Culture

Donald Trump Absolutely Savaged Malcolm Turnbull In One Of History’s Most Brutal Phone Calls

You used to call me on my cellphone...

by Osman Faruqi  2 February 2017

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

Malcolm Turnbull has had pretty average week so far, but I think it’s fair to say that today will go down in history as one of the most embarrassing moments in his political career Australian history.

The Washington Post is reporting that US President Donald Trump “blasted” Turnbull in a private phone call last week over a proposed refugee deal between the US and Australia.

But before we get into the gory details of the phone call let’s look at what’s been going on between the countries since Trump took office.

Related

For the past few days the Australian government has been caught up in an awkward tussle with Trump over the new immigration ban. First it looked like it would apply to Australian citizens, then the Prime Minister announced a “deal” he had struck with Trump to exempt them, then it emerged that no such deal existed and Australians were just going to be treated the same as most other Western nations.

While all this was going on, the Australian government was also trying to figure what was happening with a refugee deal we struck up with President Obama. That deal would’ve seen refugees currently on Manus Island and Nauru sent to the US, but further details were pretty hard to come by.

Turnbull spoke to Trump on the phone last week, and his office later told journalists that the deal was still on and everything was swell. There were even suggestions that a section of Trump’s executive order had been written at the behest of Turnbull, to ensure the terms of the deal would be adhered too.

Yesterday everything spun out of control. White House officials claimed that Trump was “still considering” the deal. Meanwhile Turnbull was still claiming that he had gotten Trump’s assurances in that phone call.

Now we know what phone call entailed.

According to The Washington Post, Trump told Turnbull he had spoken to four other world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, but this one was “the worst call by far”. Ouch.

Trump also referred to the refugee deal as “the worst deal ever” and accused Australia of wanting to “export” terrorists to the US.

White House officials compared Trump’s conversation with Turnbull to the phone call he had with the Mexican president. In that call Trump reportedly said, “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.”

Yeah, he seriously threatened to invade Mexico because of “bad hombres”.

Trump also apparently bragged to Turnbull about his election win and the size of the crowd at his inauguration, before abruptly hanging up 25 minutes into what was supposed to be an hour-long call.

Turnbull was questioned by journalists about the phone call today and said “I am not going to comment on reports of this conversation.”

Fair enough, I wouldn’t want to comment on being brutally owned either.

So there you go, Turnbull has gone from being humiliated by Cory Bernardi to being humiliated by Donald Trump. I guess that’s an upgrade?