A President Comes to Town - Reagan in Ireland

June 1984, and Ronald Reagan, the controversial, transformative Republican President of the United States visits Ireland. Opposition is widespread, and an unexpected alliance of lefties and priests man the barricades, with Reagan’s foreign policies the focus of their anger. Diarmaid and Catriona unearth all kinds of paddy-whackery, with the Americans asking the Irish Government if the Pope would say mass (lol), British journalists paying people in Ballyporeen to bring a donkey into a pub and feed it Guinness, and one man is arrested for throwing a tomato. Catriona herself was one of the protesters. “We thought he was the devil – little did we know what was coming down the tracks.”  

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