Biden Confirms He Snubbed England With Ireland Visit

(RepublicanJournal.org) – The United Kingdom officially crowned King Charles III on Saturday, May 6, in front of global representatives. U.S. President Joe Biden chose to remain notably absent, sending his wife to attend the ceremony in his place. The commander-in-chief has now reportedly snubbed England to take a trip to Ireland.

Joe Biden in yet another snub to Britain: US President says he visited Ireland to ensure 'the Brits' and Rishi Sunak didn't 'screw around' over Good Friday Agreement – after skipping King Charles' Coronation and sending wife Jill insteadhttps://t.co/TiWLAbhhqm

— Jim Polk 🇺🇸 (@JimPolk) May 11, 2023

Daily Mail reported that Biden briefly toured Northern Ireland (part of Great Britain) before traveling to the Republic of Ireland, the independent majority of the island, where the president reportedly claims some ancestry. He visited to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. The event, which ended the Troubles — or nearly 30 years of war between the two regions — on April 10, 1998, also conferred dual Irish-UK citizenship to residents of Northern Ireland.

Some UK observers have condemned Biden’s actions as “anti-British.” Given his planned trip just across the Irish Sea, they see the missed coronation — which occurred only weeks later — as just one more snub to the UK. Daily Mail quoted Biden, who stated he visited Ireland to ensure “the Brits didn’t screw around and Northern Ireland didn’t walk away from their commitments.”

The U.S. president has no authority to enforce the Good Friday Agreement. Moreover, his language regarding “the Brits” may have fallen on shaky ground.

Not everyone agrees that Biden has done anything wrong. Laura Beers, a U.S.-based history professor specializing in modern Great Britain, told the BBC that the president was simply following the precedent that “no American president has ever gone to a coronation.” The BBC noted that Dwight Eisenhower, president when the United Kingdom crowned Queen Elizabeth II, also chose to send someone to attend the coronation in his place despite King George VI, Elizabeth’s father, knighting Eisenhower in 1943 for his role as a general during World War II and the excellent relations enjoyed between the U.S. and the UK.