President Trump was heading to Ireland on Friday for a weekend at his golf resort, after two days spent trying to energize Republicans to turn out in the midterm elections in November.
The president will attend the Irish Open golf tournament, held at his Trump International Golf Links & Hotel in County Clare. Some diplomatic business will be included in the trip: He is expected to speak with President Catherine Connolly, who has criticized U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, and with Micheál Martin, the prime minister.
The trip to Ireland comes as the Republican Party faces an uphill battle to keep control of Congress in the midterm elections, which are a little more than 50 days away.
Mr. Trump has become more engaged with Republicans’ prospects as the elections get closer. He just spent two days in Dallas imploring people to vote for Republicans, and dangled a promise to send every American adult $5,000 if Republicans keep control of the House and Senate. Next week, he is traveling to North Carolina to campaign for a Republican Senate candidate, Michael Whatley.
But his efforts on behalf of Republicans often come on his own terms, and in ways that do not necessarily align with what the party wants. Mr. Trump can seem focused on his own projects — whether it is his golf club in Doonbeg, his White House ballroom or building a towering arch in the nation’s capital. The White House declined to comment.
Various polls have found that voters feel Mr. Trump has the wrong priorities. And in recent weeks, Republicans have expressed concern that Mr. Trump should be spending more of his political war chest on Republican candidates in tough races.
In an interview with Fox News, Mr. Trump said he did not intend to campaign as vigorously for congressional Republicans as he had for his own campaign. Asked if he would campaign harder than ever, Mr. Trump said “no.”
“The hardest I ever campaigned, because I had to win, was the last,” he said of his own race. “I took four months, no empty days, no empty hours.”
Asked if the midterm elections weren’t just as important as his own race, Mr. Trump said, “It’s never as important. Look, I’m campaigning for other people.”
Mr. Trump’s trip also comes at a moment when he and his party are facing blowback about high prices for groceries and gasoline amid the conflict with Iran, which is grinding on with no clear endgame.
Critics say it is a bad look.
“He can’t be bothered to care about economic concerns of the American people but when it comes to the Trump family business, he’s ready to take a trip and go to Ireland for a golf tournament,” said Sarah Matthews, a deputy press secretary in Mr. Trump’s first term. “This just shows where his priorities lie.”
Past presidents have also faced criticism for frequently leaving the White House for getaway weekends or golf trips.
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. left the White House most weekends to spend time in Delaware with his family. The Obama administration was on the defensive when President Barack Obama traveled to Martha’s Vineyard to golf in 2014 amid various crises, including killings by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
One of the more frequent critics of Mr. Obama’s travel at the time was Mr. Trump.
“Can you believe that, with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf,” Mr. Trump said on social media in 2014. “Worse than Carter.”
Brendan O’Leary, an Irish political scientist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said that usually there’s not much downside to a trip to Ireland for American presidents, particularly given the tens of millions of Irish American voters.
“If you conduct your foreign trips with an eye to the home electoral market, there’s no harm in having a nice trip to Ireland,” Mr. O’Leary said.
But Irish Americans no longer vote as a bloc, he said, and Mr. Trump is deeply unpopular in Ireland, where video of protests are as likely to be the images associated with the trip as his meeting with Mr. Martin.
“The risk is, of course, that the Irish may not like you,” Mr. O’Leary said. “And it is very palpably clear that the bulk of the citizens of Ireland do not think well of Trump.”
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