(NewsReady.com) – Malcolm Turnbull served as Australia’s prime minister from 2015 to 2018. He didn’t have the best relationship with former President Donald Trump during the time their terms overlapped. Now, he’s issuing a warning about the Republican frontrunner.
During “Q+A” on ABC News Australia, Turnbull claimed Trump was a “terrifying” threat to democracy. He said that the former US president’s alleged embrace of autocrats like Russian President Vladimir Putin was “creepy.”
Turnbull said that Trump and his party are “sympathetic” to Putin, and they aren’t “committed to democracy” any longer. He expressed concern that the world is going to have to deal with authoritarians in Russia and China, then wondered what the US would look like under the former president again.
The former prime minister claimed Trump behaved like a “12-year-old boy who goes to high school and meets the captain of the football team” when he was around Putin. Turnbull said it was like the 45th POTUS was meeting his “hero.” He said, “It [was] really creepy… the creepiness was palpable.”
Turnbull made a bold claim that the Republican leader is “attracted to dictators and tyrants.” He accused Trump of wanting to destroy America’s relationships with its allies. That’s a claim that plagued the former president during his first term, as well.
Trump and Turnbull had an infamous phone call days after the ex-POTUS was inaugurated in 2017. During the call, Trump attacked Turnbull for a refugee agreement he made with former President Barack Obama. The US president told his Australian counterpart that it was “the worst call by far” that day. The two men were supposed to speak to one another for an hour, but Trump ended the call just 25 minutes into it.
In the years after Turnbull left office, he spoke out against Trump repeatedly. In his memoir, the former prime minister called him a bully.
It appears Trump will win the GOP nomination and could be elected again. Turnbull doesn’t have anything to worry about this time around, because he’s no longer prime minister and has no power, so Trump has no reason to ever speak to him again if he doesn’t want to.
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