LATIKA M BOURKE: As Donald Trump roasted Kevin Rudd, Anthony Albanese just laughed
Anthony Albanese had a near-flawless first encounter with Donald Trump in the White House, except for when it came to the US President’s stoush with Kevin Rudd.
The Australian Ambassador to the United States is said to have personally apologised to Donald Trump after being berated by the US President on live television.
Australian sources said the former prime minister was observed apologising to Mr Trump immediately after the President’s press conference with Mr Albanese in the White House’s Cabinet room.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.The sources said that Mr Trump said that “all was forgiven” and that Mr Rudd had said “I apologise,” but Mr Rudd did not confirm the exchange and it could not be independently verified.
The reported contrition is unlikely to dampen questions about the former Prime Minister’s ability to continue in the job, after the US President told him that he didn’t like him, and probably never would.
And if Mr Rudd needed a friend in the room in his moment of excruciating humiliation, he didn’t find it in Mr Albanese.
The Prime Minister’s response to Mr Trump’s live-televised shredding of Mr Rudd was to laugh.
It was a stark contrast to the firm defence Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer launched when he stood up for the London Mayor Sadiq Khan when a similar incident happened in the UK earlier this year.
Mr Trump launched into an attack on Mr Khan, London’s first Muslim Mayor saying he was nasty and terrible. Mr Starmer intervened, holding out his hand to interrupt the US President.
“He’s a friend of mine,” Mr Starmer said at the time, also with a laugh, but one that had a tone of gentle pushback.
By contrast, Mr Albanese laughed and directed Mr Trump Mr Rudd’s way.
“Did an ambassador say something bad about me? Don’t, don’t tell me, where is he? Is he still working for you?”
A grinning Mr Albanese pointed to Mr Rudd, who was raising his hand from across the table.
Mr Rudd himself confirmed that he had indeed criticised the President, before taking up the post in March 2023, when Joe Biden was President.
Some saw humour in the President’s subsequent words.
“I don’t like you either. I don’t and, and I probably never will,” Mr Trump told Mr Rudd.
But there was also an edge to Mr Trump’s tone.
The bottom line is that once again, Mr Rudd inserted unnecessary drama, however spectacular to observe in real time, into Mr Albanese’s otherwise highly successful first one-on-one meeting with Mr Trump at the White House.
Mr Rudd’s insults, made before Mr Albanese appointed him to serve in Washington DC, included calling Mr Trump a “village idiot,” a ”traitor to the West” and the “most destructive president in history.”
But it was the former prime minister himself who drew fresh attention to them, when he released a statement on the morning of Mr Trump’s re-election last November to say that he was erasing from social media his critiques.
This drew the ire of prominent MAGA advisers who suggested the Ambassador may be on borrowed time, with Presidential adviser Dan Scavino posting to X a GIF of an egg timer.
That is the context for the backdrop to Monday’s long-delayed first bilateral meeting between the pair.
The Rudd dynamic has fuelled persistent questions about whether or not Mr Rudd’s past behaviour has had any bearing on Australia’s access to the White House in which power is concentrated around one man – Mr Trump.
Mr Albanese has previously attempted to paper over the problem by boasting of a meeting between Mr Rudd and Mr Trump at the President’s International Golf Club in West Palm Beach on January 11 this year.
But that meeting was apparently so successful, that Mr Trump doesn’t even know who Mr Rudd is.
It should not be overlooked that when asked about Mr Rudd’s comments by Sky News journalist Andrew Clennell, Mr Trump humiliated the former Australian leader by claiming once again not to know him.
“I don’t know anything about him, I mean if he said bad, then maybe he’ll like to apologise, I really don’t know,” Mr Trump said.
The snub was likely deliberate and intended to humiliate Mr Rudd as a no-body and certainly no-one with a direct line to the world’s most powerful man.
Last year, the Reform UK and then GB News commentator Nigel Farage asked Mr Trump the same question, saying then it was on behalf of Sky News in Australia.
Given this was not the first time Mr Trump had had his attention drawn to Mr Rudd’s criticisms, and Mr Rudd’s own claims to have met the US President when this sore began to fester, his assertion to not know Australia’s most high-profile former prime minister is difficult to believe.
That he then shredded Mr Rudd in font of the some of the United States’ most other powerful figures who were seated in the room, including US Vice President JD Vance, Mr Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others was no laughing matter
Mr Rudd has indeed forged good contacts in the Trump Administration including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was a dinner guest at the Australian Embassy on Monday with the Prime Minister.
And the success of Mr Albanese’s visit is due to Mr Rudd’s own performance in the job.
But diplomacy and politics are always about personal relationships and Mr Rudd has given the opposition a line of attack they would otherwise not have had, given the overall success of the visit and the significant policy achievements it included, such as the critical minerals deal and the securing of AUKUS.
“When the ambassador is the punchline of the joke and the Prime Minister is actually laughing at him, I think that tells us all we need to know,” Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said.
“To see the Prime Minister actually laughing at his own ambassador in the room when the President made a joke - I think it’s untenable,” Ms Ley said.
Mr Rudd is a survivor and unlikely to be moved over this encounter. But he will sure be hoping for a few less laughs and few more words from his boss, and mate, the Prime Minister.