The Transcript Of President Trump’s Combative Phone Call With The Australian Prime Minister Is Really Something

Back in early February, the freshly-inaugurated President Trump had already barreled into the Oval Office like a gold-plated freight train. Details of his get-to-know-you conversations with foreign leaders began to surface, including how he reportedly hung up on Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull after growing huffy about a refugee program, which Trump described as “the worst deal ever.” Now, the Washington Post has obtained the transcript of this phone call (along with that of his introductory talk with Mexico’s president, which we’ll discuss below) with Turnbull, and the discussion was even more combative than previously imagined.

In the call, Trump did indeed describe his call with Vladimir Putin as “pleasant” but slammed his talk with Turnbull as “the most unpleasant call all day.” Why? For starters, Trump slammed the Obama plan to allow 1,200 Australian refugees into the country, got the math wrong, and then bragged about himself while handing Turnbull a supposed compliment:

“This is going to kill me,” he said to Turnbull. “I am the world’s greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. And now I am agreeing to take 2,000 people.”

At one point, Trump expressed admiration for Australia’s refusal to allow refugees arriving on boats to reach its shores, saying it “is a good idea. We should do that too.” In a remark apparently meant as a compliment, Trump told Turnbull, “You are worse than I am.”

And then things grew bizarre when Trump talked about how “bad” these refugees are, and in the process, he dropped a weird “milk people” comment:

“I hate taking these people,” Trump said. “I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people” — an apparent reference to U.S. dairy farms.

The comment is already causing a stir on Twitter like so:

https://twitter.com/Bo_Bartley/status/893104442802876416

The transcripts obtained by WaPo also detail how Trump argued with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto over his country’s flat-out refusal to pay for Trump’s bad hombre-busting wall (and he attempted to dictate what Nieto said to the public). At the same time, Trump also curiously told Nieto that the Wall was the “least important thing” but “the most important” in a political sense. He then bragged to Nieto about winning New Hampshire because it’s “a drug-infested den,” but people are quickly pointing out that Trump may have won New Hampshire in the Republican primaries, yet he lost the state to Hillary Clinton in the general election.

Well, Trump was speaking gibberish as usual, but he does know his base. In that sense, he hinted to Nieto that he doesn’t really see the Wall as ultimately important, but he knows that a failure to build it could further sink him.

(Via Washington Post)