UPDATE: WHITE HOUSE SAYS CALL WAS ‘CORDIAL’ – Australian PM says Trump did NOT hang up on him

by The Right Scoop

UPDATE: White House says phone call was ‘cordial’:

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Apparently there has been more fake news coming from leaks about a phone call Trump had with the Australian PM yesterday. The call is being described as hostile and it’s been reported that Trump even hung up on the Australian leader.

It should be first pointed out that Trump indeed doesn’t like the deal Obama made with Australia and even tweeted about it:

Sky News reports:

The future of the refugee deal between the United States and Australia remains unclear after President Donald Trump tweeted that the agreement is ‘a dumb deal.’

‘Do you believe it? The Obama administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia.Why? I will study this dumb deal!’ he wrote.

The comments come after revelations from the The Washington Post of a phone call between Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Donald Trump that was cut abruptly short after verbal clashes between the two leaders.

The report says the PM and President Trump came to verbal blows over the refugee deal the Australian government secured with the Obama administration.

But Turnbull says the call did not end abruptly and Trump didn’t hang up on him. He even said Trump agreed to honor Obama’s agreement to take the illegals, despite his tweet against the deal:

Malcolm Turnbull says despite a fiery tweet by Donald Trump today blasting a refugee agreement between Australia and the United States as a dumb deal, the US president has confirmed to him that he’ll honour it.

The prime minister has told Macquarie radio that the president’s press spokesman and the US embassy have also confirmed Mr Trump will honour the deal.

Mr Turnbull also denied Donald Trump hung up on him.

‘I want to make one observation about it, the report the president hung up is not correct, the call ended courteously.’

The Post quotes Trump as labelling the agreement ‘the worst deal ever’ and that he called the phone call the worst he had all day.

When asked by reporters about the exchange Prime Minister Turnbull refused to comment other than what he had already said.

‘I’m not going to comment on that report other than, as was already confirmed by the President’s official spokesman and the White House, that the President would honour the agreement we had with the White House,’ Mr Turnbull said.

Here’s a video of some of his comments:

It is interesting that Turnbull didn’t address the tone of the call. Given Trump’s tweet, I think it’s fair to assume he communicated his dislike of the deal to Turnbull. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the call was hostile. Turnbull apparently didn’t want to comment on the call at all, so I wouldn’t read too much into this.

In any event, it’s clear that Trump has a bad ‘leak’ issue somewhere in the administration and it’s likely in the State Department. Someone clearly wants Trump to look bad. I expect that will be one of Tillerson’s first duties, to weed the leakers out.


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