US President Donald Trump has taken to his favourite medium of Twitter to blast the media for what he claims is “fake news” over reports of his recent, tense phone call with Aussie PM Malcolm Turnbull.
On Thursday of this week, The Washington Post reported that the call, in which the two leaders touched on a proposed refugee swap between Australia and the United States, did not go very well.
An “insider” told the Post that Trump accused Turnbull of trying to export the “next Boston bombers” to the US and abruptly ended what should have been an hour-long conversation after 25 minutes.
After the story broke, Turnbull did a round of damage control interviews insisting that the call had ended “courteously”, while Trump, of course, hit Twitter to rail against the “dumb” deal.
Be that as it may, Trump is now trying to smooth over his latest diplomatic incident, insisting that the call was “civil” and thanking his Aussie counterpart for “telling the truth” about it.
Thank you to Prime Minister of Australia for telling the truth about our very civil conversation that FAKE NEWS media lied about. Very nice!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2017
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters yesterday that America would honour the refugee swap deal, struck in the final days of the Obama administration, “in some way.”
“We’re going to vet these people in accordance with the agreement that happened and we’ll continue to have further updates as we do,” said Spicer, who also mistook Joe Hockey for the Australian PM and referred to Turnbull as “Trumble.”
It is presumed that, if refugees from Manus and Nauru arrive in America, they will be subject to the “extreme vetting” process set out in Trump’s recent executive order on US immigration.
Source: ABC News.
Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty.
