Everyone’s favourite former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has found himself a delightful little niche in Australian politics from his position on backbench: a cheeky warrior for the hard-right elements who despise Malcolm Turnbull. When he was knifed, he promised no sniping or undermining, but he’s absolutely been doing that.
His latest angle?
Trump ain’t so bad. After the
NSW Parliament passed a motion condemning Trump as a
“revolting slug”, Abbott popped up on
Paul Murray‘s show on
Sky News to defend the erstwhile Republican candidate. You’d think that
right now, when Trump is facing escalating claims of sexual harassment and assault, would be a weird time for an
Australian intervention. You’d be wrong, folks.
Abbott points out that Clinton‘s claim that Trump supporters are a “basket of deplorables” is inaccurate – that they’re decent people who just want a change in the country. This is almost certainly the case: there are lots of hopeless people who see something in the Trump campaign that Clinton isn’t offering. But Abbott is also suggesting that many Trump policies are “reasonable” and “sound”.
He does point out that Trump’s leaked comments are “gross” and “absolutely disgusting” but stresses that Trump’s treatment of women is not necessarily disqualifying when it comes to those aforementioned “sound” policies.
Nice. It’s pretty clear Abbott is carving out a section of the Coalition base that the cosmpolitan (and uterrly inept) Turnbull can’t capture, and it’s a bit of a concern, tbh. Does rousing up the far-right count as undermining? I reckon it probably does.
While you ponder that, you should also ponder the greatest tweet ever made about Paul Murray:
Source: Sky News.
