“I think it’s absolutely that,” he said, calling it “racism.” “People afraid of losing their economic condition and their status.”

Will he talk to President Trump about that when he brings shamrocks for St. Patrick’s Day?

While Varadkar mostly wants to explain some facts about Ireland and trade to Trump, he said that if he had a chance, he would like to get into some issues they disagree on, “whether it’s migration or climate change and rights of women, rights of people from L.G.B.T. backgrounds.” Ireland’s feminists say he needs to pay more attention to women’s rights here, and appoint many more women to his cabinet.

Varadkar laid the groundwork for his ascension two years ago when he was the minister for health by coming out on Irish radio in an interview with Miriam O’Callaghan, surprising some family and friends. Homosexuality was decriminalized in Ireland only in 1993.

“I always thought I’d be alone,” he told O’Callaghan.

Varadkar, who has a reputation as a straight talker with a distaste for glad-handing, said he wanted to level with the Irish people so they would not think he had a hidden agenda when he supported an upcoming same-sex marriage referendum (which passed, making Ireland the first country to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote). After coming out, the shy Varadkar had a bit of a makeover, slimming down and getting up earlier to exercise. He looks fit, sitting across from me, wearing a dark Canali suit, beneath a sketch drawn by his partner’s brother.

I asked him if he had spent years hiding his sexuality. “Of course, yeah,” he said. “I would have kept my private life very private. Maybe didn’t have much of a private life as well. You know, a lot of people sort of turn themselves into their careers, and that’s something I definitely did, both as a doctor and a politician.”

When confronted with “those little questions that people ask, understandably, ‘Are you seeing anyone?’ ‘Do you have a girlfriend?,’ well, I suppose I’d be very cagey. I’d just say, ‘No,’ or ‘I’m not one to answer those kind of questions.’ ”