Trump says he would love a united Ireland. London says the vote is not on the table

Donald Trump used a press conference at Farmleigh House on Saturday to say he would "love" to see Northern Ireland leave the United Kingdom and join the Republic of Ireland. Sitting beside Taoiseach Micheál Martin, he called unification "a great feather in everybody's cap" and said it was "going to happen eventually." He added that it "may as well happen now."

The remark broke with the public neutrality that U.S. presidents have kept on the question since Washington helped broker the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. That accord is the legal route to any change in Northern Ireland's status. It requires the British secretary of state to call a referendum if it appears likely that a majority would vote to leave the United Kingdom. It also requires a parallel vote in the Republic. Neither condition is in force.

Trump arrived in Dublin on Saturday morning after an overnight flight from Washington. He paid a courtesy call on President Catherine Connolly at Áras an Uachtaráin, then sat with Martin at the state guesthouse in Phoenix Park. When a reporter asked about Irish unity he first said he did not want to cause trouble. He then answered anyway. "I'd love to see it unified. I have friends on both sides, great people. They're Irish people. How can they be bad, right?" He pointed at Martin and called him "the right man over here to get it moving." He noted that "the UK will have something to say about it obviously."

Later the same day, at Deerfield Residence, he walked the comment back without withdrawing it. There was "no good answer" to the question, he said. Unification would still be "a very cool thing." He joked that half the room would clear out after hearing him.

A Downing Street spokesperson said the British position had not moved. New Prime Minister Andy Burnham had already said a referendum was "off the table." The government still judges that there is not the support required to trigger a poll under the 1998 rules. Unionist parties in Belfast treated the Farmleigh remarks as a breach. Nationalists treated them as a statement of the obvious. More than 10,000 people marched through Dublin against the visit itself.

Martin's office tried to lower the temperature. A spokesperson said Trump's view should "come as a surprise to no one" and that the president had been consistent that he sees unity as the optimal outcome. Trump had floated a "merger" earlier this year after watching Martin with Northern Ireland deputy first minister Emma Little-Pengelly. This time he said it on camera next to the Irish head of government.

The rest of the bilateral was commerce. Trump told Martin that Ireland had "fleeced" the United States by taking medical companies and that Washington needed "a couple of them back." He also said the relationship had never been better. The itinerary then left Dublin for Doonbeg in County Clare, where Trump owns a golf resort and where the Amgen Irish Open was under way. Family members joined him on the course.

Nearly 3,700 people were killed in three decades of conflict over the same question Trump treated as a golf-weekend aside. The Good Friday deal did not settle the argument. It locked it into a consent test that neither London nor Dublin can skip. A U.S. president can say he would love the result. He cannot call the vote. Burnham's office made that point on Saturday afternoon. The comment still sits on the record of a two-day state visit, and unionist voters will hear it again the next time a border poll is even mentioned.