As part of his international exploration to find new problems that he invariably can make worse, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago stopped in the Motherland on Wednesday and proceeded to bungle his way into one of Ireland's most delicate and volatile issues. From the Guardian:

Trump, sitting next to a visibly uncomfortable taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, waded into the Brexit debate minutes after Air Force One touched down at Shannon airport on Wednesday afternoon. “I think it will all work out very well, and also for you with your wall, your border,” he said at a joint press conference. “I mean, we have a border situation in the United States, and you have one over here. But I hear it’s going to work out very well here.”

Varadkar interjected that Ireland wished to avoid a border or a wall, a keystone of Irish government policy. “I think you do, I think you do,” Trump said. “The way it works now is good, you want to try and to keep it that way. I know that’s a big point of contention with respect to Brexit. I’m sure it’s going to work out very well. I know they’re focused very heavily on it.”

I don't know what the previous presidential record for Side-Eyes Received was, but I'm fairly sure that the president* shattered it over the very first lunch he shared at Buckingham Palace. Every one he's received since is just gravy.

Sweep your problems under the rug when Donald Trump, American president touches down. Pool Getty Images

The possible consequences of Brexit on the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, which brought an end to the most recent Troubles in the north of the country, have roiled Irish politics ever since the first referendum went sideways. If the UK leaves the European Union, then the Northern Ireland statelet goes with it. Very possibly, absent some touchy negotiations, this would result in the re-establishment of a "hard" border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Which means checkpoints and other reminders of the bad old days in what used to be called "bandit country."

The president* is bunking in at Doonbeg, his property in Clare on the west coast of the island. This is something of an irony since the resort has been lobbying the Irish government for a huge seawall to be built to protect the president*'s golf course against the erosion caused by the climate crisis in which the president* doesn't believe. The locals are raising hell about it and, so far, they've stalled the wall. (In 2016, they beat him in defense of the narrow-mouthed whorl snail, which is indigenous to the area. So much losing.) We are now represented overseas by the man who came to dinner.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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