Irish Taoiseach visits the White House – Sucking up isn’t working as Trump does this

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Taoiseach Micheál Martin met with U.S. Vice President JD Vance in Washington, D.C., kicking off a series of St. Patrick’s Day events. Over breakfast with their spouses, they discussed U.S.-Ireland trade, undocumented Irish citizens, and global conflicts, including Ukraine and the Middle East.

Martin has previously called out President Trump for “racist” immigration jabs. Let’s remember that nobody from the Irish government was invited to Trump’s inauguration. And today, after demanding that no taxpayer funding be given to President Trump’s Irish golf resort Doonbeg, this morning he invited JD Vance to come to Doonbeg for a round of golf!

This is some of the things he said earlier

This is what Trump has done

Meanwhile, Ireland’s domestic landscape has been roiled by what some critics call “wokeism,” epitomized by the case of Enoch Burke, a teacher whose refusal to use a transgender student’s preferred pronouns has sparked a national controversy.

Burke, an evangelical Christian from County Mayo, was suspended from Wilson’s Hospital School in Westmeath in 2022 after rejecting a directive to address a transitioning student by their new name and “they/them” pronouns. He argued that this clashed with his religious beliefs. What followed was a series of legal battles and public standoffs. Burke repeatedly defied court orders to stay away from the school, leading to his arrest and imprisonment for contempt of court. As of September 2024, he had been jailed for the third time, spending over 500 days in Mountjoy Prison by early 2025, according to posts on X. His refusal to purge his contempt—by agreeing to comply with the court—has kept him behind bars.

The recriminations against Burke have escalated beyond incarceration. On March 7, 2025, the Irish Times reported that the state moved to appoint a receiver to collect €79,100 in fines from Burke’s teaching salary, accrued due to his non-compliance with court orders. This financial penalty adds to earlier fines and legal costs, though exact figures prior to this are less documented. Burke’s family, vocal supporters of his stance, have faced their own repercussions: his father, Sean Burke, was imprisoned for two months in 2023 for assaulting a garda during a court-related incident, while the family’s confrontational protests—including heckling then-Taoiseach Simon Harris in 2024—have drawn public and official ire.

The Burke family’s trip to Washington this week, coinciding with Martin’s visit, has fueled speculation of a possible intervention or statement, perhaps linked to Elon Musk’s vocal support of Enoch on X.

The Irish judiciary, however, has maintained that the issue is not about transgender rights but about Burke’s refusal to respect legal authority—a stance articulated by the Court of Appeal in 2023.

Ireland is an experimental dumping ground for the EU and global elites

Compounding Ireland’s domestic tensions is the strain of EU asylum policies, which have led to a significant influx of migrants, including from African nations, into a country historically unaccustomed to such diversity. Under the EU’s migration framework, Ireland has accepted growing numbers of asylum seekers—over 100,000 Ukrainians since 2022, plus thousands more from countries like Georgia, Nigeria, and Somalia. In December 2023, Dáil debates revealed that over half of Ireland’s international protection applicants hailed from nations not at war or deemed unstable, raising questions about the system’s integrity. Former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar acknowledged a “limit on our capacity” in 2023, while Martin’s government has grappled with housing shortages, with more than 400 asylum seekers in tents by late 2023 due to a lack of accommodation.

Assimilation has proven challenging. Communities, already stretched thin by under-resourced services—too few teachers, gardaí, and GPs—have voiced frustration, sometimes erupting into anti-immigrant protests or riots, as seen in Dublin in November 2023. The government has promised tougher deportation measures for failed asylum seekers and better local outreach, but critics argue these responses are too late. Ireland’s open-door approach, driven by EU obligations and its humanitarian tradition, has clashed with public sentiment, with a 2023 Red C poll showing over 70% of Irish people feeling the country had “done enough.” The influx, particularly from culturally distinct regions like Africa, has fueled debates about identity and integration, with some X posts decrying a loss of Irish homogeneity—a sentiment the government has struggled to address amid EU pressures.