrat policy of open borders” (See this NYTimes timeline of Trump’s statements) the current U.S. President seems, finally, to have had the realisation imposed upon him that Coronavirus is a real and present danger.

Not that something as hazardous or deadly serious as the worst global pandemic in a century is going to stop Trump from scoring political points. Along with changing his messaging, Trump has also changed his language. Up to two weeks ago – when he was still denying the seriousness of the situation – he was content to call the threat by its proper name: Coronavirus or Covid19.

No longer. Now that the public spotlight has turned on to the weeks and months of his administration’s negligence and indifference Trump has found a new name for the disease: the Chinese Virus.

Continue reading “CoronaVirus and DonaldTrump: It’s A Virus, Not A Political Tool. Call It By its Name” →

My 5:30am #debatenight thoughts: A win is a win, even when your opponent secures it for you

by dsmooney, posted in Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Politics, President Obama, UK politics

 

debatenightPostscript: Perhaps a better way of summing up the Clinton/Trump debate is to say that she didn’t do much to reduce her unfavourable while Trump did a lot to increase his…. 

Here are a couple of random, even disconnected, thoughts on tonight’s U.S. Presidential Debate, posting at approx 5:30 am (Irish Time).

The first is just how shockingly poor Trump’s performance really was. While many pundits were predicting that he would do badly, especially as news emerged of how little debate prep he was doing,  I hadn’t imagined it would be THAT bad.

Continue reading “My 5:30am #debatenight thoughts: A win is a win, even when your opponent secures it for you” →

Three cheers for the system. Hip hip…. No? Nothing…?

by dsmooney, posted in Donald Trump, Elections, Government, Micheal Martin, Policy, Politics, US politics

Here is my “Mooney on Monday” Broadsheet column from August 8th 2016 last:  www.broadsheet.ie/three-cheers-for-the-system/

blog_tag1This comes as no surprise. After the tumult and turmoil of the past few years it would require a hopefulness that bordered on the foolhardy to expect to hear anything even vaguely complimentary said about the system.

At so many levels, it failed us. The institutional accountability and oversight that we thought would prevent bank and financial crashes proved inadequate at best, and downright mendacious at worst.

It is a failure that reaches beyond the crash and extends right up to the present day with so many people seeing the present recovery as something that is happening in communities and areas other than theirs.

This feeling that is not unique to Ireland. We see echoes of it in the Brexit result in the U.K. with the high numbers of people in the former industrial heartlands of the midlands and the north of England voting to leave the EU.

Continue reading “Three cheers for the system. Hip hip…. No? Nothing…?” →

Ehh.. #SocialMedia alone not to blame for coarsening of political debates

by dsmooney, posted in Culture, Donald Trump, Government, Politics, referendum, UK politics, US politics

JoCoxFlowersThis is my Broadsheet opinion piece from June 20th, written in the aftermath of the horrific murder of Labour MP, Jo Cox. broadsheet.ie/ad-hominemphobia/

As people struggle to come to terms with how Jo Cox MP could be so brutally slain outside her constituency clinic, many have focused on the coarsening of public debate and the abuse, both actual and online, aimed at politicians.

Though there has undeniably been a coarsening of public debate in recent years, we should not delude ourselves that there was once a golden age when all political discussion was genteel and free from ad hominem attacks.

There wasn’t.

Politics has always been a rough trade where vigorous and full bodied exchanges are the order of the day. Take this robust response from Frank Aiken T.D. in Dáil Éireann in July 1959, which I found while doing some research on Irish diplomatic history.

Continue reading “Ehh.. #SocialMedia alone not to blame for coarsening of political debates” →

Shameful… @realdonaldtrump’s dog whistle politics

by dsmooney, posted in Donald Trump, Elections, Politics, President Obama, US politics

pulse-nightclub
Pulse Nightclub, Orlanda

This piece first appeared two weeks ago on Broadsheet.ie in the aftermath of the appalling events in Pulse nightcub in Orlando, Florida- link: broadsheet.ie/2016/06/13

When faced with a massive tragedy the natural inclination of most democratic political leaders, from across the spectrum, is to put partisan politics aside for a time and stand together in solidarity and grief.

Campaigns are put on hiatus, genuine political differences are temporarily put aside while the country mourns and tries to cope with the enormity of what has befallen it.

It is what happened in the wake of recent terrorist attacks in France and in Belgium and countless times in the USA in the aftermath of yet another mass slaying of innocent victims.

Yet, last night, even before the names and details of the 50 men and women callously slaughtered in the Pulse Nightclub in Orlanda had been released, the Republican Party’s presumptive candidate for the U.S. Presidency chose to take the other route, going was online to whip up anger and score political points off the worst instance of US domestic terrorism.

Continue reading “Shameful… @realdonaldtrump’s dog whistle politics” →

.@RealDonaldTrump is Riding A Zeitgeist Didn’t Create But Others Have Missed

by dsmooney, posted in Donald Trump, Elections, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Irish Labour Party, Micheal Martin, Politics, US politics

donald-trump CNNHere is my Broadsheet column from June 7th 2016. Published online here:  http://www.broadsheet.ie/riding-a-zeitgeist 

——————————–

“Donald Trump looks as if he was playing a President in a porn movie.”  This was Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle’s scathing put down of the Donald on BBC radio four’s News Quiz last Friday.

Maybe it is something to do with the Donald’s addiction to calling everything ‘huge’ (or as he says it: huuuuuge ) and lauding his own achievements with outlandish superlatives but Boyle’s taunt perfectly captures Trump’s OTT and hammy public appearances.

Trump’s emergence as a real contender for the White House has surprised most pundits including – if one of his former publicists is to be believed – himself.

How could this gauche, egotistical, property dealing demagogue tear up the US presidential campaign playbook and beat a string of long established Republican hopefuls?

Hard though we may find it to comprehend from this side of the Atlantic; but part of the Trump phenomenon is that he has teed-up this US presidential election to be a fight between the Washington insider: Hillary Clinton and the outsider: Trump.

Continue reading “.@RealDonaldTrump is Riding A Zeitgeist Didn’t Create But Others Have Missed” →