Australian PM defends ambassador to US after Trump run-in

BBC:

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has strongly defended his ambassador to the US after Donald Trump said he did not like the diplomat during a meeting at the White House.

On Monday, Trump was asked about Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister turned ambassador to the US, who wrote several now-deleted tweets critical of the US president years before his Washington posting.

Rudd owned up to the tweets, prompting the US leader to say “I don’t like you either” and causing the room to erupt in laughter.

The high-stakes meeting with Trump was Albanese’s first, and the prime minister later dismissed the comments as “banter” amid calls to sack Rudd.

Australia’s opposition leader Sussan Ley said Trump’s comments meant Rudd’s position was “untenable” and that he should be dismissed as ambassador.

Rudd – who led Australia between 2007 and 2010, and briefly again in 2013 – was appointed as ambassador in 2023 for a four-year posting.

In 2020, he wrote that Trump was the “most destructive president in history” and a “traitor to the West”. Another post described Trump as a “village idiot”.

Minutes after his comments in the Cabinet Room, Trump reportedly told the ambassador that “all is forgiven”.