'This is the worst deal ever': Donald Trump badgers and brags in call with Australia's Malcolm Turnbull
2
February, 2017
The
US President has come out swinging after revelations of his caustic
call to the Australian PM.
Donald
Trump is railing against what he terms a "dumb deal" -
struck by his predecessor, Barack Obama - which will see the US take
1250 refugees from Australia. The US Embassy in Australia confirmed
the agreement would be honoured.
Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!
US
President Donald Trump's phone call with Australian Prime Minister
Malcolm Turnbull did not go according to plan.
His
tweet, on Thursday afternoon, came hours after details of the phone
call began to emerge.
It
should have been one of the most congenial calls for the new
commander in chief — a conversation with the leader of Australia,
one of America's staunchest allies, at the end of a triumphant week.
Instead,
Trump used the call to blast Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over the
refugee agreement and boasted about the magnitude of his electoral
college win, according to senior US officials briefed on the Saturday
exchange. Then, 25 minutes into what was expected to be an hour-long
call, Trump abruptly ended it.
In
the less-than flattering tweet, Trump said: "Do you believe it?
The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal
immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!"
At
one point during the Saturday exchange, Trump informed Turnbull that
he had spoken with four other world leaders that day — including
Russian President Vladimir Putin — and that, "This was the
worst call by far."
Australian
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was expecting an hour long audience
with the US president. Trump had other ideas.
Trump's
behaviour suggests that he is capable of subjecting world leaders,
including close allies, to a version of the vitriol he frequently
employs against political adversaries and news organisations in
speeches and on Twitter.
"This
is the worst deal ever," Trump fumed as Turnbull attempted to
confirm that the United States would honour its pledge to take in
1250 refugees from an Australian detention centre.
Trump,
who one day earlier had signed an executive order temporarily barring
the admissions of refugees, complained that he was "going to get
killed" politically and accused Australia of seeking to export
the "next Boston bombers".
In
a press conference in Melbourne on Thursday, Turnbull refused to
discuss the report.
"I'm
not going to comment on a conversation between myself and the
President of the United States other than what we have said
publicly," he said.
"You
can surely understand the reasons for that. I appreciate your
interest, but it's better that these things - these conversations are
conducted candidly, frankly, privately. If you see reports of them,
I'm not going to add to them."
Turnbull
said he stood up for Australia in every forum.
"My
business is being the Prime Minister of Australia. That's my job,"
he said.
"You
may wish to speculate about policies and politics in Washington,
that's not my role. My job is today and everyday to stand up for
Australia and that's what I do."
US
officials said that Trump has behaved similarly in conversations with
leaders of other countries, including Mexico. But his treatment of
Turnbull was particularly striking because of the tight bond between
the United States and Australia — countries that share
intelligence, support one another diplomatically and have fought
together in wars including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The
characterisations provide insight into Trump's temperament and
approach to the diplomatic requirements of his job as the nation's
chief executive, a role in which he continues to employ both the
uncompromising negotiating tactics he honed as a real estate
developer and the bombastic style he exhibited as a reality
television personality.
The
depictions of Trump's calls are also at odds with sanitised White
House accounts. The official read-out of his conversation with
Turnbull, for example, said that the two had "emphasised the
enduring strength and closeness of the US-Australia relationship that
is critical for peace, stability, and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific
region and globally."
A
White House spokesman declined to comment. A senior administration
official acknowledged that the conversation with Turnbull had been
hostile and charged, but emphasised that most of Trump's calls with
foreign leaders — including the heads of Japan, Germany, France and
Russia — have been both productive and pleasant.
Trump
also vented anger and touted his political accomplishments in a tense
conversation with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, officials
said. The two have sparred for months over Trump's vow to force
Mexico to pay for construction of a border wall between the two
countries, a conflict that prompted President Pena Nieto to cancel a
planned meeting with Trump.
Trump
told President Pena Nieto in last Friday's call, according to the
Associated Press, which said it reviewed a transcript of part of the
conversation: "You have a bunch of bad hombres down there. You
aren't doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared.
Our military isn't, so I just might send them down to take care of
it."
But
even in conversations marred by hostile exchanges, Trump manages to
work in references to his election accomplishments. US officials said
that he used his calls with both Turnbull and Peña Nieto to mention
his election win or the size of the crowd at his inauguration.
One
official said that it may be Trump's way of "speaking about the
mandate he has and why he has the backing for decisions he makes".
But Trump is also notoriously thin-skinned and has used platforms
including social-media accounts, meetings with lawmakers and even a
speech at CIA headquarters to depict his victory as an achievement of
historic proportions, rather than a narrow outcome in which his
opponent, Hillary Clinton, won the popular vote.
The
friction with Turnbull reflected Trump's anger over being bound by an
agreement reached by the Obama administration to accept refugees from
Australian detention sites even while Trump was issuing an executive
order suspending such arrivals from elsewhere in the world.
The
issue centres on a population of roughly 2500 people who have sought
asylum in Australia but were diverted to facilities off that
country's coast at Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.
Deplorable conditions at those sites prompted intervention from the
United Nations and a pledge from the United States to accept about
half of those refugees, provided they passed US security screening.
Many
of the refugees came from Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Somalia, countries
now listed in Trump's order temporarily banning their citizens entry
to the United States. A special provision in the Trump order allows
for exceptions to honour "a pre-existing international
agreement," a line that was inserted to cover the Australia
deal.
But
US officials said that Trump continued to fume about the arrangement
even after signing the order in a ceremony at the Pentagon.
"I
don't want these people," Trump said. He repeatedly misstated
the number of refugees called for in the agreement as 2000 rather
than 1250, and told Turnbull that it was "my intention" to
honour the agreement, a phrase designed to leave the US president
wiggle room to back out of the deal in the future, according to a
senior US official.
Turnbull
told Trump that to honour the agreement, the United States would not
have to accept all of the refugees but only to allow them each
through the normal vetting procedures. At that, Trump vowed to
subject each refugee to "extreme vetting," the senior US
official said.
Trump
was also sceptical because he did not see a specific advantage the
United States would gain by honouring the deal, officials said.
Trump's
position appears to reflect the transactional view he takes of
relationships, even when it comes to diplomatic ties with
long-standing allies. Australia has sent troops to fight alongside US
forces for decades and maintains close co-operation with Washington
on trade and economic issues.
Australia
is seen as such a trusted ally that it is one of only four countries
that the United States includes in the so-called "Five Eyes"
arrangement for co-operation on espionage matters. Members share
extensively what their intelligence services gather, and generally
refrain from spying on one another.
There
also is a significant amount of tourism between the two countries.
Trump
made the call to Turnbull about 5pm Saturday from his desk in the
Oval Office, where he was joined by chief strategist Stephen K.
Bannon, national security adviser Michael Flynn and White House press
secretary Sean Spicer.
At
one point, Turnbull suggested that the two leaders move on from their
impasse over refugees to discuss the conflict in Syria and other
pressing foreign issues. But Trump demurred and ended the call,
making it far shorter than his conversations with Shinzo Abe of
Japan, Angela Merkel of Germany, François Hollande of France or
Putin.
The
Australian Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for
comment.
The
Washington Post, Tom McIlroy, Richard Willingham
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