Trump Ireland visit latest: US president says he’d ‘love to see’ a united Ireland while in Dublin

US President Donald Trump has said he would "love" to ⁠see a united Ireland and that he thinks it will ⁠happen eventually.

Talking to the press during a weekend visit to Dublin and his Irish golf course, the president called the idea a “fantastic thing”.

He added: "Well, I ​don't ⁠want to cause any problems, ⁠but I will ​tell you, ⁠I'd love to ‌see it unified," He said after a meeting with ‌Irish prime minister Micheal Martin in Dublin.

"The ⁠way I look at it, it's going to happen eventually ... I think it would be a fantastic thing. Now ‌the UK will ​have something ‌to say ⁠about it ... but ⁠I think it would be ‌a ​great thing."

Trump made the statement after he held talks on Saturday with his Irish counterpart Catherine Connolly.

It comes during a weekend visit that's more about a major golf tournament hosted on a course he owns on the country's Atlantic coast. He will address the US and Irish business leaders at the US ambassador's official residence in Dublin before traveling to his oceanfront golf club in Doonbeg, on the other side of the country, to watch the Irish Open.

Nine months before Donald Trump was voted in as US president for the first time in 2016, he was asked at a campaign rally about a large golf course he purchased on a picturesque sliver of Ireland’s Atlantic coast.

"We spent a lot of money on making it just perfecto and now it’s doing great. But I don’t care about that stuff anymore. It is like small potatoes,” he said.

His interest in the site appears to have suddenly been rekindled. This weekend, protesters will turn out at the course in Doonbeg, Co Clare and across Ireland as he makes his first visit to the island as US president since 2019.

Irish President Catherine Connolly is a left-wing politician who was among those who protested when Trump visited Ireland in 2019 during his first term in office.

A supporter of the Palestinian cause, she in the past has criticised US policy in the Middle East and called Trump a "bully."

The Irish president met Trump at the end of a red carpet at her official residence.

He emerged alone a few minutes later and saluted as an Irish Defence Forces band played the US national anthem and inspected an Irish Army honor guard.

Connolly then joined Trump outdoors to introduce the US and Irish delegations before the leaders went back inside for their closed-door talks.