Barack Obama asked Malcolm Turnbull for help with Donald Trump

Barack Obama recruited Malcolm Turnbull to persuade Donald Trump to respect alliances and international agreements during a secret Sydney meeting.

Malcolm Turnbull with Barack Obama during their meeting at a Sydney hotel in March 2018. Picture: Twitter

Barack Obama recruited Malcolm Turnbull to persuade Donald Trump to respect traditional alliances and adhere to international agreements that maintained America’s pre-eminent global leadership position during a secret meeting in Sydney after he left the White House.

In March 2018, Mr Obama met with Mr Turnbull, then prime minister, in a suite on the 29th floor of the InterContinental Hotel in Sydney. Mr Obama was visiting Australia for several well-paid speaking engagements.

Mr Obama expressed his deep concern about Mr Trump’s chaotic presidency and the battering of America’s prestige and influence around the world. He said it was like watching “a good friend drink himself to death and being powerless to do anything about it.”

Weathering the US president was proving harder than he had expected, Mr Turnbull replied. He said China was “asserting itself” and “playing into” domestic Australian politics at a time when the US seemed adrift from global affairs and reverting to isolationism, nativism and protectionism.

Donald Trump and Malcolm Turnbull hold a joint press conference in the East room at the White House in Washington DC. Picture: Nathan Edwards

Mr Turnbull, then in the final months of his prime ministership, echoed Mr Obama’s fears and said he did not know how long the world could “hold the line” and where “the international order” would be after Mr Trump’s presidency.

The private conversation is revealed in a new book, Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Trump, by journalist Edward-Isaac Dovere. It is published in Australia by Penguin Random House this month.

“Obama and I were absolutely of the same mind that the international system could not stand eight years of Trump,” Mr Turnbull recalled, “the damage would be irretrievable.” The former president and the then prime minister feared the cost of Mr Trump’s presidency.

Mr Obama was rounding up world leaders, especially from the centre-right, who could stand up to Mr Trump and influence his policies. The former president said German chancellor Angela Merkel would need to “stay in power as long as possible to be bulwark against Trump and the forces of protectionism.”

When Mr Turnbull asked who could defeat Mr Trump at the next election, in November 2020, he replied that he was not optimistic that he could be ejected from the White House. Mr Obama said there was no “obvious candidate” who could challenge Mr Trump. He did not mention Joe Biden.

Speaking to the Rekindling Hope podcast, hosted by Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen and former McKell Institute CEO, Sam Crosby, Mr Dovere revealed the meeting had a big impact.

When Mr Obama returned to the US, he began repeating Mr Turnbull’s assessment that America could withstand four years of Trump, but not eight.

“That meeting was an important moment,” Mr Dovere said. “After that trip and after that conversation with Turnbull, Obama starts saying something which then becomes part of the larger political conversation. Biden starts talking about it too.”

Mr Obama first appealed to Mr Turnbull to stand up to Mr Trump at the APEC meeting in Peru, held in November 2016. He argued that because Mr Turnbull was “an Australian conservative” this would have some weight with Mr Trump.

“(Obama) says, ‘Look, you can appeal to him because Trump thinks in these very black and white terms,” Mr Dovere says in the podcast. “When he hears the word conservative, he thinks you are like a hard-line conservative by American standards.”