HMM: Pundits Stunned After Trump Hangs Up On Australia Prime Minister, Slamming “Dumb Deal”

It said the call had been scheduled to last an hour but Trump cut it short after 25 minutes when Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull tried to turn to subjects such as Syria. Turnbull told reporters the call with Trump at the weekend had been frank and candid but refused to give further details.

“I do stand up for Australia. My job is to defend Australian interests,” the former Goldman employee said in Melbourne. Turnbull refused to confirm the Post report that Trump, who had earlier spoken to world leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, had angrily told him that the call was “the worst so far”.

Political analysts were dumbfounded and said such acrimony was unprecedented, surpassing even the difficult relations between former U.S. President Richard Nixon and then Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who pulled Australian troops out of the Vietnam War. “Even that was always done in the language of foreign policy niceties,” said Harry Phillips, a political analyst of 40 years experience at Edith Cowan and Curtin universities in Perth.

As reports of the conversation hit headlines on both sides of the world, Trump tweeted shortly before midnight in Washington: “Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal.”

Boy, that escalated quickly.