Quite an Irish President – Biden visits the Emerald Isle

In beautiful weather, Joe Biden met President Michael D. Higgins and later Prime Minister Leo Varadkar for the first time in the capital Dublin. Both the war in Ukraine and the peace process in Northern Ireland should play a role in this. For Biden, the multi-day visit to the homeland of his ancestors is mainly a feel-good trip with many beautiful pictures. But on Thursday, he was also overtaken by the increasingly disturbing news of stolen US classified documents.

“It’s an honor to come home to the homeland of my ancestors,” Biden said in Dublin. On Wednesday he shook hands, took selfies with residents and spoke at a pub in North East Ireland’s Dundalk, where his ancestors are from. He spends much of the journey meeting face to face and searching for traces of his family history. Some Brits find it incomprehensible that the US president spends so much time on Ireland, but not on Britain.

Several of the Catholic US president’s ancestors hail from Ireland, some from County Louth in the northeast, where Biden made his first long stop on Wednesday. Together with his son Hunter and his sister Valerie, the 80-year-old was shown Carlingford Castle on the east coast for the first time. Not far from there, his ancestors, the Finnegans, left their ancient homeland in the mid-19th century. The castle was probably one of the last things the family saw when they left for America, Biden said. One of his granddaughters has the first name Finnegan.

“It Feels Like Home”

He understands why his ancestors left the country in the middle of the famine, the Democrat later said from a makeshift lectern in a pub in nearby Dundalk. “But when you’re here, you wonder why anyone would ever want to leave.” Biden gushed, “It feels like home.” And, “It’s good to be here again.”

Biden had been to Northern Ireland before, but he only spent a short time in the British part of the country. In Belfast he met British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and delivered a speech to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. Immediately afterwards, however, he traveled on to Ireland for an extensive visit.

The US president’s strong focus on Ireland caused irritation in the British press. After a government official had to defend Biden against accusations that he was “anti-British” at the start of his trip, the British tabloid media pounced on a speech by the US president on Thursday in which he called the New Zealand national rugby team “All Blacks” , a paramilitary British unit in the Irish War of Independence – the “Black and Tans”. That too was interpreted as partisanship.

Sunak felt compelled to emphasize that Britain has a very close relationship with the US. A Daily Mail journalist complained that Biden had spent only 15 hours in the UK and “he slept half of that”.

Biden was having “the time of his life” in Ireland

In Ireland, on the other hand, Biden was received with great enthusiasm. Spectators lined the streets with Irish and American flags. Residents of the towns Biden visited had baked, decorated and cleaned up their shops — all in the hope that the president would stop by and talk to him.

In Dundalk, Biden made a longer visit and strolled through the inner city with his retinue. He was approachable, shook hands, took selfies. In a snack bar he chatted and joked with employees, then the trip to the pub. His spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said on Thursday that the president had “the time of his life”.

Biden is not the first American president with Irish roots. The most famous was probably John F. Kennedy. Biden’s predecessor Barack Obama also has some Irish ancestry. Overall, about half of all U.S. presidents are partially descended from Irish immigrants — and about 10 percent of U.S. citizens, for that matter. But hardly any White House incumbent has celebrated his connections to the Emerald Isle like Biden before. The Democrat often refers to his Irish heritage and regularly quotes Irish poets.

A variety of national and international problems

For Biden, the emotional trip is also an alternation of all kinds of national and international problems – especially the current news about a massive data breach with US classified documents. The American president could not completely avoid questions about this during his foreign trip. But after a short answer to the affair on Thursday, he quickly switched back to family anecdotes.

On Friday he plans a visit to County Mayo in the northwest of Ireland, where his ancestors also come from. Biden already warned in Dundalk that it would not be his last visit. “The bad news for you is: we’ll be back. It won’t be possible to keep us away.” (oee/sda/dpa)