Gavan Reilly: If a week is a long time in politics, how long must a day feel these days?

If a week is a long time in politics, how long must a day feel these days? Last Wednesday night, Micheál Martin expected to be spending his Thursday in Belfast, meeting with the First and Deputy First Ministers. Instead he spent Thursday morning speeding down the M7 in the direction of Shannon Airport for a short-notice meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. I do mean literally speeding: his car overlook me at Rathcoole on its route down.

As of that moment, he hadn’t yet received his formal invitation to the White House next week, but was relatively calm about that: officials had been backchannelling with Washington for weeks, and had already been given a date for which to travel. Nonetheless, there was always some anxiety: the backchanelling in search of an invite begins every winter, and Donald Trump is no Joe Biden, perpetually misty-eyed at the thought of the auld sod. The backroom team would not rest on its laurels until the invitation did, officially, land.

It did so that very night. Relief, for a while. Until the Taoiseach saw Friday evening’s encounter between the man he’d just met, and the man he was about to. How lucky Micheál Martin was that the invitation arrived before Friday’s Oval Office debacle for Zelenskyy… and how unfortunate for him that he’s the next visitor due in the same chair.

At least the events of the last week show a charter for how it all could go. Last Tuesday Emmanuel Macron went over, feigned bonhomie, and emerged looking like a great lad altogether, despite the two sides’ obvious disagreements on an approach to Ukraine. The same model was picked up by Keir Starmer on Thursday, who rode the wave of ‘our countries have historical ties’ and emerged with a fresh commitment to a trade deal between the US and UK.

And then there’s the events of Friday, where two sides exhibited their differences, where Zelenskyy may perhaps have spoken somewhat out of turn – no more so, however, than JD Vance, whose questioning then prompted the debacle that followed, and which might have turned the last 80 years of transatlantic alliances on their head.

The array of personnel that now attend these meetings is telling in its own right. In more recent times, the meetings on St Patrick’s Day have begun as solo affairs. When Leo Varadkar visited in 2018, 2019, 2023 and 2024 – all of which I covered personally – the meeting began with only Biden or Trump for company. Only in 2017, when Trump was new in the job, did the engagement begin with handlers in the room.

Those handlers may now be crucial to how it plays out. Martin is not merely going over to reinforce a European view; he has his own domestic issues to deal with, including the view of Trump’s commerce secretary Howard Lutnick who has repeatedly targeted Ireland as a corporate tax freeloader. If he and Vance are in the room, it may be wise for Micheál Martin to put his head down and say as little as possible – in front of the cameras, at least.