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TDS HAVE TODAY expressed their outrage in the Dáil at Conor McGregor’s visit to the White House earlier this week.
Dublin West TD Ruth Coppinger told the Dáil that “two rapists met each other in the White House” on St Patrick’s Day.
The Solidarity-People Before Profit TD said that Conor McGregor’s visit to the Oval Office earlier this week, just days after the Taoiseach had been there, was an insult to the country and an insult to women.
“Your visit was completely obliterated and overshadowed by the real Donald Trump,” Coppinger told Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
“So much for your diplomatic mission with Trump,” she said.
Coppinger noted that the Taoiseach was silent last week when Donald Trump said in front of him that Conor McGregor was his favourite Irish person.
Responding to her comments today, the Taoiseach said that he has publicly stated his position on Conor McGregor and accused Coppinger of twisting what he said to suit her agenda.
“I’ve no truck with the masculine toxicity of Mr McGregor, but he’s not a member of this house,” the Taoiseach said.
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Separately, on McGregor, the Taoiseach added: “In some respects, I think perhaps he craves attention and it might be wise of us not to facilitate that”.
That comment was made in response to a question from Independent TD Paul Gogarty who told the Dáil today that the “decision to invite a thug in a suit” to the Oval Office on St Patrick’s Day “to what in effect was a rapist convention” was a “gross insult to the people of Ireland and especially the women of Ireland.”
In January last year, Trump was ordered to pay over $83 million in damages for defamation to writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of sexually abusing her.
Carroll made the accusation in a memoir, saying that Trump sexually abused her in 1996 in a dressing room in Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury department store in Manhattan.
Trump, who denied the accusations, made multiple statements in recent years casting aspersions on Carroll’s character.
The statements in question in the case were made in 2019 while he was president.
A previous New York jury awarded Carroll $5 million after finding that Trump sexually abused her at the store and then defamed her in October 2022 statements. Trump did not attend that trial.
No letter
Meanwhile, the Irish Government has said it was not aware of McGregor’s visit to the White House ahead of time.
Earlier today, Labour Party TD Duncan Smith suggested that the Taoiseach or Irish Ambassador to the US should write to the White House condemning McGregor’s visit.
Asked today if the Government would be doing so, a spokesperson for the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Harris said that they would not be writing to the White House about the visit as to do so would “give legitimacy to the idea that he was representing Ireland when he wasn’t”.
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