U.S. President Donald Trump ripped into the Australian Prime Minister during their call last week, reports said, castigating a refugee accord he later described on Twitter as a “dumb deal”.
The Washington Post said Mr. Trump abruptly cut short the fiery conversation after criticising the agreement to re-settle people kept in Pacific camps, sparking a war of words with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Thursday after the report surfaced.
Australia is considered a close U.S. ally — one of the so-called “Five Eyes” with which the U.S. routinely shares sensitive intelligence — and the call might have been expected to be smooth sailing. But, according to the Post, Mr. Trump’s assessment was the opposite. Of his four conversations with world leaders that day, “this was the worst call by far,” it cited him as telling Mr. Turnbull, shortly before he terminated the telephone meeting.
Australian government sources told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation the report was “substantially accurate”. Mr. Turnbull said he was disappointed that details of the “very frank and forthright” exchange had been leaked.
“As far as the call is concerned I’m very disappointed that there has been a leak of purported details of the call in Washington,” he told Sydney radio station 2GB. “But I want to make one observation about it — the report that the President hung up is not correct. The call ended courteously.”
