THE White House will once again have a peculiarly unionist feel on St Patrick’s Day as the DUP and UUP cross the pond to accept a bowl of shamrock from President Donald Trump in a green tie.
There is a comical irony in the prospect of the two main unionist parties finding themselves in the middle of a celebration of the kind of unapologetic Irishness they spend so much time back home raucously opposing. But more importantly than that, the visit presents the DUP and UUP with a problem that didn’t exist last year.
The allegations made against Donald Trump in the Epstein files are many and they are shocking. So shocking that they can’t be outlined even briefly in these columns; so shocking that it’s been reported that files containing witness statements and notes relating to Trump’s alleged rape of children have been disappeared; so shocking that the Trump White House continues its increasingly desperate attempts to stymie the court-mandated release of the files in their entirety.
Of course President Trump is innocent of the allegations until proven otherwise and indeed he doesn’t at this stage face charges. But it remains the case that politicians should be extraordinarily careful about who they rub shoulders with.
It first of all requires to be pointed out that what we already know about Donald Trump – both via the courts and his own mouth – should have seen him removed from public office years ago. But his cultist followers both on Capitol Hill and across the United States have decided that the normal rules don’t apply and so an adjudicated rapist is once again the most powerful man in the world.
But for those unionists flying to Washington next month for St Patrick’s Day, the fig leaf of political and public apathy about Trump’s dark past no longer exists. The Epstein files dominate the political arena like no single subject has dominated for decades. The President is at the very heart of allegations surrounding the most powerful and dangerous paedophile and sex trafficking ring ever brought to light. Sinn Féin, the SDLP and Alliance last year stayed away from the White House on St Patrick’s Day because of what was already known and proven about the putrid moral character of the President.
The growing disgust this time round over the Epstein files has shown that decision to have been a prescient one.
Will senior DUP and UUP figures queue up for official White House portraits and selfies with a man who is now more associated in the public mind with the notorious and terrifying Epstein child sex ring than any other single person? Unfortunately, it looks at this point as though the answer to that question is yes. For the grim reality is that if they do crack on as though nothing has happened, as if the Epstein files don’t exist and as if Trump is not embroiled in a child sex scandal of unimaginable proportions, they will not lose a single vote over it.
But they should remember that posterity is a harsh and unsparing judge.
