Donald Trump, after a diplomatic interlude as brief as it was surprising, begins the second phase of his short stay in Ireland on Sunday, devoted to his passion for golf and the promotion of his private business.
After meeting the Irish president and then Prime Minister on Saturday, the Republican leader took off his tie and put on a white cap bearing the “USA” logo to join the golf resort bearing his name in Doonberg, on the west coast of the island.
He will leave this site on Sunday evening surrounded by particularly tight security, probably after having presented the trophy to the winner of the Irish Open, which takes place there.
On Saturday, the American president affirmed in Dublin that it would be “fantastic” to see Ireland “unified”, breaking in a surprising way with the neutrality observed by Washington on this sensitive subject.
“Donald Trump is Donald Trump and the president can say whatever he wants. But we are very serious about the Good Friday Agreement, which put an end to violence in Northern Ireland in 1998, said a British minister, Angela Rayner, on Sky News.
These agreements provide for the organization of a referendum on the union between the British province and the Republic of Ireland if the population seems willing, which is not current according to the United Kingdom.
Beyond these diplomatic turmoil, it is first and foremost a family stay coupled with a business trip for Donald Trump, who constantly blurs the line between his official function and his private interests.
He is in Ireland with his two sons, Eric and Don Jr, who have managed the family affairs since his return to the White House. The first deals more specifically with luxurious golf properties all over the world.
The former real estate tycoon took advantage of a press briefing on Saturday to praise his Irish golf course, located in a town of nearly 800 inhabitants, as being “one of the best in the world”.
He praised the qualities of the Irish athletes involved in the competition, including Shane Lowry and Rory McIlroy.
Some 40,000 people are expected around the course winding between the dunes, which has been targeted twice by pro-Palestinian activists in the last 18 months. A woman was arrested on Friday for trespassing on the site, and two other women were arrested on Saturday for disturbing the peace nearby.
Around 4,000 members of the Irish and American security forces should be mobilized, as well as anti-drone technologies, around a president who escaped an assassination attempt during a meeting in 2024, and who was targeted again in April, during a gala in Washington.
Conflict of interest
The American president himself plays golf almost every weekend at one of his family’s properties, near Washington, not far from New York or in Florida.
It is also in his club near Miami that the American president will host the annual G20 summit in December.
This mix of genres between government and business makes the Democratic opposition cry out for corruption as much as nepotism, accusations that the main party regularly brushes aside.
According to legal financial disclosures, Donald Trump raked in more than $2 billion in income in 2025, the year he returned to power, compared to just over $600 million in 2024.
He is criticized for having accepted a plane offered by Qatar, on which he traveled to come to Ireland, for his gains in cryptocurrencies, for his stock market transactions, for granting pardons to donors and for having monetized his Truth Social network, among other things.
“Since the Civil War (1861-1865), we have not had a president in the United States whose economic activities present a conflict of interest” of this nature, explains to AFP Richard Painter, professor of law at the University of Minnesota.
The energy put by Donald Trump in promoting his interests “can send the message to a large number of people, companies, foreign governments or others, that supporting his properties or doing business with his companies is a way to curry favor with the president,” warns this former legal adviser to George W. Bush.
