Donald Trump, fresh off a golf club victory lap, turned a press conference into a WWE smackdown segment. The target? Kevin Rudd – Australia’s silver-tongued ex-PM turned ambassador – who was called out for his old Twitter burns labelling Trump a “traitor to the West.” The president, ever the showman, fired back with a classic: “I don’t like you either, and probably never will.” The room erupted, Anthony Albanese included, because it was peak Trump theatre. Later, cool and composed, Rudd apologised off-mic, and Trump waved it off with a magnanimous “all is forgiven.” The actual business – a deal on critical minerals, AUKUS humming along – got done. An awkward, but functional, diplomatic encounter.
Enter Sussan Ley. The Liberal leader and self-appointed guardian of diplomatic dignity hit the airwaves on Sky News and ABC, clutching her pearls as if witnessing the Hindenburg disaster. She declared Rudd’s position “untenable” and demanded his immediate recall, even blaming him for the nine-month wait for the meeting. This, despite Rudd having spent those months grinding on the very AUKUS subs and minerals deals that just unlocked an $8.5 billion pipeline.
But the real masterstroke was her snipe that Albanese’s laughter at the “joke” proved he was mocking his own man. As if the PM’s guffaw was the real betrayal, not the geopolitical slight.
It was a scene straight out of a bad sequel to All the President’s Men. Instead of Woodward and Bernstein, Sky News hosts clutched their mics like holy relics, breathlessly declaring the “Rudd Reckoning.” Ley strode in as the avenging heroine, backed by the full-throated roar of the Murdoch machine, transforming a cheeky, off-the-cuff zinger into a five-alarm diplomatic fire. “Untenable!” they cried in unison, as if Rudd’s old tweets were the true reason tariffs exist and AUKUS subs are late.
Meanwhile, the actual win – that shiny critical minerals deal and the billions it unlocks for Aussie exports – was relegated to a footnote in the fine print, if it was mentioned at all.
But for Sussan Ley, this appeasement calculus has no limits. Ditch Rudd? A given. But why stop there? If Trump grumbles about tariffs, sack the entire trade team. If he dislikes our climate policy, fire the environment minister. And if he were to tweet that Vegemite is “low energy,” you can bet Ley would demand we rename it “Freedom Spread.”
It’s the classic opposition playbook: take a lighthearted jab and inflate it into a full-blown crisis, ignore the tangible wins (like that critical minerals deal, which Foreign Minister Penny Wong credits directly to Rudd’s hustle), and then posture as the only adult cleaning up Labor’s mess. Never mind that Wong rightly called Trump’s line “tongue-in-cheek,” or that former ambassador Dennis Richardson pointed out JD Vance trashed Trump far more viciously before becoming his VP – and no one demanded his recall.
Online, the backlash to Ley’s backlash was a meme-filled reality check. One user quipped that her position looks more “untenable” than Rudd’s, a sentiment that echoed as Barnaby Joyce bailed on recontesting his seat (he swears it’s not a dig at her). Another roasted Sky News for looping the clip with the gravitas of the moon landing, turning a single chuckle into geostrategic Armageddon. Let’s be fair dinkum: Kevin Rudd is a survivor who has navigated far rougher waters than a Trumpian zinger.
When the dust settles, this manufactured “scandal” reveals far more about Sussan Ley’s own leadership wobbles than any flaw in Rudd’s resume. The reality is simple: Trump has moved on, the critical deals are signed, and the Australia-US alliance remains rock-solid. But if Ley continues to chase these phantom crises, she might soon need her own personal ambassador – to the backbench.
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Can’t add much to that Roswell,elastic mouth might as well be writing her own obituary.Of course, it’s a given that Murdoch’s Farce wouldn’t threaten a Year six faux debate,about the same level as the current opposition shambles.
And an unfond farewell to Wombat Joyce.
As Roswell noted, Vice President Vance said many more offensive things about his boss in the days before Trump was elected – here’s a selection:
Vance was a strong opponent to Trump’s policies, even referring to him as, potentially, “America’s Hitler.”
“I’m a Never Trump guy,” Vance said in an interview with Charlie Rose in 2016, according to Politico. “I never liked him.”
As Trump continued to campaign, Vance amped up the messaging, warning on NPR that Trump was “leading the white working class to a very dark place,” with campaign promises that ranged from “immoral to absurd” (as he wrote in USA Today).
In April of 2016, he wrote in the New York Times that Trump was “unfit for our nation’s highest office.”
He went even further in a July 2016 opinion piece for The Atlantic, titled “An Opioid for the Masses,” Vance wrote of Trump’s big campaign promises, “He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein … Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.”
He wrote on Twitter (and has since deleted) posts that called Trump “reprehensible” and condemned him for fomenting fear and division. In another since-deleted Twitter post used against him by his senate race opponents, he wrote of Trump, “My god what an idiot.”
He sent his former law school roommate a private message on Facebook, which was shared at the time of the 2022 midterms, saying, in part (per the Ohio Capital Journal), “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”
Like Rudd, JD Vance has since withdrawn these observations or apologised so is his position as Vice President untenable?
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks”
TRUMP SET UP – AUSTRALIA NOW IN A MOST PRECARIOUS POSITION
Disgusting behaviour and deals once again by Trump who is playing like an 8 year old bully in the school playground on the world stage and Albanese has walked right into the lion’s den – and it is not what it seems. And in the process Trump and his administration have set Australia up for another confrontation with China – the transaction. Australia once again America’s vassal State to take the heat. US will ditch us long before the AUKUS agreement will ever see the light of the day and the cowardly Albanese Labor Government and kamikaze LNP Opposition have walked right into the trap.
We have no argument with China, we have every right to feel bullied, set up and mockingly deceived and disavowed by Trump and the US. This rare Earth’s metal signing was a set up and masquerade, how our ambassador was treated the true intent of Trump’s administration to put us in the firing line – yet another proxy for America’s wars against the world and anyone who Trump perceives to be his meal ticket.
Listen to how the ABC (Australia) the morning after, who have portrayed this meeting almost the opposite in both respects, and deeply misinformed and disturbing – how blind can our Public Broadcaster be! News Corp’s gutless press all over it as we would expect it to be.
IT WAS A DIPLOMATIC INCIDENT AND A VERY GRIEVOUS ONE WITH SEVERE UNDERTONES!
There is some hope with sensible critique coming out of America but not from the Trump administration, Republican or Democrats parties and usual media culprits. Check out this YouTube clip – Trump ERUPTS on LIVE TV in NIGHTMARE PRESSER – Pondering Politics, 21 October 2025 https://youtu.be/7x_qY_EkDac?si=9VdiNO97umc16Fzw
…and who was the journalist (in this YouTube clip) and media group he represents, prompting this whole of administration and press conference response and public mockery? Absolute arse hole just like the monster he deliberately triggered – So now you have it – Trump’s agenda is a set up and Australia has just been screwed, mocked and abused.
KEATING THE STATESMAN UNPLUGGED – Interview with Laura Tingle https://www.facebook.com/reel/2021490448639686
Top response from Paul Keating, the only ex-Prime Minister or Statesman in Australia who is talking any sense, with the exception of the Greens and Independents, and of course they have been neither despite the policy sense and critique they make.
Labor appears to have lost the plot on foreign policy period, LNP never had it, the Australian MSM are toxic undermining our sovereignty asking the wrong questions including our key Public Broadcaster.
Everyone should be listening to Paul Keating, the only one talking sense, sees the writing on the wall and the courage to tell it.
China is and never has been our enemy, but America is sucking us dry economically, politically and militarily, mocking us under Trump, setting us up as a proxy battler for its paranoia and abuse of China. There will be no AUKUS subs, they will be useless in defence of Australia, they will put us deeply in debt, they are America’s attack dogs making us a target, compromising our sovereignty, and USA under Trump or not will dump and disavow us when their dirty deed has been completed. Why is Australia so blind to the hegemony and abuse meted out by the USA on us, on China, indeed the whole world over.
I think the problem is with Marles’ right-faction. They want the kick backs and are on an ideological crusade on people who are not right wing in their opinions.
Lookat the vile mess the ABC has become
Anyone that thinks this deal was done by Oz & US without a tango or two and a natter on the sidelines with China is dwelling in the hasty dramas of the war hawks.
On might have noticed T-Rump recently shifting ground in that arena with China, saying to the effect, “everything is fine with Xi” and “We know the China won’t invade Taiwan militarily to subjugate it.”
The deal is beneficial to the world’s entire techno supply-chain, and won’t faze China in the least, as it well knows its capture of the market for the time being won’t suffice.
Yes, Clackka, but why must Australia be bankrolling the US refusal to fix its revenue issues, let alone all their other gross attitudes and actions across the world.