Imagine, just for one second, that Hillary Clinton was elected President. The (literal and on-the-nose) glass ceiling would have shattered, Pauline Hanson wouldn’t be grinning like the Cheshire Cat on crack, and we would’ve been able to see if Donald Trump was as gracious a loser as he is a winner.
But that didn’t happen, and the world is fairly shook. Questions about why this happened and what this means for Australia are rightly being asked, but it looks like old mate Tony Abbott is straight-up using this shock election to relaunch his own leadership goals.
Congrats to the new president who appreciates that middle America is sick of being taken for granted.
— Tony Abbott (@TonyAbbottMHR) November 9, 2016
In an interview with Radio National‘s Fran Kelly this morning, the former Prime Minister excused Trump’s wildly racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and general garbage comments about almost every minority made during his campaign, saying that we should judge him instead by his record as president.
“In the end, people are not voting for a saint, or even for a role model, they’re voting for a leader. This was someone they thought would be strong, this was someone they thought would address their real concerns.”
Abbott made the same point as everyone else – that Trump had tapped into the disenfranchised American voters – but did it in a way that sounds *remarkably* like he might be talking about, idk, himself.
“If people are unhappy with conventional standard bearers, they will find new standard bearers. If you don’t have strong centre right party, a strong and sensible centre right party, people who are looking for what might be broadly described as conservative positions will find other voices to represent them. I think this is something that mainstream politicians ignore at their peril.”
Kelly obviously picked up on that, pointing out that Abbott – who embodies all of the above – failed in the polls, to which Abbott replied: “Trump was constantly failing in the polls!”
Abbott then took aim at political correctness, which is nothing new, but he’s predictably now subscribing to Cory Bernardi‘s theory of the “silent majority”. (He was also quoted by the Daily Telegraph‘s Simon Benson today as saying that Trump’s win was “a poke in the eye with a burnt stick for the politically correct everywhere”, so ya know. Good fun.)
“Both the UK vote last year, the Brexit vote this year, and the Trump vote this year are a good sign that we should not be ruled by polls. Because what we’ve seen in all three cases were people who weren’t upfront with the pollsters, because they saw the kind of excoriation that the non-politically correct were getting, and obviously didn’t want to tell pollsters what they really thought.”
Sounds exactly like something an unpopular politician would say, imo.
The rest of the interview pipped along with a sledging of 18C, a praising of Turnbull’s return to traditional Liberal issues like border security over innovation (sounds…. familiar), and a final question from Kelly: is it true that he wants to return to cabinet?
“Well look, I’m in the parliament, I’m here to serve, I’m very happy being the best possible member for Warringah. As a former Prime Minister, from time-to-time there are national or even international issues where I might speak out, and uh, that’s keeping me pretty busy right now.”
So, yes.
“I’m not *asking* to be promoted, I’m just seeking to do the best job that I can.”
Definitely yes.
For better or worse, it really is Trump’s world now, and Tony’s definitely living in it.
Watch / listen to his full interview below:
Photo: Getty / Mark Metcalfe.
