Suggestions that MMA fighter Conor McGregor is seeking to become a candidate in the presidential election later this year will not fly, People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy has said.
“I think they [Mr McGregor’s suggested ambitions] will go very, very far in a social media site owned by Elon Musk, where a lot of people retweet him and boost him and so on, but I really don’t think they’ll go very far in terms of actually winning public support.
“He is not a beloved figure in Ireland for all the reasons people know, so I don’t think that will get off the ground in reality, it might exist in Donald Trump’s head and Elon Musk’s head and their various promoters over there, but I don’t think it’ll fly,” Deputy Murphy said.
Speaking at a press conference in Dublin, Mr Murphy also said that Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s “quiet diplomacy” with US President Donald Trump last week is “no longer looking very smart” after Mr Trump’s “abhorrent” and “really scandalous” White House meeting with Mr McGregor yesterday.
“I think it was really scandalous that Conor McGregor was set up to represent the Irish people on St Patrick’s Day in the White House,” he said.
“He is a man with abhorrent views on a whole range of issues,” he said, adding that it is “abhorrent by the Trump administration to have promoted Conor McGregor in this way”.
Mr Murphy said: “I do think that the so-called quiet diplomacy of Micheál Martin which was lauded by many commentators as being very smart no longer looks very smart, because the truth is while Trump is praising Conor McGregor, Micheál Martin while sitting in a room with him [Donald Trump] didn’t say a single word to contradict him.”
Referencing the meeting and the separate issue of Israeli attacks on Gaza overnight, Deputy Murphy said “clearly the very cowardly bootlicking approach of Micheál Martin is exposed for just that”.
Last year, a jury in a civil case found Mr McGregor raped Nikita Hand in a hotel in Dublin in December 2018 and awarded her almost €250,000 in damages.
Meanwhile, Tánaiste Simon Harris has said he was aware that there was a real sense of “disgust” in Ireland about Mr McGregor being in the White House yesterday.
Mr Harris reiterated that Mr McGregor does not speak for Ireland.
“He doesn’t only not represent our values, he’s actually the opposite of all of the values we’re proud about in Ireland,” Mr Harris said.
“He represents the very worst of toxic masculinity. I think we need to be very clear on that.
Mr Harris added that while Mr Trump can “have whoever he wants to visit him”, he wished to be clear that Mr McGregor “wasn’t there in any way speaking for us”.
He said that despite what happened yesterday, it had been a very good week in terms of Irish diplomacy for the US St Patrick’s Day events.
“We have had nine ministers from our Government, including our Taoiseach, visit 15 states across the United States, we’ve celebrated with our community, with the proud Irish American community here.
“We’ve taken every opportunity to focus on business opportunities, investment jobs, putting forward our views on a number of important global issues and the very important economic issues around trade and tariffs,” Mr Harris added.
