The bromance between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin might be over

IT ALL started so well, but the budding romance between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin just hit a big snag.

IT WAS all going so well, but the budding bromance between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US hopeful Donald Trump appears to have soured already.

Trump’s willingness to stir up anti-Russian and even anti-Chinese sentiment among Americans is not going unnoticed in these countries, who have started to turn against the Republican frontrunner.

While the Kremlin was once generally more positive about Trump than the other presidential candidates, this was turned around after the billionaire released a pre-election video that it says demonised Russia.

“I saw this clip. I do not know for sure if (President) Vladimir Putin saw it. (But) our attitude is negative,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a teleconference with reporters this week.

China is also turning against Trump, with China’s state-owned Global Times newspaper delivering a scathing criticism of him as a candidate who has “opened a Pandora’s box in US society”.

The tensions point to the scary potential for Trump to hijack relations with the world’s superpowers. This week analysts warned that a Trump presidency could be a disaster for Australia, as he seemed “postitively allergic to Washington’s miliary alliances, which is a problem for a US ally such as Australia”.

With his convincing wins in the US primaries this week, the prospect of a Trump presidency is becoming more likely.

Here’s what’s going on.

RUSSIA

Trump’s latest salvo to “make America great again” is a video posted to Instagram that includes clips of Putin wrestling someone in Judo as well as an Islamic State fighter.

It then cuts to old footage of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton barking like a dog, Putin laughing and the slogan, “We don’t need to be a punchline. Make America great again”.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he did not know if the President had seen the video but the Kremlin regarded it “negatively”.

“It’s an open secret for us that demonising Russia and whatever is linked to Russia is unfortunately a mandatory hallmark of America’s election campaign,” Peskov said.

“We always sincerely regret this and wish the (US) electoral process was conducted without such references to our country.”

Russian state TV, which usually closely reflects the Kremlin’s world view, has generally been more positive about Trump than the other presidential candidates.

However it has complained about what it says is the anti-Russian tenor of the overall campaign, criticising almost all of the candidates for statements they have made on Russia.

Putin had previously called the Republican frontrunner a “bright and talented person”.

State news presenter Dmitri Kiselyov also openly backed Trump this week as an “anti-establishment” candidate prepared to work well with the Russians.

“In his own words, he is the only one of the contenders to have hired people with his own money. That is, he gave people work. In America, they value this,” he said.

Trump also gained an endorsement from Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin, who posted a video online called “In Trump we trust” that claimed “the fact that for the first time throughout decades a truly independent candidate can be nominated for presidential elections horrifies current American elites”.

Dugin said he really likes Trump but dismisses Marco Rubio as a “sodomite” and Ted Cruz as a “pseudo-Christian”.

Daily Beast reporter Anna Nemtskova told PRI this week that Trump is generally depicted as a “good alternative” to President Barack Obama in Russia, which has been responsible for the migrant crisis and situation in Ukraine.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump after the Florida state primary.

CHINA

In contrast Trump has not held back from antagonising the Chinese, repeatedly pledging to place tariffs on goods produced overseas and promising to bring back the production of things like the iPhone to America.

He even mocked the negotiating style of Chinese and Japanese businessmen during a campaign rally, using a broken-English accent.

In the past Beijing brushed off the remarks as just a “disturbance”.

But this week it stopped playing nice.

In a scathing editorial in the state-owned Global Times, the billionaire is described as a “big mouth clown” and blames the democratic system for producing leaders like Trump, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

“The clown is now the biggest dark horse,” the news organisation said about the “rich, narcissist and inflammatory candidate” whose popular support had opened a Pandora’s box.

“The rise of a racist in the US political arena worries the whole world. Usually, the tempo of the evolution of US politics can be predicted, while Trump’s ascent indicates all possibilities and unpredictability. He has even been called another Benito Mussolini or Adolf Hitler by some Western media.”

It comes after Trump openly mocked the Japanese and Chinese way of doing business at an Iowa rally last year, saying in an accent: “When these people walk into the room, they don’t say, ‘Oh hello, how’s the weather?’ So beautiful outside, isn’t it lovely? ‘How are the Yankees doing?’ Oh they are doing wonderful, great.

“They say, ‘We want deal!’” he said, to laughter from the crowd.