Rudd’s fate as ambassador under new cloud as ‘village idiot’ Trump slur emerges

Fresh doubt has been cast over Kevin Rudd’s future as Australia’s ambassador to the United States amid revelations he branded Donald Trump “incompetent” and a “village idiot”.

Donald Trump, Kevin Rudd and Anthony Albanese.

Fresh doubt has been cast over Kevin Rudd’s future as Australia’s ambassador to the United States amid revelations he branded Donald Trump “incompetent” and a “village idiot” in the wake of Mr Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.

The comments, in videos unearthed by Sky News, will likely make it even harder for Dr Rudd to gain the confidence of the famously vindictive president-elect and his incoming administration, which has vowed retribution against Mr Trump’s critics.

Anthony Albanese again expressed confidence in his hand-picked ambassador on Tuesday, delivering a curt “yes” when asked whether Dr Rudd was still the right person to represent Australia in Washington DC.

Government sources highlight the fact that many who are now close to Mr Trump including vice-president-elect JD Vance – who once compared him to Hitler – have managed to get back into his good books after past negative comments.

But the government knows it may have to reassess its support for the former prime minister turned diplomat if he is frozen out by the Trump administration.

“Things may change in the future, of course, but at this point there is no reason to change tack,” a Labor source said.

Dr Rudd has many high-level backers, including former prime minister Scott Morrison and former ambassadors to the US Joe Hockey, Arthur Sinodinos and Dennis Richardson.

They argue he has done a good job since his appointment in March last year, highlighting his energetic lobbying of influential Republicans in congress ahead of the passage of key enabling legislation in the US to solidify the AUKUS nuclear submarine partnership.

But Dr Rudd put his past criticism of Mr Trump up in lights last week, issuing a statement saying he had scrubbed negative social media posts about the president-elect “to eliminate the possibility of such comments being misconstrued as reflecting his positions as ambassador and, by extension, the views of the Australian government”.

They included past tweets branding Mr Trump a “traitor to the West” and the “most destructive president in history”.

The New York Times covered the story on its front page under the headline “Why the Australian Ambassador Deleted Tweets Critical of Trump”.

In his newly emerged comments, Dr Rudd told Indian politician Shashi Tharoor in a January 2021 webinar that the US under the first Trump presidency had been “run by a village idiot”.

“People have seen China continuing to be competent in its national statecraft and the United States increasingly incompetent in its national statecraft under Trump,” he said.

In another video appearance, in 2022, Dr Rudd told a webinar at Duke University Mr Trump was “incoherent” and occasionally “in love with dictators”.

No one, apart from possibly Mr Trump himself, knows whether he will seek to punish Dr Rudd for his past comments or let bygones be bygones.

But the president-elect gave an ominous hint in March during an interview with far-right British politician Nigel Farage, branding Dr Rudd “nasty” and warning he “won’t be there long”.

Mr Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee, has also suggested Dr Rudd should be replaced.

“I think the problem … is when people say those things and don’t have a change of heart, it’s kind of hard to have a position like that where you’d want to keep someone who said such nasty things about a person,” Ms Trump told Sky News this month.

The questions over Dr Rudd’s tenure come amid high anxiety in Canberra over the president-elect’s unpredictable nature, his tariff plans that would damage Australia’s economy, and nervousness over the future of the AUKUS pact.

Former Defence official Peter Jennings said he believed Dr Rudd’s position was “untenable” and the government should move to replace him.

“It’s definitely the number one issue in terms of the bilateral relationship,” Mr Jennings told The Australian.

“From an Australian perspective, we don’t need to have this fight with the US.

“We know that Trump is a person who holds grudges. And I think the question is: Is that what we need to be defending when we come to establishing a new relationship with the president?”

He said the government needed to swiftly and decisively deal with the issue, arguing the nation’s relationship with the US was “just too vital to Australia’s security interests”.

“Frankly, had the government been thinking ahead, as they should have, this issue would never have come up; the tweets would have been deleted before Rudd started (as ambassador), and Rudd would have had his own plan in place, which doesn’t appear to be the case,” Mr Jennings said.