‘A little bit nasty’: Donald Trump’s assessment of Australia’s prime ministers

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.