Andrew Bolt: Forcing Kevin Rudd on Donald Trump is not in Australia’s interests

Sending Kevin Rudd to Donald Trump to ask for favours for Australia makes about as much sense as sending a cat to a dog pound.

Some people still can’t accept the world has changed, and silly Trump-hating Kevin Rudd must now quit as our ambassador to the United States.

So let me repeat what they just can’t process. Wakey, wakey. Donald Trump just got elected president.

If you think that doesn’t make Rudd a dud – after he’s called Trump a “village idiot”, “nuts” “traitor to the West” and “the most destructive president in history” – you really are a Trump denier.

I don’t mean only Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who personally picked his mate and still insists he’s “terrific” and must stay.

I also read, for instance, Paul Kelly, editor-at-large of The Australian, writing on Wednesday that people like me wanting Rudd dumped are suffering “Trump Appeasement Syndrome” and are – gasp – unpatriotic.

Yes, really: “This shows a contempt for Australian sovereignty and a craven weakness before Trump … We must look a sad, pathetic little country.”

Pardon?

Kevin Rudd’s days in Washington are surely numbered. Picture: Noah Willman

You’ll hardly need me to tell you anyone writing that clearly never wanted or expected Trump to win, and – like many Rudd defenders now – is having trouble adjusting to Orange Man’s landslide victory.

Sure enough, Kelly has himself called Trump a “mean, loathsome, morally compromised person” and said tackling Kamala Harris and her agenda “seems beyond him”.

Except it wasn’t, and here we are. Rage all you like, guys, but Trump’s in and Rudd must be out.

If you were in any doubt Rudd must go, look what happened in the hours after Kelly filed his piece, rallying to Rudd like General Custer to Last Stand Hill.

Trump’s former White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, told me “Rudd is going to have some problems” and should be replaced because Trump “will not forget” Rudd’s insults.

Dan Scavino, a senior adviser on Trump’s campaign this year and a former Deputy Chief of Staff at Trump’s White House, even mocked Rudd by pinning at the top of his X feed Rudd’s statement last week announcing he’d just deleted – too late! – his abuse of Trump from his social media accounts.

Scavino added just one thing – a gif of an hourglass with the sand running out.

https://t.co/gZgn50AWYipic.twitter.com/ieUTiYW6bG

— Dan Scavino Jr.🇺🇸🦅 (@DanScavino) November 12, 2024

SBS reported that under this headline: “Trump adviser makes cryptic post about Kevin Rudd’s role as ambassador to the US.”

“Cryptic”? As cryptic as a sledgehammer.

And unsurprising. Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara, head of the Republican National Committee, already warned two weeks ago Rudd was a problem and “maybe we want to choose somebody else”.

Trump himself said earlier this year that Rudd seemed “not the brightest bulb”.

It does not show “contempt for Australian sovereignty” to conclude that sending Rudd to Trump and his team to ask for favours for our country makes as much sense as sending a cat to a dog pound.

In fact, the opposite. It shows a contempt for Australia’s interests to insist on ramming Rudd down Trump’s throat, especially when Albanese is already pleading with Trump in their first phone call to exclude Australia in his plan to hit imports with big new tariffs.

That’s just pig-headed. It’s not as if standing by Rudd is defending important Australian values. It’s not like, say, sending a female ambassador to a Muslim country, or a long-time human rights campaigner to Beijing.

We wouldn’t be defending our interests, just Rudd’s idiocy – his appalling misjudgment of Trump, and his childish abuse.

Donald Trump has referred to Kevin Rudd as “not the brightest bulb”. Picture: AFP

But Rudd actually fails as ambassador on two fronts. Not only isn’t he not the man to sell us to America, he’s also not one Albanese can trust to interpret America to Australia. He’s neither a reliable sender nor receiver in Trump’s America.

After all, Rudd clearly never predicted Trump’s win, since he didn’t delete his online abuse until Trump won. How could he get such a critical call so wrong?

I hear Rudd defenders claim Trump won’t actually care about Rudd’s past abuse because, look! Trump made JD Vance his vice president, even though Vance once called him “America’s Hitler”.

The Financial Review’s US correspondent, for instance, declared Rudd was not alone “in his volte-face on Trump”, a line Rudd has helped put about, saying: “I think you’ll know that a whole range of people at a time have had a whole range of interesting things to say about President Trump.”

But here’s the difference: Vance said he was wrong about Trump. He explained why he’d misread him. He apologised.

Rudd, famously arrogant, has done none of that, and certainly didn’t when he last week deleted his anti-Trump insults.

The only explanation he gave for hiding what he’d said was that he didn’t want them “misconstrued as reflecting his positions as Ambassador and, by extension, the views of the Australian Government”.

No apology. No recanting. Not diplomatic.

I suspect even Rudd privately knows he’s not the man to talk to Trump and his top officials. He’s even asked two prominent Liberals – former ambassador Joe Hockey and former Prime Minister Scott Morrison – to help him do it.

That should tell us everything. Let’s get rid of the middlemen, and pick instead the best salesman for our country.

Kevin, either crawl to Trump or go home.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Forcing Kevin Rudd on Donald Trump is not in Australia’s interests