Punching down: Malcolm Turnbull unloads on “thin-skinned” Donald Trump, again

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has accused the US President of “changing sides” to support Vladimir Putin against Ukraine.

Malcolm Turnbull has accused US President Donald Trump of “changing sides” in the Russia-Ukraine war as he lashed the US President as thin-skinned, volatile and a threat to the rules-based world order.

As the clock ticks towards the deadline on the US President’s threat to impose 25 per cent trade tariffs on Australian steel and aluminium, government sources insist they are still working to secure a reprieve or an exemption.

But the former PM has declared he’s pessimistic about our chances and delivered both barrels to the US president again, after a war of words first erupted on Monday.

In a new escalation of the political brawl, Mr Turnbull accused the US President of siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin against Ukraine.

“He has, effectively, changed sides in the war between Russia and Ukraine, cutting off military aid to, and intelligence sharing with, Ukraine. His formula for peacemaking is kneecapping Ukraine to the point that it has to accept Putin’s peace,’’ he said.

“A genuinely strong leader would use his power to compel the aggressor, Russia, to yield. Instead, he is punching down on the weaker party.

The former PM accused Donald Trump of siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin - pictured here at the 2019 G20 summit in Osaka, Japan - on the war in Ukraine. Picture: Kremlin Press Office / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Writing in the Nine newspapers, Mr Turnbull said that ‘sucking up’ to the US President was not the answer.

“We need to have an honest conversation about this – the gaslighting has to stop,’’ he said.

Mr Turnbull said the crisis among the Western alliance was illustrated by the former French president Francois Hollande, who said today: “While the American people may still be our friends, the Trump administration is no longer our ally.”

“I certainly wouldn’t go that far, but ominously, former Australian Defence Force chief Admiral Chris Barrie has said this is the harshest wake-up call since the Fall of Singapore. We sleep through it at our peril,’’ he said.

The US' relationship with Ukraine has deteriorated since President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's meeting with Mr Trump and Vice President JD Vance last month. Picture: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Ex-PMs punctuation sledge

The former prime minister also attacked the US President over his use of apostrophes, noting that Mr Trump had referred to “Australian’s (sic)” in his social media musings with incorrect punctuation.

“Punctuation aside, his “truth” said more about his thin-skinned, volatile temperament than it did about me,’’ Mr Turnbull said.

‘Trump is a bully – that is like saying the Pope’s a Catholic’

Mr Turnbull then provided a short tour of his interactions with the US President as he recalled them.

“I was so ‘weak and ineffectual’ that I stood my ground in the face of his fury, and finally persuaded him to honour a refugee deal I had done with President Obama. And then I was so ‘weak and ineffectual’ that I managed to persuade him to give Australia an exemption from steel and aluminium tariffs in 2018.

“At the time, I was told not to stand up to him. I was told to flatter him, suck up to him, offer him things. I didn’t do that, and I achieved very good outcomes for Australia.

“Trump is a bully – that is like saying the Pope’s a Catholic – and if you suck up to him, you will just get more bullying.

Attacking the ABC and News Corp, the publisher of news.com.au, Mr Turnbull dismissed the risk that his comments could scupper a tariff deal suggesting it was “utterly bizarre that the unremarkable comments of a former prime minister would cause the US to decide not to exempt Australia from tariffs.”

“It has always been most unlikely that Australia will secure an exemption this time. It was hard enough in 2018 and all the signals from the administration are that the tariffs will be applied across the board,’’ he said.

Mr Trunbull pointed to the fact that he was able to convince Trump to honour a refugee deal and secure a tariff exemption for Australia while he was prime minister. Picture: Oliver Contreras-Pool/Getty Images

“The problem with compromising free speech like this is that it is a slippery slope. Are we all to bite our tongues constantly lest we incur the wrath of the President? After all, he can put tariffs up and down on a whim, and has done so several times in the last few weeks. What other mischief might he inflict on us if we dare to say what we think?

“His trade war, I said, risked recession. Wall Street agrees. And I pointed out that his chaotic style of government, bullying friends and allies – threatening to annex Canada and seize Greenland, not to speak of abandoning Ukraine – made the United States look like a very unreliable ally.

“This would be exploited by China, I said, which this time round would seek to be as unlike Trump as possible. China would be consistent where Trump was erratic, respectful where he was abusive. This differentiation would, I said, cause many countries which were not closely aligned to the US to hedge towards China.”

Trump slams Turnbull as ‘weak, ineffective’

Mr Trump slammed Mr Turnbull on social media on Monday after the former Australian prime minister warned the United States’ poor treatment of its allies was providing “an opportunity” for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“Malcolm Turnbull, the former prime minister of Australia who was always leading that wonderful country from ‘behind’, never understood what was going on in China, nor did he have the capacity to do so,” Mr Trump wrote in a post to his own social media platform Truth Social on Sunday evening (Monday AEDT).

The Trump social media post appears to be in retaliation for Mr Turnbull’s appearance in an interview on Bloomberg television, where he argued the United States was an increasingly unreliable ally.

Mr Turnbull said if Mr Trump triggered a global wave of protectionism, it would clearly be “bad for business.”

“Trump seems to have a view that America can prosper at the expense of everybody else,’’ Mr Turnbull told Bloomberg TV.

“That’s not going to work, that’s what they tried at the time of the Great Depression.

“You’ve had tariffs going on, going off, going back on again, and then, you know, this uncertainty is, you know, better than anyone at Bloomberg is hitting the markets too.

“It’s bad for business.”