With the big day looming, the airwaves are full of fevered anticipation about the imminent St Patrick’s spectacle. That the events will be awash with gaudy pageantry and cheesy stereotypes is a given, but presenters and pundits across all stations worry that the annual festivities might descend into ugly scenes of unruliness.
Yes, so all-pervasive is the mood of trepidation before the meeting of Micheál Martin and Donald Trump that there’s no room for the usual hand-wringing about antisocial behaviour ruining St Patrick’s Day celebrations here. The forthcoming national holiday notwithstanding, the focus is firmly Stateside.
As it turns out, the encounter between the Taoiseach and the US president passes off without major mishap. “There will be a national sigh of relief,” says Kieran Cuddihy on The Hard Shoulder (Newstalk, weekdays). “No landmines stepped on.”
The host’s ruefully accurate verdict underlines both the anxiety in the run-up to Martin’s visit and the low expectations surrounding it. What was once a feelgood beano to the White House – the former taoiseach Bertie Ahern can’t help boasting to Cuddihy that he made the trip 11 times – is in this instance portrayed as venturing into a bear cave, armed only with a stick to prod the Trumpian grizzly. (The feeling is best summed up by the presenter Joan O’Sullivan’s dramatic introduction, on Wednesday’s Morning Ireland, on RTÉ Radio 1: “D-Day in Washington.”)
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But as the day progresses the coverage takes on a cautiously optimistic note. When the Taoiseach meets first with vice-president JD Vance, Rachael English, host of News at One (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), wryly remarks that, rather than fill his usual role as Trump’s pugnacious wingman, the veep has “the same level of come-all-ye and schmaltz” as the former US president Joe Biden.
Sure enough, with the much-hyped Trump showdown turning out to be a damp squib, Martin emerges relatively unscathed, with his dignity possibly the only casualty. “There will be people who wish he took a much harder line on Gaza,” says Cuddihy of the Taoiseach’s decidedly neutral take on the destruction of the Palestinian enclave.
With Trump’s trade war between the United States and Europe escalating, Cuddihy’s guests remain wary. “I would say we got through it okay,” says Brian Murphy, who was chief of staff for the former taoiseach Leo Varadkar. “But it’s going to be a rocky few years ahead, and it is going to impact on us.”
Disaster may have been averted for now, but it’s not exactly a triumph either. Best go easy on the ticker tape during Monday’s parades.
In common with other news-magazine shows, Today with Claire Byrne (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) expends much airtime in advance of the White House meeting gaming how it might pan out. Some contributions inadvertently prove more telling than others.
On Monday Byrne speaks to Carla Sands, Trump’s former ambassador to Denmark, in order to get a sense of US Republicans’ view of the visit. Sands, who is impeccably polite throughout, gushes about the beauty of Ireland (without providing any specifics) before raising the dangers of unchecked immigration and ominously implying that it threatens to dilute Irish culture.
Turning to the issue of free speech – or, rather, its supposed erosion here by allegedly woke policies – the former ambassador raises the Enoch Burke case, presenting his imprisonment in slanted if not inaccurate terms. This triggers Byrne’s inner klaxons: she sharply observes that the matter remains before the courts, then moves on. But factually scanty though Sands’s contribution may be, it provides a dispiriting glimpse of the prism through which the Maga movement sees Ireland.
If Byrne is reliably unflappable at such moments, she can’t hide her emotions when it comes to some things. “Next up, scabies,” she alarmingly proclaims. A suitably icky discussion of the skin disease follows, with Dr Phil Kieran graphically describing how parasitic mites cause the condition – “They get into the skin, they burrow away and then, as they die, they start to break down” – while Byrne sounds aghast: “How many might be actually living on your skin at any one time?”
When the host hears that some patients claim the itching is so bad they’d rather peel their skin off, it’s all too much, as she borrows from the Ned Flanders book of profanity: “Yikes.” Still, the yucky subject of parasites is a reliable way of injecting energy into proceedings: the last time Byrne sounded this animated was when she was talking about head lice a couple of years back.
When it comes to gripping book ideas, the US civil service doesn’t automatically spring to mind, as the American writer Michael Lewis admits to Oliver Callan (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays). “Normally it’s like writing about ice melting,” says Lewis, who has edited a book on the topic, “but Trump electrified the material.”
Sure enough, Lewis, the author of nonfiction best-sellers such as Moneyball and The Big Short, makes a timely case for the United States’ embattled public service at a time when Elon Musk is trying to dismantle it. “He’s just taking a sledgehammer to the institutions,” says Lewis, who outlines the dull but essential tasks carried out by such bodies. Far from making government more efficient, he adds, Musk is “eliminating challenges to Donald Trump’s authority”.
Absorbing though this is, Lewis also appeals to the general listener, proving an astute and witty observer of wider life. He succinctly skewers the acquisitiveness of the billionaire class: “The more money they have, the more they think about money.” Callan, meanwhile, enthuses about his guest’s previous writings on Ireland, and clearly enjoys both the tenor and the content of the conversation.
Even so, there’s no avoiding the week’s big theme, as the host asks Lewis whether Trump’s second presidency spells trouble for the Irish economy. “Of course you should be worried, because he seems to just have a nose for causing trouble,” says the writer, advising the country’s leaders to lay low “and suck up to him when you see him”. Callan lets out a weary chuckle: “We’re all about this already.” Funny because it’s true.
Moment of the Week
Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1) carries the news that the Irish OnlyFans star Matthew Gilbert, aka the Irish Viking, has made a €260,000 settlement with the Revenue Commissioners. Its business correspondent, Adam Maguire, reports on the online subscription service where creators such as Gilbert share “what might politely be called adult content – porn, in other words”. Maguire details how earnings on the platform vary wildly, with most creators making very little money, often prompting them to post material that is more explicit. Either way, the Gilbert case shows the taxman is paying attention to such activity. And maybe in more ways than one. “It’s a flag to all content creators, not just on OnlyFans, that Revenue is watching.” Naughty! Before anyone gets the wrong idea, Maguire adds: “And looking at your income.” Right.
