Opinion
God help us! Morrison cosying up to Trump is weird, but it could soon get weirder
Nick Bryant
Journalist and authorA former porn star. A former president. And now a former Australian prime minister. Just when it seemed the dramatis personae surrounding the Trump trial in New York could not get any wackier or circus-like, Scott Morrison pops up in midtown Manhattan in a display of Trumpian mateship with his old pal “DJT”.
Both men, of course, have recently been spruiking Christian book titles: Trump his God Bless The USA Bible, which retails at $US59.99, and Morrison his Plans For Your Good: A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness. Fittingly then, there was something almost quasi-religious about their summit.
Shame about the “pile-on”: Donald Trump with Scott Morrison at the former president’s penthouse apartment in Trump Tower.
The golden doors of the penthouse apartment in Trump Tower that formed the backdrop for their photograph together could easily be mistaken for the Ark of the Covenant. A swath of recent polls point to the Second Coming of “The Donald”. Morrison even gave voice to the gospel according to Trump. “It was nice to catch up again,” he noted afterwards on X, “especially given the pile-on he is currently dealing with in the US.”
“Pile-on” was a reference presumably to the four separate criminal prosecutions being mounted against the former president, which include charges relating to his attempt on January 6, 2021, to violently overturn the outcome of the 2020 election.
Forgiveness has always been an article of Christian faith. But judging from the tenor of Morrison’s remarks, he does not appear to think that Trump has done anything wrong. Later, in an interview with the ABC, the book of Morrison again appeared to mimic the book of Trump: that the former president is the victim of a Democratic witch-hunt.
“Politics is played pretty brutally here as it is back in Australia,” Morrison said. “And you know, when you see that being played out in institutions like the courts, that concerns me.”
To others I will leave the task of deconstructing in detail Trump’s thoughts on AUKUS. According to Morrison, the nuclear submarine deal he negotiated with the Biden administration evidently received a “warm reception” from the former president.
But who knows whether Trump’s response can be taken at face value. During his first term in the White House, on matters peripheral to his thinking, Trump had a habit of being swayed by the last person he spoke to. More significantly, he tended to regard any pact he had not personally negotiated as being, by definition, a lousy deal – although, given the exorbitant sums that Australia is willing to stump up for America’s nuclear technology, that is harder to argue with AUKUS.
More curious, to me at least, is what Morrison’s visit to the US tells us about the enduring impact of the “Trump effect” on global politics, and of how, even after the insurrection of January 6, the abnormal is being normalised.
Consider, for example, another event on Morrison’s East Coast itinerary, a book launch in Washington DC that resembled a reunion of the Trump administration. Kellyanne Conway was there. She’s the former White House aide famed for introducing the notorious phrase “alternative facts” into the political lexicon. Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo – now a business associate of Morrison’s – was also in attendance. He was memorably described by a former US ambassador in the pages of The New Yorker as being “like a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass”.
Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo (left), Scott Morrison, and Kellyanne Conway.Credit: Farrah Tomazin
Former vice president Mike Pence, who should be commended for defying Trump’s orders to overturn the election result on January 6 and for refusing to endorse his former boss in the upcoming election, also addressed the gathering.
Yet, as well as the guest list, what was noteworthy was the venue and the host: the Australian embassy in Washington and another former prime minister, ambassador Kevin Rudd. Morrison, a Pentecostal conservative, clearly feels at home on “Planet Trump”. But the Labor government, and its diplomatic emissaries, now have to countenance working within that orbit, with all the lip-biting and moral concessions that involves.
Trump recently predicted that Rudd “won’t be there long” after Nigel Farage, during an interview on GB News, presented him some of the ambassador’s previous critical comments – which included calling him a “traitor to the West” and “the most destructive president in history”. Yet, if Trump wins in November, the Albanese government will have little choice but to play nice. Going all the way with AUKUS gives it no alternative.
“ScoMo”, of course, is yesterday’s man, so the question of whether he has righteous qualms about embracing someone who launched such a brazen attack on democracy, and who boasted of sexually molesting women, is of less contemporary consequence. But the sight of a former prime minister cosying up to Trump serves as a perturbing reminder that the present-day prime minister might soon find himself having to assume the same position.
Nick Bryant, a former BBC Washington correspondent, is the author of the forthcoming book, The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict With Itself.