Almost daily, social media produces one of its more durable fantasy genres:
“If Donald Trump ran in Australia, he’d win in a landslide.”
Many are followed with pleas that Australians are desperate for a “strong, decisive leader” and thoroughly fed up with Anthony Albanese.
This is an interesting theory, given that Anthony Albanese won the May 2025 election in a landslide – the kind of electoral result normally interpreted as “most voters would quite like him to continue.”
But never mind reality. Social media has feelings.
The argument goes like this: Australians are secretly yearning for Trump-style leadership – tough, uncompromising, business-minded, allergic to nuance, and deeply suspicious of experts, minorities, journalists, judges, and sometimes democracy itself.
One wonders where this hidden constituency was when Australians:
- voted for universal healthcare and continue to defend it ferociously
- rejected American-style culture wars at the ballot box
- punished leaders who flirted with Trumpism by… voting them out
Australia does not have ICE raids because Australians would riot.
Australia does not privatise healthcare because Australians would riot.
Australia does not tolerate leaders openly threatening journalists because – and there’s a pattern here – Australians would riot.
The people insisting Trump would “clean up” in Australia are usually the same people who:
- hate Medicare
- admire the U.S. Supreme Court’s post-Roe handiwork
- think unions are a communist plot
- and believe “strong leadership” means no one telling you no
In other words, they are not describing Australia.
They are describing a country they wish Australia were.
There is also a curious misunderstanding of what Australians mean by strong.
Australians like leaders who:
- don’t scream constantly
- don’t treat politics like a wrestling promo
- don’t appoint family members or loyalists to senior roles
- don’t attempt coups when they lose elections
Decisive leadership in Australia looks like quietly getting on with governing, not threatening to jail opponents on social media at 3am.
Trump-style politics has been tested here. Repeatedly.
It failed. Repeatedly.
Tony Abbott tried the culture-war hardline. That didn’t work out.
Scott Morrison tried grievance, secrecy, and executive overreach. Lost – badly.
Peter Dutton moved right, then further right, then kept walking. Lost even worse.
And yet the fantasy persists: This time, Australians would love it.
No, we wouldn’t.
We’ve already told them – at the ballot box, loudly and clearly – that we don’t want American politics imported wholesale, particularly the bits involving healthcare roulette, militarised policing, and leaders who confuse loyalty with obedience.
If Donald Trump ran in Australia, he wouldn’t win in a landslide.
He’d lose – and then claim the election was rigged, the media was corrupt, the courts were biased, and the voters were ungrateful.
Which, come to think of it, might make him feel right at home on social media – just not in Australia.
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Pretty well sums it up, I think.
Of course, there IS a minor cohort that we could say is sort of pro-Trumpist. Many in this cohort tend to support the policy-free zones inhabited by the One Nation party and the hard-right fringes of society. Fortunately, much of that small minority of folk are relatively harmless. Angry old white men with lower levels of general education and limited worldview seem to make up much of that group, though there are also some out there with fairly nasty views on what society ought to be, and how to go about making it that way. Many of these are already on the domestic watch-list by law enforcement and other institutions.
But in general, we tend to be a tolerant, peaceful lot who just want our governments to get on quietly governing the country without the drama and pointless effervescence of Trumpism.
Radio ABC RN this afternoon (040226) reported that Clive Palmer was making approaches to the NOtional$ offering to fund their future. Perhaps this is why NOtional$ misleader Divot Proudless has been so misogynist demanding the three (3) former NOtional$ Shadow Ministers for Inhibiting Regional Development be re-instated as if nothing had happened ….. regardless of the principle of Cabinet solidarity.
Oops!! Sill me!! Thinking that any NOtional$ MP understood any Parliamentary convention that did not suit their personal pecuniary interests. After the now re-located Beetrooter demonstrated that laying the juniors staff was part of the unwritten job description to work with the Notional$.
The Only-Nutters Porelein Handjob crew is racing to implement TACO Trumpery policies after the 2028 feral elections when James Ashby will be promoted to party leader after Porelein retires from indeterminate old age. Beetrooter will need more than an adulterous relationship to overcome this impediment.
Just think what the NOtional$ could do with a $60 MILLION voting budget. They may even be able to convince thinking city voters that siting a nuclear reactor on Ben Buckler Headland will have no effect on surfing at Bondi. Such is the power of the Australian Mainstream Media Manipulation Monopoly.
Certainly the number of thinking Australian voters are becoming disappointed with the snail-like speed of legislative reform and holding previous politicians to account for their inept & uncaring ”(mis-)management” of Robodebt, the Five Secret Ministries forming the first democratically elected dictatorship receiving Royal Assent at a bargain price of about $17 MILLION PA from the then gg and the $368 BILLION USUKA sub debacle for post-politics employment opportunities.
However, Australians seldom remain politically stupid, and the ALBANESE LABOR GOVERNMENT 2025 BIG VICTORY remains as a clear indication that eventually even Blind Freddie sees through the bull manure propaganda that the former COALition is ”the best managers of the national economy”.
Hi Jim, wouldn’t it be nice if we had a government who didn’t fold to the latest pressure from whatever source, and instead, govern in the interests of the whole country, instead of today’s beat up?
“tolerant, peaceful lot?”Who will be soon not allowed to protest peacefully on account of a foreign country’s genocide?
Trump is only one part of the problem. Evening Cocky,You’re in line for State representation.
Giday Harry.
Instead of saying ‘tolerant’, perhaps I ought to have said ‘apathetic’.
I follow your point.
Thankyou – a good summary of what we do and believe politically here in Oz. At least most of us.
And the comments above are also relevant.
I find it interesting that the few people I know who like “trumpism” cannot answer basic questions such as:
– How will you pay for her treatment if your daughter gets breast cancer?
– Do you really want untrained, armed bullies roaming the streets and accosting people because of their skin colour?
– Wasn’t your Grandfather an immigrant?
– Didn’t your disabled son get caught up in robodebt?
– How will your daughter afford to pay for her engineering degree?
And others…..
“If Donald Trump ran in Australia, he’d win in a landslide.” Ah, no he wouldn’t. We saw through the giant steaming pile of bullshit that is now the LNP Minus the N Party and savaged them to being a gang of inconsequential whining squabbling little children. The same would happen to The Trump.
Here you go Roswell, try and top this from Demento Donnie Dinky Dick:
https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/2018808756625166417
Thanks, GL. That had me screaming, “WTF!”
I’m not known for my screaming, so this is new territory for me.
I enjoyed it.
It would be great if those keyboard warriors would actually involve in politics, join a party, attend real meetings, discuss real issues, talk to real people.
They then may find that people actually like what governments, local, state, federal do, build the infrastructure for growing populations, roads, railways, water supplies, hospitals and so forth.
Yesterday I met with my 95 year old neighbour who needed a bit of work done, she told me she liked Pauline Hanson and her stance on immigration. I asked her about her last 9 week hospital stay and who looked after her. She agreed that some of the ‘coloured’ people treated her well, the doctors and nurses, even the cleaning staff.
She did not know that those people would not be welcome here if Pauline had her way.
Roswell,
I’ve heard that Roy Cohn upon meeting The Donald realised that he was a moron and that if he was eating (when he wasn’t talking) his brain would start to work. So he spent years training Donnie to speak through his anal sphincter to prevent such a catastrophe and make a pile cash at the same time.
Yes, I paraphrased a bit of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Most of the uneducated supporters of PHON are like that Bert. You could ask your neighbour how she paid for her hospital stay. “coloured” people ??? Give me a country full of immigrants who value the life they can make here, rather than the nasty little grubs who place themselves on a higher rung in life.
Trump shared fixer Roy Cohn in ’80s New York with Murdoch….
Of course that fucking racist scumbag saw the whole thing before he posted it. Cops heavy flak, blames a most likely non-existent someone else (what else is new) and in a panic deletes it.
““I looked at it, I saw it and I just looked at the first part,” the president said. “I didn’t see the whole thing; I guess during the end of it there was some kind of a [thing] that people don’t like. I wouldn’t like it either. But I didn’t see it, I just, I looked at the first part … then I gave it to the people. Generally they look at the whole thing, but I guess somebody didn’t and they posted – and we took it down.”
Asked whether he would apologize, as even Republican officials have suggested he should, Trump bristled. “No, I didn’t make a mistake,” the president who approved the posting of a racist meme on his social media account said. “I mean you give, I look at a lot of, thousands of things,” he added,…”
@12.11 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/feb/06/trump-barack-obama-michelle-truth-social-epstein-latest-news-updates