During the very first days of Trump’s second Presidency in the United States, the Irish government began a policy of appeasement. We will all pay the price.

By Lucy Warmington | Feb 5 2025

The first day of the Donald Trump Presidency was exactly as he promised it would be. Trump signed executive orders to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organisation and the Paris Climate Pact, pardoned 1,500 prisoners currently serving time for domestic terrorism for storming the Capitol on January 6th 2021, he declared a state of national emergency at the US-Mexico border, promising to send the full strength of the US army there, and reinstated every US army veteran who refused to get a Covid-19 vaccination with full back pay. He declared that the US will only recognise two genders, that the US will become a colour-blind nation, that they will reinstate free speech, rename the gulf of Mexico the gulf of America, and retake the Panama canal. He did it all on Martin Luther King day, and he declared it all in the interest of realising Martin Luther King Jr’s dream. 

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in Ireland, the incoming coalition government has already buckled under the pressure of Trump’s Presidency. They have scrapped the Occupied Territories Bill, a bill hard-fought for by campaign groups, activists, and lobbyists for years, a bill which every single major political party in the country had promised they would pass in their General Election manifestos, a bill which would ban imports of goods made by Israel in the illegal occupied Palestinian territories, and a bill which at its core stands up to Trump’s ideology. They have dropped this bill to appease Donald Trump, and in doing so, the Irish government have set a hideous precedent, and a bleak example of what we can expect from governments around the world. The dominoes will soon fall. 

At this stage, Donald Trump and the oligarchy he has created have surpassed ‘political differences’ and a ‘need for diplomatic relations’. Donald Trump truly believes that America is the greatest country in the world, he truly believes he has the right to rule over any territory he sets his eyes on, be it Greenland or Gaza, and he sees the rest of the world only through eyes of greed that aim to extract for his own benefit, and if they’re lucky, the benefit of his supporters. There is no-one that he respects leading any government, no-one he is afraid of, and no-one that has the singular ability to prevent him from following through on his word - words that he fully comprehends the impacts of. Playing the ‘diplomatic relations’ card with him is pointless; he has thrown out the deck. He believes he is above the law and that he is the most powerful man on the planet. Frankly, he is correct. He has constructed the US into a system designed to keep him sitting firmly above the possibility of ‘democratic accountability’. The judiciary designed to keep the executive in check has allowed a convicted felon to sit in the oval office, and there is no way to remove him. He has survived two impeachments, 34 felony convictions, and one jail sentence (though he should have been subject to many more). He is immune whilst he sits in office, he has the capability to overturn the US constitution, potentially transform the broken pieces of their democracy into an ‘emergency’ third term, and ensure that the ruling class of the US, the oligarchs and billionaires, are so firmly stitched into the pockets of policy-makers and so ingrained into the culture of US politics by the time he is done, that we will look back on today and think Trump was light work (as if). And, he will undoubtedly pardon himself before he leaves office - if he doesn’t die there. 

Never have we seen genocides and blatant Nazi salutes live streamed on screens across the world, and then denied. Never has history been so important, its lessons so ready to be learned, knowledge so easily accessible, and yet every morsel of it ignored. 

How dare the rest of the world watch on and begin enacting their appeasement policies? How dare the Irish government sit down and come to the conclusion that having a civil relationship with the US is what is going to serve them best? I have seen the discourse that says ‘the world has come through this before’, and that ‘history is repeating itself’ but I vehemently disagree. This is nothing like what we have seen before. Never before has the world had billionaire owners of media companies that reach every crevice of this world, in the US President’s pocket. Never have we seen genocides and blatant Nazi salutes live streamed on screens across the world, and then denied. Never has history been so important, its lessons so ready to be learned, knowledge so easily accessible, and yet every morsel of it ignored. 

I am going to quote an extract of a speech given by American lawyer, academic, and activist Mari J. Matsuda, because I think it is relevant: “There are times to stand outside the courtroom door and say ‘this procedure is a farce, the legal system is corrupt, justice will never prevail in this land as long as privilege rules in the courtroom.’ There are times to stand inside the courtroom and say ‘this is a nation of laws, laws recognising fundamental values of rights, equality and personhood.’ Sometimes, as Angela Davis did, there is a need to make both speeches in one day.” 

Today is the day to make both of these speeches.

We need to unite, if only on one common thread, against Trump. Every activist, civilian, political interest group, and politician, every person of conflicting ideologies, whether you intend to question the system, to rip it down, or to work within it, needs to understand that right now, for common sense and collective interest, is not the time to appease Trump. In any realm of my imagination, I cannot make sense of how this will benefit anyone long-term. Appeasement is only in the interest of short-term governments, hoping not to crash their state’s economy and be prematurely voted out, but it is not in the long-term interest of the people who will live through it.

We are talking about the lives of millions of refugees, the healthcare of millions of people who need to access abortions, the livelihoods of millions of working-class Americans who will be shafted by Trump’s economic and social benefit policies, the billions of people who under Trump’s administration will no longer receive aid, the lives of millions of queer people, transgender people, non-binary people, and the dangerous and harmful rhetorics we have already seen a sharp rise in, due in no small part to the biggest social media platforms in the world casting fact-checking aside in the disillusioned name of ‘free-speech’; we are talking about irreversible damage to our climate and an unimaginable loss of life. All preventable, and regardless of the degree to which you believe in any of these causes, all catastrophic under the thumb of Donald Trump.

In 10 years time, we will not be thanking you because you helped to keep our economy stable for a few years. What Trump is about to bring will be so much worse, and those who appease him will sit alongside those who appeased Hitler in the history books, and we will look back, and we will say, ‘they knew exactly what they were doing, how could they not?’