Americans in Ireland making adjustment to Trump era

Hugh Ross, originally from Delaware but living in Ireland for 13 years with his wife Catherine and their four children, has no doubt as to why Donald Trump won so convincingly. "The government had forgotten about a lot of people, those normal people that I grew up with. I was a firefighter and I had a lot of lads I went to school with who got jobs in car plants.

“Those plants closed and the jobs went overseas,” says Ross, who contends that Trump is not a racist, “He just wants to control [immigration]. A lot of Americans feel they are being overrun.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s attitudes to the Middle East found favour with voters, too. US politicians should pay more attention to domestic US issues, not foreign ones: “I hope we get America out of the Middle East. We don’t belong there.”

Brian Norton, chief executive of Future Finance, a company specialising in student loans across Europe but headquartered in Dublin, was surprised by the result, but remains calm about the future.

“The checks and balances in our system of government are strong,” he says, “We’ve had good and bad presidents in the past but the US is the oldest free standing democracy in the world, and that’s for a reason.”

The Trump administration’s plans will not become fully clear until after the inauguration on January 20th, when the billionaire businessman will be sworn into office on Capitol Hill.

“Some of the haze that exists around some of the policies of the Trump presidency will clear and we’ll know what he’s up to . . . There are policies that he’s advocated and people have voted for,” he adds, speaking from Lisbon.

“ On the other hand, the American democratic structures will make some of those policies unable to be carried out. I’m curious to see his list for his first 100 days. That’s usually a pretty good indicator.”

But he is relaxed about the implications of a Trump presidency for Ireland: “Trump is a business guy and the Irish-American relationship has been a very pro-business relationship . . . [However] if the American corporation tax rate was lowered dramatically, then the attractiveness of Ireland would be reduced,” he went on.

Not everyone is relaxed, however. "It felt emotionally that a bomb had obliterated my home. I felt really terrified," says Kim V Porcelli, a Staten Island-born American living in Ireland since the 1990s. Now a dual-national, Porcelli was still filled with gloom as she took her toddler son to a Dublin park on a beautiful sunny autumnal day two days after the election.

“I felt violated as a woman,” she says, describing her feelings on waking up on Wednesday morning and tapping her smartphone to see the overnight result The metaphorical bomb having just gone off. Half of my country is fine with someone who has perpetrated sexual assaults against women being president. This is a licence for any man to do anything he wants,” she declared

Porcelli, Ross and Norton are typical of Americans abroad, who have been trying since early Wednesday to come to terms with the election result in the country of their birth, and for which they retain huge emotional and familial ties.

Most, though not all, are not supporters of the victor and their reactions range from shock and surprise, through to a degree of acceptance and a cautious “wait and see” attitude.

However, Tammy Turner from Fort Worth in Texas, is delighted. A childcare nurse of Irish extraction visiting relatives in Ireland for a month, she looks forward to four years of Trump in the White House.

"To me," she says, "the issues weren't the candidates. I have a great deal of respect for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, but to me, the issue was the Supreme Court." Turner is anti-abortion and while she does not necessarily want all controversial Supreme Court decisions of recent years reversed, she is strongly opposed to what she called advanced-term abortion.

“It is important to me that we have a supreme court that upholds the views of our nation, she adds, agreeing that the US should deal with domestic problems. “It’s time to clean our own house.”

But what of Trump the person, his character and what he might do?: “I pray for the man daily and I pray that he will have the right people around him and a teachable spirit, and that he will do what is right for our country.”

Clinton supporter Larry Donnelly, a law lecturer at NUI Galway who comes from Boston, a city with which he maintains close ties and visits regularly, says he was shocked at the result. "I and a lot of other people saw the conditions that were so conducive to Trump in the US but I, and they still underestimated the extent of his support," he told The Irish Times.

Trump’s appeal went beyond the economically-marginalised, says Donnelly, since he did better with Latinos, educated whites and women than anyone had predicted. “This is very bad for the undocumented [ie illegal] Irish in the US if he follows through on what he has said about immigration. In terms of trade,” he continued, “its worrying for Ireland.

“Foreign direct investment won’t go away because American companies need a base in Europe, but I definitely think that if the US adopts a more protectionist policy, it will be bad for Ireland.”

Sometimes, however, the consequences of seismic political upheaval can be reflected by a change of tone, by a new mood about what is acceptable conduct, or not. Since Wednesday, Porcelli has heard from friends that some people have been unshackled by the result, believing it is now acceptable to express misogynistic, racist or xenophobic opinions long kept at bay

“I’m hearing from the US that the bullying has begun,” she says. “Latino children taunted in school; a woman of colour called a n***** bitch by a stranger in the street; office workers mocked by loudly laughing, high-fiving Trump bros; kids chanting ‘Build That Wall’ in gym class.”

“I grieve for the future we won’t have,” she adds simply.

Democrats Abroad Ireland chairman TJ Mulloy, an Ohio-born investment broker resident in Ireland for six years, holds that Trump is “a demagogue and a fascist” and questions his mandate to be president.

“He lost the popular vote but won the electoral college. He won within the system that’s there [but] the electoral college system has to go,” he says. “He’s a clever enough man to have a successful presidency. He’s a salesman and a damned good one . . . We are in a period of such uncertainty. I can’t foresee what America will be like in 10 years’ time . . . I wish him success, don’t get me wrong, even though that is not how they approached Obama.”

Porcelli takes some solace in the fact that she is not in the US right now.

“Thank you, Ireland,” she says, “for giving me a home. I have never been so relieved to be a dual citizen.”