Andrew Bolt: Ex-PMs, united in hatred, are digging their own graves

Vain and brittle former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd are on a rampage against those they blame for their fall — and it’s set to destroy them.

There’s a Chinese proverb: let those who seek revenge dig two graves. Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd better get a bobcat.

The two former prime ministers, with their wives, are destroying themselves in a mad campaign for vengeance.

Call it the MalKev conspiracy to bring down the Murdoch media and Scott Morrison, which the roarsome foursome blame for costing Mal and Kev their jobs.

I know, it’s crazy. Truth is, Rudd was a very bad prime minister who was so disliked by his own MPs that they sacked him.

Turnbull was so hopeless that his MPS sacked him, too – twice, once as opposition leader and then as prime minister.

But these two vain and brittle men would never blame themselves, and are now on the rampage with their wives against those they blame for their fall.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was so hopeless that his MPs sacked him.

Here’s the thing, though. When you wake up every day seemingly obsessed with finding more proof that your enemies are evil, you will find it – or, much more likely, invent or imagine it.

You’ll become paranoid and deluded. You’ll destroy yourself.

Let me give you four recent examples – one from each of the four.

Kevin Rudd is now shouting for a royal commission into the Murdoch media which he claims spread “misinformation”.

But this same Rudd on Friday tweeted against what he called “Morrison’s feeble attempts to wedge the Labor Party on China”, and added: “Here’s something Morrison should have tattooed on his forehead: ‘PORT OF DARWIN’.

“Our principal access point for US troops, and he allowed it to be sold off for 99 years.”

In fact, Darwin Port was sold off – actually leased – to a Chinese firm in 2015, when the prime minister was not Morrison but Rudd’s new bestie, Malcolm Turnbull.

Kevin Rudd is shouting for a royal commission into the Murdoch media. Picture: Gary Ramage

Then Rudd’s wife, Therese Rein, had another shot at the Murdoch media, on Sunday tweeting: “Imagine if the Murdoch’s used their powers for good on … Covid vaccination.”

In fact, Murdoch newspapers like this one kicked off a front-page campaign in July to get more people vaccinated, with headlines like “A call to arms”.

It was actually Rein herself who undermined the vaccination campaign by tweeting an obscene conspiracy theory about the AstraZeneca vaccine that the Morrison government had backed: “The 50m doses of AZ for Australia are being manufactured by biopharmaceutical company CSL. Which senators and MPs and donors of the federal coalition have shares in CSL?”

Rein later deleted the tweet and walked back her insinuation of corruption.

Malcolm Turnbull has joined Rudd’s campaign against the Murdoch media, and now blames it for many things – including inciting Trump supporters in January to storm the US Capitol building.

Therese Rein with Kevin Rudd. Picture: AAP

In his foreword for the revised edition of his autobiography, Turnbull wrote: “The mob proceeded to besiege and break into the home of American democracy … Several security guards were killed …”

False again. Not a single guard was killed. The truth is the opposite: one of the guards shot dead a protester, a woman.

The last of the four, Turnbull’s wife Lucy, was this week appalled that the wicked Scott Morrison had backed a Senate inquiry into how the ABC handles complaints about its bias and fake news.

She tweeted: “An independent ABC is one of our great Australian institutions. Must be treasured and protected, not interfered with or destroyed (by) governments of the day. Silencing it would be a major act of political censorship.”

Of course, Morrison is not at all trying to destroy, silence or politically censor the ABC. Lucy Turnbull just dreamt that up.

Lucy and Malcolm Turnbull. Picture: Joel Carrett

More astonishing is how blind she is to the fact – soon pointed out to her on Twitter – that it was her own husband who came closest to attempted “political censorship” of the ABC.

Malcolm Turnbull as PM complained so much about the reporting of ABC economics editor Emma Alberici that then ABC chairman Justin Milne, a Turnbull friend, asked ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie to sack her.

“They fricken hate her,” he wrote of Alberici.

“She keeps sticking it to them with a clear bias against them … Get rid of her. My view is we need to save the corporation, not Emma.”

Guthrie claimed Milne also told her that Turnbull “hates” ABC political reporter Andrew Probyn and “you just have to shoot him”.

Turnbull denies asking for any reporter to be sacked.

But here are two Rudds and two Turnbulls united in hatred of the Murdochs and Morrison, and in that hatred made blind, delusional and foolish.

He who seeks revenge should dig two graves.