Tim Blair: Rudd’s situation is untenable and there’s no-one to blame but himself

His arrogance led him to dismiss Donald Trump in the crudest terms but our Kevin happens not to be the greatest healer himself, as anyone who endured his time as Labor leader and PM will recall, writes Tim Blair.

Anthony Albanese’s appointment of Kevin Rudd as our ambassador to the US in late 2022 initially seemed a brilliant strategy.

At a stroke, Albanese not only cut Rudd out of the domestic political scene but also forced the ex-PM to effectively take a vow of diplomatic silence.

Win/win for Albo. Win/win for Australia.

But with even more anti-Trump attacks now emerging from Rudd’s past, the only sensible option is to terminate his official role in the US, bring him home and put him in a Rudd-sized soundproof chamber somewhere deep below the Parliament House carpark.

The bloke’s situation is untenable, and he has nobody to blame but himself.

Anthony Albanese’s appointment of Kevin Rudd as our ambassador to the US in late 2022 initially seemed a brilliant strategy.

Rudd’s arrogance led him to dismiss former and returning US President Donald Trump in the crudest terms. Our celebrated peak-level negotiator evidently never considered how those insults might come back to bite him.

Indeed, following Trump’s defeat in 2020, Rudd must have thought he’d never have to answer for describing Trump as “the most destructive president in history”, someone who “drags America and democracy through the mud” and “thrives on fomenting, not healing, division”.

Our Kevin happens not to be the greatest healer himself, as anyone who endured his time as Labor leader and PM will recall.

And Rudd certainly wasn’t in healing mode when he lashed out at Trump and the US in footage now exposed by Sky News.

Ambassador of Australia to the United States, Hon Kevin Rudd, at his residence in Washington DC. Source - Twitter

The first slab of unearthed slurs came from January 2021, when Rudd spoke online with Indian politician Dr Shashi Tharoor. “The United States, in the past four years, has been run by a village idiot,” Rudd said.

The entire US, he continued, had become “increasingly incompetent in its national statecraft under Trump”. Rudd gave China’s communist dictatorship a tick, however, saying it was “continuing to be competent”.

And there was worse to come in April 2022, just a few months before the announcement that Rudd would be our main man in the US.

Rudd in Washington DC. Picture: Noah Willman

“Donald Trump had a habit of wanting to shred most of the allies in terms of their political standing,” Rudd told a political science webinar at North Carolina’s Duke University, “and cause doubted uncertainty as to whether he’d actually have their back if a crisis emerged.”

Let’s rewind again and look at comments I made in late 2022, at the time of Rudd’s US appointment: “Albanese has satisfied Rudd’s ego by bestowing upon him a fancy title and also subtracted him from Australia’s political conversation.

“It could be a genius move, if it works.”

It didn’t. Get Rudd out of there and replace him with someone – anyone – who isn’t equipped with an active self-destruction system.