By their friends shall ye know them: Donald Trump and the Democratic Unionist Party’s populist revival

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was home to some of the most vocal and steadfast supporters of the Presidency of Donald J. Trump. Drawing on a diverse range of sources, including interviews with those supporters, this paper accounts for the good relations between the DUP and Trump. That account highlights several commonalities, including their 'Orangeism', their stance on Brexit, their illiberalism, and their populism. As well as its nature, we also assess Trump's impact on the behaviour and development of the DUP. We show how the Trump presidency fuelled a populist revival within the party, providing in the process an important update to existing accounts of its modernisation journey. That revival, we conclude, encourages greater cognisance of the DUP's populist credentials and ongoing scrutiny of the factional tensions within it, tied as those are to the prospects of political unionism.