Trump might avoid a global backlash —because no one cares what he says

President Donald Trump arrives to meet with Ireland's Prime Minister Micheál Martin at Farmleigh House in Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland, September 12, 2026.

President Donald Trump has once again stumbled "with stamping feet" into statements that hit a raw nerve internationally, but according to a new breakdown from The i Paper, he might avoid causing an incident this time around, largely because no one cares what he has to say anymore.

Trump has been visiting Ireland this weekend to attend a golf tournament and briefly meet with the country's leader, Taoiseach Micheál Martin. While the visit has seemingly been crafted to avoid diplomatic headaches, the president nonetheless managed to play with fire when he made comments expressing support for the unification of Ireland with Northern Ireland, the region on the same island controlled by the United Kingdom.

"I’d love to see it unified,” Trump said. “I think it would be a great feather in everybody’s cap if that happened. It’s going to happen eventually... yeah, I think it would be a fantastic thing. Now the UK will have something to say about it, obviously. But I think it would be a great thing. I mean, how can it be bad?"

Writing for The i Paper on Saturday, reporter and columnist James Ball said that "To call the issue a sensitive one is a dramatic understatement."

"People have fought and died for both sides of this cause for more than a century," Ball explained. "The current relatively peaceful status quo was achieved through the Northern Irish peace process, which involved painstaking, grinding diplomacy over a period of years – with significant US involvement."

Ball further argued that Trump's comments "in normal circumstances, dramatically upend the status quo." He also noted that the supporters of the current status quo have "spoken most favorably of Trump," believing him more likely than former President Joe Biden to support their cause.

Typically, such statements from a U.S. president would not be made "without significant diplomatic work alongside it," but that, Ball added, is yet another norm Trump has shattered in his second term.

"At this stage, everyone knows that isn’t how Donald Trump’s administration operates in its second term," Ball wrote. "Instead, the 80-year-old President just tends to say whatever pops into his head at any given moment, and whatever seems like a good idea at the time. If someone puts it to him in different terms later, he might say something else entirely."

Despite the potential concerns, however, Ball argued that Trump's Ireland comments are unlikely to kick up an international incident in the same way that his Greenland remarks did, as his conduct in office has severely degraded the import of his words and the weight of his office.

"Trump is so volatile that his words no longer carry the weight that they once did, and certainly not the weight that his office implies," Ball argued. "Even a few short years ago, everything he said was international news, because it could be assumed that everything he said mattered. Now, we almost always have to wait a few days to see whether Trump really means it or not."

He concluded: "Whatever Trump’s intent, any hopes for a relatively quiet weekend are surely over. Trump has made headline news on an issue that is life and death, especially for the people living in Northern Ireland. The mess he left behind will be for others to clean up, though. Trump himself has golf to watch, after all."

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