President Donald Trump was asked on Sunday, September 13, 2026, the second day of a 48-hour visit, about the demonstrations that greeted him in Ireland. Rather than answer, he told the reporter who put the question to him that she looked like Sinéad O’Connor, the Irish singer-songwriter who died in 2023.
The president spent two days in the country, splitting the trip between Dublin and the golf resort he owns in County Clare, and he took questions from reporters at several points along the way.
“Mr. President, did you see any footage of the protests against your visit here in Dublin, and what do you make of that opposition?” a reporter asked as he took questions during the visit. She also raised protesters’ objections to U.S. support for Israel in Gaza.
Trump, 80, began with “I don’t know,” then changed the subject altogether. “You know, you remind me of somebody,” he said. “A very cute Irish singer who passed away recently. You know who that is? Sinéad! You look like Sinéad O’Connor. That’s a compliment. She sang beautifully.”
“I’ve actually had that before,” the reporter replied.
He then moved on to other questions. The one about the protests went unanswered.
On X, much of the reaction fixed on the timeline. Users pointed out that O’Connor had died more than three years earlier, which they argued was not “recently” by any measure, and that the president had said nothing at all about the thousands of people who had turned out against him a day earlier.
O’Connor’s Criticism of Trump
The comparison landed on one of Trump’s sharpest critics. The singer was 56 years old when she died on July 26, 2023, and a coroner ruled in January 2024 that she died of natural causes. A Grammy winner whose work took in human rights and women’s rights, she was best known worldwide for her 1990 recording of “Nothing Compares 2 U.”
In 2020 she criticized Trump publicly over his refusal to condemn white supremacists, calling him a “devil” and saying she believed he was the biblical Devil.
In 2024, after her death, her estate and her record label, Chrysalis Records, demanded that Trump stop playing her version of “Nothing Compares 2 U” at his rallies, telling him in a joint statement to “desist from using her music immediately.” The statement said the singer had lived by a “fierce moral code” and that she would have been disgusted, hurt and insulted to see her work misrepresented by a man she had herself called a biblical devil.
Thousands March in Dublin
The protests the reporter asked about had filled Dublin’s city center the previous day. On Saturday, September 12, thousands marched from the Garden of Remembrance to oppose the visit, carrying crude balloons and other anti-Trump displays. Thousands also gathered in County Clare that day, close to the resort where the president would spend his Sunday.
A significant policing and security operation ran throughout the two days as Trump moved between the capital and his golf resort in County Clare.
Unity Talk and Whiskey Tariffs
Trump landed at Shannon Airport and met Taoiseach Micheál Martin at Farmleigh in Dublin on Saturday, before an evening event at the U.S. ambassador’s residence. He also met Irish President Catherine Connolly during the Dublin leg of the trip.
In Dublin, standing alongside Martin, he delivered the line that dominated coverage of the visit’s first day, saying Irish unity would be a “great thing.” He returned to the subject the next day at Doonbeg, telling reporters that a reunified Ireland “should happen.” The remarks caused consternation among British politicians and among unionists in Northern Ireland. Martin said there had been an “overreaction” and that the comments should not have come as a surprise, because Trump had said something similar around St. Patrick’s Day.
The rest of the second day belonged to golf. Trump watched the Amgen Irish Open at Trump International Golf Links & Hotel in Doonbeg, County Clare, the course he owns, and presented the trophy to the winner, golfer Shane Lowry. At the presentation he said he would “take the tariffs off” Irish whiskey, scrapping a 10 percent duty, drawing a big cheer. He claimed he had planned to fly home that morning and had stayed on only to hand over the trophy.
Trump flew home to a midterm election year in which he faces a battle to hold both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Air Force One left Shannon Airport at 8:10 p.m. on Sunday, flying west to Washington, D.C., with the question about the Dublin protests still unanswered.