Ireland\u2019s leader has condemned anti-immigration comments made by Conor McGregor, during an appearance by the 36-year-old former mixed martial arts champion in the White House ahead of a St Patrick\u2019s Day meeting with US President Donald Trump. <\/p>\n
Speaking in the White House briefing room Monday, McGregor said the Irish government had \u201cabandoned the voices\u201d of the Irish people and claimed rural towns <\/strong>in Ireland were being overrun by immigrants. <\/p>\n \u201cIreland is at the cusp of potentially losing its Irishness,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n McGregor, who was at the White House to meet US President Donald Trump on Ireland\u2019s national day, has previously said he is considering running for president in his native country. <\/p>\n Irish leader Miche\u00e1l Martin was quick to denounce the fighter\u2019s comments, however, saying Conor McGregor\u2019s remarks were wrong, and \u201cdid not reflect the spirit of St. Patrick\u2019s Day, or the views of the people of Ireland.\u201d <\/p>\n In a post on X, Martin said the holiday was \u201ca day rooted in community, humanity, friendship and fellowship.\u201d <\/p>\n McGregor has long been vocal about his anti-immigration views and, as far back as 2022, expressed support for people protesting against immigration. His controversial social media posts have been circulated by groups with links to the far right. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s about time that America is made aware of what\u2019s going on in Ireland. What is going on in Ireland is a travesty. Our government is the government of zero action with zero accountability,\u201d McGregor said ahead of his meeting with Trump. <\/p>\n \u201cSo, issues need to be addressed, and the 40 million Irish Americans, as I said, need to hear this,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd I\u2019m here to raise the issue and highlight it. You know, it\u2019s also St. Patrick\u2019s Day, so a little bit of celebrations.\u201d <\/p>\n McGregor\u2019s appearance at the White House came after Martin, <\/strong>the Irish taoiseach, met with Trump last week. During that visit, a reporter asked the president about his favorite Irish person. <\/p>\n \u201cOh, there\u2019s so many \u2014 are you kidding me? Well, I do happen to like your fighter; He\u2019s got the best tattoos I\u2019ve ever seen. Conor\u2019s great, right? I\u2019m talking about Conor,\u201d Trump said. <\/p>\n Once the face of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, McGregor is a controversial figure in Ireland. <\/p>\n In a January civil lawsuit, a woman accused McGregor of sexual battery during the 2023 NBA Finals in Miami. The incident was investigated by police at the time and the Miami-Dade state attorney declined to press charges against him. McGregor, said the allegations were false. <\/p>\n Last fall, a civil jury in Dublin awarded nearly 250,000 euros ($257,000) in damages to Nikita Hand, a woman who claimed McGregor had \u201cbrutally raped and battered\u201d her in a hotel in Dublin in 2018. McGregor testified that the two had consensual sex and vowed to appeal the verdict. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ireland\u2019s leader has condemned anti-immigration comments made by Conor McGregor, during an appearance by the 36-year-old former mixed martial arts champion in the White House ahead of a St Patrick\u2019s Day meeting with US President…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5284,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}