Australia mentioned! In an interview with Nigel Farage on GB News, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was asked about how he would approach diplomacy during a second term as president, including with us: “Things have changed in Australia, we’ve got a Labor government,” Farage said. “The previous ambassador Joe Hockey, I think was quite a good friend of yours … Now they’ve appointed Kevin Rudd, former Labor MP. He’s said the most horrible things. You were a ‘destructive president’, a ‘traitor to the West'”
“He won’t be there long if that’s the case,” Trump responded. “I don’t know much about him. I heard he was a little bit nasty. I hear he’s not the brightest bulb, but I don’t know much about him. If he’s at all hostile, he will not be there long.”
It’s a classic Trump insult: tough talk supplemented with a childish burn attributed to an imagined grapevine (“many are saying …”) and almost certainly improvised to cover the fact he has no idea who Rudd is.
First, let’s marvel at Trump and Farage happening, purely by accident, upon two of the descriptions most likely to get under Rudd’s skin: as wonkish a technocrat to ever occupy the prime minister’s office reimagined as a “former Labor MP”, and not all that bright an MP at that.
Of course Trump has never let sketchy preparation get in the way of offering his opinion on anything, and Australian PMs are no different.
Malcolm Turnbull: ‘You are worse than I am’
When Trump first became president, it was quickly made clear how the relationship between our then PM, the urbane, faintly grandiose Malcolm Turnbull, and the meandering and incurably vulgar new commander-in-chief would play out, with news hitting of a brutal first call between the pair in February 2017. The now infamous conversation descended into a heated disagreement about the Trump administration honouring an Obama era commitment to resettle a cohort of asylum seekers imprisoned by successive Australian governments on Manus and Nauru.
While there are periods of obvious fury from Trump about the situation, there is also grudging admiration when he is presented with the full picture of Australia’s border security regime: “That is a good idea. We should do that too. You are worse than I am.”
As ever, Trump saved the most memorable description for himself (“I am the world’s greatest person that does not want to let people into the country”) and just to show there was no hard feelings, sent out his then press secretary Sean Spicer, who repeatedly referred to Turnbull as “Trumble” and “Trunbull”.
Scott Morrison: ‘A great victory’
Scott Morrison had a much better time of it than his predecessor — “Congratulations to Scott on a GREAT WIN!” Trump tweeted after Morrison’s miracle win in 2019, with the PM treated to an opulent state dinner in Washington later that year. As ever, the praise was as much for himself as for Morrison: “He didn’t surprise me but he surprised a lot of other people. See, I knew him. So I said he’s going to do very well and he did,” Trump said in Osaka ahead of the G20 summit in June 2019. Also fairly typically, Trump’s erratic temper meant it wasn’t all plain sailing — according to a 2020 scoop from legendary US journalist Carl Bernstein, Morrison was among the many world leaders who Trump “regularly bullied and demeaned”.
Morrison, for his part, added “condemning the incitement of an insurrection” to the list of things that weren’t his job.
As long as Hockey turned a blind eye to Trump cheating at golf they would remain ‘friends’. The truth is that Trump is a friend to no-one. Trump doesn’t own a golf course in our country so likely has no idea where Australia is.
Rudd should wear the childish critique as a badge of honour.
Yeah, I doubt he’ll be losing any sleep over it; he’s in good company
I’m thinking it was meant to be disparaging, damning with faint praise. Only someone bigly, hugely, gigantically, enormously mean can command respect. Such as Putin, Xi Jinping or another warmonger we’re not allowed to mention. Get in on the ground floor for Trump Gaza resort and golf course.
The ego of the man (Trump) is embarrassingly high, and the intelligence of the same man is embarrassingly low – how any sensible person could consider him to be a suitable leader of the USA has got me completely baffled.
Maybe a lot of Americans like the idea of a dictator in The White House?
Too many deplorables
It’s called Dunning-Kruger syndrome.
Explains both the radical incongruity of Tre45on’s self-opinion, and his undeserved support.
It’s why fwits are so dangerous.
Actually, strictly speaking I think it’s called an effect, but it’s so pathological it deserves to be called a syndrome
Watching the clip, it was clearly a put-up job by Sky Australia so they could generate a headline and another few nights of circle-jerking.
Had Farage not fed him the bananas, the monkey would not have had a clue who Rudd was, or is, for that matter.
For an interesting perspective on Trump’s campaign, this is pretty good.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/03/donald-trump-ego-election-2024/677797/
Media marketing for fringe or alt right public figures? One’s understanding was that the Legatum supporting Brexit owned GB News (that gets picked up by MSM), hosted Farage to help rehab Trump on his past negative comments about NATO; an effort not to scare the horses on the conservative right?
Interesting on Farage, like Bannon, Miller et al. they channel the nativist or eugenics ideology of Tanton Network which informed Brexit, the Trump White House and migration policies in the Anglosphere, while lobbying and influencing media in Anglosphere via faux environmental science through immigration and population growth talking points, locally SPA.
Mainstreaming and journalist Jason Wilson has written about this regarding platforming of Bannon by 4 Corners some years ago
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/05/the-consequences-of-steve-bannons-ideas-need-to-be-interrogated-not-just-his-words
Why do you keep banging on about faux environmentalist population growth talking points, when the authoritarian followers don’t give a flying fig for the environment?
It’s the right who seem to want us all devalued and drowning in our own sht, and too many people is a guarantee of that. How many people do you imagine our dying ecosystems can bear?
Why bother with shooting messengers and angry questions in an effort to run protection for RWNJs, authoritarians and their anti-science agitprop?
SKY-jerk ‘A storm in a T-cup stirred by media tits.’
Dutton’s eagerness to jump on the bandwagon of charlatans like Trump/Farage confirms all my worst thoughts about the man.
Does this need to be reported?
Any chance of the media not giving Trump free air time this time round?
You know, learning from last time?
They are mesmerised by him, as if by a venomous snake.
Hah! So the media is more about serving the public interest, and not so much the clickbaiting?
News flash – the fourth estate has left the building.
Farage the mate of Abbott and who lead the push to bring Britain to its knees by pushing Brexit. He’s a mirror image of Abbott and likes to draw attention to himself by destructive behaviour. As for the other who has a limited grasp on reality would be at least 50 points below Rudd if he wanted to measure IQ. It’s just more Murdoch promotion of conflict to add dollars to his bank account.
Spot On!
Who in their right mind would tune into anything hosted by Farage in the first place? What a put-up job!
Yeah wow, come to think of it, there’s a certain similarity in the faces of Abbott and Farage… and Trump too – as if they’d all spent years practicing a Clint Eastwood expression.
I think you’re dead wrong about the IQ gap between Rudd and Trump though; it has to be at least eighty points.