Donald Trump the Megathread part II - Mod Warning updated in OP 12/2/26

I've been thinking about this a bit today; and maybe Mods want to split this off into a new Bannon does Ireand thread as opposed to this Trump thread.

But I could see 3 ways Ireland could be swayed fairly quickly, if outsiders focused time and resources onto us; and they might want to have control of an EU country to try leverage that group. So imagine if you were Bannon, and having Musk's backing and wanted to do something, here's my suggested ways

1 - The Trump approach, hijack and subvert an existing big party, that way you get all the 'Sure I've always voted FF/FG/Other, and so did my Grandparents' to go along with you. It could be done, obviously in a much more subtle way than Trump storming in, but by recruiting into your cause quietly a member of a political dynasty. Say get a Lenihan/O'Rourke/McCreevy for FF, or a Coveney/Bruton for FG, or an Ellis or even McGuinness for SF; a family member that is a bit more inclined to your way of thinking, but comes from impeccable family 'heritage'; that you slowly give resources and support to rise through the party. Using twitter you could undermine other internal party rivals. Since most politcial party memberships in Ireland are small, you could get sycophants to register as members, people happy to loudly sing your praises at the right time, drag rivals down and just irritate enough other right minded members enough so they leave.

Then in next election your chosen party hopefully has a disaster of a result, has to go 'soul searching' looking for its roots; and your Manchurian candidate is there waiting to take reigns, and start changing the narrative slowly at first - talking of pride, your parties roots, the need to remember what made Ireland great from the 70s onwards, MIGA!!!!!

2 - The Farage approach. Stand as an MEP, Ireland has a habit of sending more curve ball candidates to Europe; be it the likes of Ming/Daly/Wallace or the fact the FG currently have 2 MEPs from the North West who's whole political experience could be summarised as 'Won Rose of Tralee' and 'Was a jockey'. If you can get any sort of seat, even as last place confirmed but again possible with resources behind you, you now have a 'mandate' and respectablilty; and unlike the other MEPs who disappear for the next 5 years, you are more than happy to talk and appear on Irish TV as the alternative voice.

You use this platform to highlight all the Government waste and inefficiencies - look at children's hospital, look at congestion and no investement there, look at housing, look at Dee Forbes and her ilk unaccountable! Now it's time for Reform! Irish sovereingty! By next Dail election, you message is out, you have candidates happily standing for you around the country (all with mystery investment and influence) behind them. You can stand if you want, your seat in Europe is already safe. You just want to set out your narrative, and with Ireland's PR voting system you just need to sneak in about 5 to 10 candidates even as 5th place crawl over the line. If Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch can almost sqeak in, no reason your guys can't with influence and resources behind them. Suddenly you're 4th largest Party from no-where and possible King Makers for a coalition. Get into Government and you can start pushing your narrative to more extremes, slowly but surely.

3 - McGregor approach - All out blitz, no subtlety, no cares. Just get someone famous, throw all your weight behind them, massive ad campaigns, smear tactics. Probably don't use McGregor because of his past, but find someone equally domineering, sneering, caustic to his opponent as Trump but also with charismatic touch to his followers, and with a simple message that can be rammed home over and over. Blitz Ireland with the negative attack ads so common in the US, we've no precedent for it; Irish Politicians will be caught off guard not sure how to deal with some-one openly, nakedly slagging and ripping into them, as they've been brought up on the unwritten rules of decorum, sly digs etc.

Again you don't have to win over everyone, you don't even care if a big majority despise you. All you want is around 20 to 25% to adore you, become foot soldiers for you, drown out the alternatives, dominate the airwaves or social media. 20% 1st preference votes overwhelms PR in a lot of constituencies and gets you 20 to 25 seats, instantly 2nd or 3rd largest party. All others have to ally themsleves against you and your message, but that suits you as you are now 'Only alternative!' as others all are Swamp! Establishment! Failures!

I agree with the approaches that you suggest might have some success in upsetting the current political system. But I think upsetting is all they could do given the current political environment.

The 20% to 30% vote can work in two-party systems particularly but also in first past the post systems where there are multiple parties. I would disagree with you that 20% can overwhelm PR. I haven't seen any sign of that happening in any recent elections. It nearly happened with Hutch - but it didn't - hee had Steenson in the same constituency - they got 15% between them and nearly got the 4th seat in a 4 seater. Marie Sherlock started with a lower vote but better transfers got her through. PR-STV provides a levelling buffer that, once you get into the final counts, elects the candidate that people hate least. The right have shown an inability to get their ducks in a row and transfer to each other. The candidates on the right just can't gather transfers from anybody outside of their gene pool. Hutch was an exception here - he nearly doubled his vote with transfers, Steenson only added 30%. Marie Sherlock more than doubled her vote, pulling in the vast majority of transfers in the latter counts. The proliferation of candidates amongst the center and left helps that along as they are less dogmatic about their second choices and transfer more readily.

There has been a 'soft' approach by the right in social media to try to shift to a two bloc system - the FF/FG bloc on one side and the left (dominated by SF) on the other. Presumably to allow a third party to leverage through the middle. All of this smacked of thinking (and presumably funding) coming from a US/UK perspective. You could see them angling to promote 'winners' on the left - trying to reduce the numbers of parties by dissing Labour and the SDs then suddenly noticing that the SDs were winning and trying to promote them over Labour only to find the two parties ending up even in the 2024 election. The by-elections next year will be interesting if only to watch the narratives that the right hopes to create - in both cases the left will hope to have a winner but their strength will lie in their diversity and I doubt they will attempt to have a 'left alliance' candidate.

On the centre-right bloc there was a definite attempt to anoint FG as leaders by dissing Micheal Martin and trying to promote the careers of Coveney (failed) and Carroll-McNeill (we'll see). Martin was heading off anyway, OCallaghan will probably be the next leader and that could let FG sieze the leadership - if they can pick a decent leader. I suspect the two parties will muddle along trying to be different but their supporters seeing them as the same and transferring accordingly - leaving them in a position where they run a three-legged race against the other parties.

By the way I agree about a new thread on this.

I'd agree it can't/won't be Casey. Age alone (he's 68) would be an issue. I know that's young compared to Trump but Casey would be starting from near scratch to build up again.

Casey is more an example of the sort of floating votes out there that could be tapped by Bannon. Casey did manage to get 23% of vote based on pretty much 1 issue that he didn't exactly plan for or hammer home. He did though immediately become a lightning rod for the sort of supporter Bannon thrives on.

Find another Casey - someone with a respectable past (ie not McGregor), a professional outlook and CV, and start him off as subtle candidate to build up. No big fanfare of Steve Bannon or Musk shouting from roof he's our guy, just completely hidden in background guiding him and boosting him on social media, while said candidate makes a few not extreme remarks about immigration needing control or travellers no longer being protected as much. An issue that attracts that floating 20% but can't be blatantly pointed to as racist or bigoted or whatever.

I cannot see Bannon or Musk pumping in money to form a far right party and staying quietly in the background, and with both of their names being linked to any such attempt would not help get votes here.

I think a lot of people have woken up to the far right agenda thanks to Trump, Bannon, Musk et al. In the run up to the last general election there was a lot of speculation as to what percentage of the first preference vote the far right would get. Exit polls showed it at 6%.

Somebody said here earlier that a leader of a far right party going attack dog against our established parties would do well electorally. There would be two sides to that coin though. Any such party would need a broad range of policies and how they intended funding them. Not just a single issue, and that is something from the present crop that has been glaringly missing. The Irish electorate are no mugs, and even for a party as large as Sinn Fein has been a stumbling block in the past.

This fcukin dimwit can't remember or care what the last claim he heard was. Hes like a dog that barks at every passing car. He'll claim something else tomorrow when someone else gets in his ear.

The fact that anyone still pays attention to him is the scary part. He should be stuck in a room with I love Lucy reruns on the tv and a fake press conference once every 2 days to make him feel important.

The GE results are the most relevant - where he'd have the biggest chance of having a say in how the country is run - and they are also his worst.

A very important factor in Irish GE's, i.e. how to get into power, is that you need to have a coalition. Rare were the times that FF managed to pull off a single-party government. If the far-right vote was at 6% last year then they have to work very hard to get up to the high forties before possibly convincing a few contrarian indies to support them and that would still be a wobbly government.

Look at other countries where the far-right parties have won the elections, e.g. the Netherlands; they struggled to get anyone to work with them and the traditional, respectable parties won't want any far-right party leading the line, especially here where FF and FG are all about the optics of leading the country (e.g. shutting SF out in 2020 and the ridiculous rotating Taoiseach).

We also have a highly-educated populace and stricter regulations about campaign financing and social media.

I'd be very surprised if the far-right got into power in Ireland. If they did, it would be because a decent amount of people actually wanted it to happen. While unpalatable, that's how democracy works.

I think.you would be givingn them a lot of credit with that theory. A collective group just about capable of putting on matching shoes.

Now it sounds like he is a medical professional. Just watch the moron supporters take aspirin like smarties now, very clever.

He claimed the cut on the back of his hand was from when pam bondi high fived him and her ring cut him... How are they high fiving each other that a ring could cut the back of his hand?

Obviously I don't believe it, the regular plasters are plainly covering up cannula sites which would also explain the bruising. God knows what kind of daily cocktail he is on.

One feature of Irish society and politics that offers a degree of resistance to a MAGA style takeover is the "Great Again" part. Where we see the most successful rise of the Hard/Far Right is in historical colonial powers and/or countries with a hefty industrial heritage - the latter frequently being linked directly to the former. Whether that is Britain, France, Germany or the USA, the modern electorate can look back at a time when, at least from their national perspective, their country was great; and now it's not, at least not in the same way.

We Irish don't have the same attitude, because our "greatness" was always based on agriculture, emigration and a creative interpretation of our cultural baggage. What I've noticed, though, is that since the 90s, the Celtic Tiger and the Crash, people in Ireland have slipped into the kind of nostalgic retrospection that's feeding the Hard/Far Right elsewhere? Where the French or the Germans blame immigrants for taking their industrial jobs (the jobs that were always destined to be lost), now the Irish are blaming immigrants for the cost/lack of housing, houses that you used to be able to buy for 75k in the Good Old Days.

Ireland's people have a great general standard of education, are generally well travelled and not obsessively attached to a glorious past. Yet there's still a fierce insularity evident in many respects, the same as I see in the post-industrial wastelands of FN-voting northern France. When an electorate assumes it's societal problems are unique to itself, it becomes easier for malevolant agencies to encourage that deception and propose an appropriate "solution" that'll be no solution at all.

We sneer at the American farmers voting for a man and a set of policies that were always going to destroy them - but the Irish constantly vote for a political duopoly that has consistently failed to deliver on problems like housing, whinge about how young people can't afford a mortgage, then rejoice at getting a great price for selling half their garden with outline planning permission.

I don't think a brash Trump-McGregor style candidate would ever make inroads into the Irish political landscape, but someone with a bit more charisma, a significant following on social media and a carefully crafted message could easily tap into the general discontent of the post-Tiger generation.

If he's on that many blood thinners, you'd wonder how he didn't bleed out when "shot"

What was also revealed was Trump's atrocious diet, full of fast food. I can't imagine that would help considering the medication he has to take.

He is taking blood thickeners above the neck?

😉