Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The disabled. One can go through the list. President Trump has put whole nations in his firing line. People understand the mortal threat he represents and they are mobilising across the world on an unprecedented scale. The protests we are seeing in the United States are of a scale that has not been seen since the late 1960s. People understand that this guy represents an absolutely mortal threat, namely, the threat of pulling the entire political spectrum in the direction of the fascist and Nazi politics of the 1930s. I do not say that lightly. Let us be clear: I do not believe Mr. Trump is a Nazi but he is dangerously echoing the politics of the Nazis, and he has people who are openly sympathetic to fascist politics in his Cabinet. He has given a fillip of support to actual Nazis and fascists across the world, who were jumping with joy when he was elected because his policies have legitimised theirs. They are all cock-a-hoop over what he is doing, what he represents and the boost he has given to them, breathing life back into the politics that led to the Holocaust. We should not underestimate the threat this man represents. This is not just another nasty president or just another particularly right-wing and obnoxious leader; he is an existential threat to the whole world and has to be recognised as such.

That is why it is imperative that we mobilise against him.

He has pulled off an extraordinary trick by harnessing the legitimate anger of many working, poor, disillusioned and disaffected people in the US at the betrayals and failures of the Obama Administration and the Democrats and pretending to be an anti-establishment figure as if he is going to give the establishment a kicking in a way that will serve the interests of the American working people, when he is actually manipulating that and turning it in the most dangerous right-wing direction. It is important for us to say this because those of us who are opposed to Trump should in no way use our opposition to whitewash Obama's crimes and betrayals of promises such as, for example, keeping Guantanamo Bay going, 260,000 bombing raids in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere in the world and millions of refugees turned away from the US borders. If we do not recognise the hypocrisy, failures and betrayals of Obama, we will not be able to engage with the angry people in the US who look to Trump as an alternative.

Trump is not an alternative. He is the extreme right-wing face of the establishment. I say this to anyone who has illusions to the contrary. His cabinet is the wealthiest in the history of the world. It is not a cabinet representing the little people. It is a cabinet of the 1%. Wilbur Ross is worth $2.5 billion, Betsy DeVos is worth $1.25 billion, Rex Tillerson, formerly of ExxonMobil, is worth $325 million, Steve Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury, is worth $300 million and Andy Puzder, formerly of Goldman Sachs and a CEO in the fast food industry who is hostile to the minimum wage, is the Secretary of Labor. I do not have time to go through the lot of them. His entire cabinet's personal wealth, not including Trump's own, is $4.5 billion. There is more wealth in his cabinet than in 63 of the poorest countries in the world. That is incredible. Trump is a representative of the 1% who is using the anger felt by people in America - the poor, the unemployed and the disaffected - and turning it in a vicious, racist direction against Muslims, ethnic minorities, gay people, women and anything that is progressive. He must be resisted.

I will mention one other group in that regard. Today, Trump is meeting Benjamin Netanyahu. Since Trump's election, Netanyahu, who has smashed through any sort of serious attempt at trying to make peace with the Palestinians, feels that he is completely off the leash and, citing Trump specifically as the reason, can expand illegal settlements into Palestinian territory. If Trump moves the US Embassy to Jerusalem, it will be like throwing a grenade into the political process in the Middle East.

Against the threat that Trump represents, for us not to go on St. Patrick's Day would be the sort of protest that would be felt. If the Government goes, it will be legitimising and endorsing him as some sort of normal US President with whom we can have normal political discussions. We cannot. We must resist his political agenda.

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