Trump gets taste of Aussie politics over working dinner

The US president’s working dinner took on an Aussie flavour with Kieran Gilbert’s killer question.

US President Donald Trump was quizzed by Sky News Chief Political Reporter Kieran Gilbert during his working dinner with Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

US President Donald Trump got a taste of the rough and tumble style of Australian politics, when Sky News Chief Political Reporter Kieran Gilbert began lobbing questions during his working dinner with Prime Minister Scott Morrison ahead of the G20 summit in Japan.

Ivanka Trump, Mr Trump’s daughter who doubles as a senior White House official, looked shocked as Gilbert’s Australian accent burst through the media scrum on Thursday night.

Gilbert said generally at a White House pool spray — the term for an event where a pool of journalists are brought in to witness the President meeting with a foreign leader — reporters throw in unvetted questions after the leader make their opening remarks.

“Sometimes they ignore, sometimes they respond,” Gilbert said.

A fellow golf fanatic, Gilbert told The Australian he strategically decided to kick off by asking if Mr Trump planned to come to Melbourne for the President’s Cup in December.

Mr Trump laughed, saying he would like to come but “it might not be easy”.

“I’d like to. That’s a big deal. That’s going to be great,” he said.

“There’s a warm invitation,” Mr Morrison threw in.

I asked the President about his ‘America First’ approach being seen by allies as ‘America alone’ because it has adverse impacts on allies like Australia and Japan #Auspol #G20Summit https://t.co/9ca4MLiKYi

— Kieran Gilbert (@Kieran_Gilbert) June 27, 2019

Gilbert said he thought Australians would be genuinely interested in whether the American leader plans to make his first official visit Down Under, but also used the question to engage the President and get him talking.

He then followed up with this killer: “Mr President, you talk about ‘America First’ a lot, do you recognise that for many of your allies, sometimes it’s seen as America Alone which has adverse impacts on countries like Japan and Australia, on trade for example”.

A sombre Mr Trump replied that America has been “very good” to its allies.

“We work with our allies. We take care of our allies. Generally speaking, I’ve inherited massive trade deficits with our allies. But we also look at our allies.”

“And I think Australia is a good example. We’ve worked together very closely — just recently, on a big trade situation. We had a little bit of a trade deal going, and it worked out very well for both of us.’’