Turnbull in damage control after Trump parody

Malcolm Turnbull has been forced to defend his parody of Donald Trump.

Malcolm Turnbull and Donald Trump repair their relationship in New York last month. Picture: Nathan Edwards

Malcolm Turnbull has been forced to publicly limit any damage to ­his relations with Donald Trump after parodying the US President’s ­attacks on “fake news” and ­ridiculing his links with a “Russian guy”.

Coalition MPs were concerned last night that the Prime Minister’s sardonic speech at the Canberra press gallery’s Midwinter Ball on Wednesday night would “be a problem” as news media in the US and Britain picked up the story and video footage was run on the Nine Network.

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Mr Turnbull had believed his parody would not be made public under the Chatham House rules that applied to the event. However, veteran Nine Network political journalist Laurie Oakes, who did not attend the ball, yesterday released the potentially damaging video after it was leaked to him.

In his humorous speech, Mr Turnbull made fun of poor opinion polls for him and Mr Trump and referred to the President’s political troubles with Russia.

“The Donald and I, we are winning and winning in the polls,” Mr Turnbull exclaimed in a prepared speech to the more than 600-strong audience at the dinner in the Great Hall of Parliament House.

“We are winning like we have never won before! We are, not the fake polls, not the fake polls, they’re the ones we’re not winning in. We’re winning in the real ones. The online polls, they are so easy to win! I have this Russian guy, believe me it’s true.”

After the pirate video of the ­officially “off the record” speech was put to air, Mr Turnbull went on 3AW radio to express “dis­appointment” it had leaked and described the speech as “affectionately lighthearted”.

Mr Turnbull said he had been the butt of his own jokes and it was not aimed at Mr Trump.

“The butt of my jokes was myself,” he said.

The rushed reaction to limit the impact of the speech came after Mr Turnbull had been under internal Coalition pressure over the Finkel report on energy pricing and pinned down in parliament over a threat from Nationals MP George Christensen to cross the floor of the parliament and defeat the government on a motion for a banking inquiry.

After Mr Turnbull’s comments, the US’s charge d’affaires to Australia, James Carouso, who had been at the event, was said to be “unperturbed”.

A US embassy statement said: “We understand that last night’s event is equivalent to our White House Correspondents’ Dinner. We take this with the good ­humour that was intended.”

The White House had not put out any statement last night, ­although US media including Fox News, CNN and The Wall Street Journal were running the story and seeking information from Australia.

Mr Trump refused to attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — in which the president of the day makes fun of himself and the press corps — because of bad relations with the media. His predecessor, Barack Obama, regularly attended the event.

Despite the statement from the US embassy in Canberra, ­some Coalition MPs were concerned that Mr Turnbull’s remarks could damage the tenuous relationship with Mr Trump and demonstrated a lack of judgment from the Prime ­Minister. Canberra and Washington are finalising details of a plan for the US to take up to 1200 ­asylum-seekers from Australia.

Last month, Mr Turnbull flew to New York to met Mr Trump on an aircraft carrier to mark the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea. The meeting was part of an attempt to heal personal relations damaged after a telephone conversation ­between the two leaders was leaked amid suggestions Mr Trump had “hung up” on Mr Turnbull.

It was the second time a leaked conversation between an Australian prime minister and a US president had created political furore and official tensions.

In 2008, Kevin Rudd leaked a phone conversation he had with George W. Bush about the G20 negotiations that was designed to belittle the US president. The leaking of the call damaged their relations permanently.

@TurnbullMalcolm There's always a leak.

— House of Cards (@HouseofCards) June 15, 2017

Government MPs were yesterday concerned that media coverage of the speech could spark an angry reaction from Mr Trump that would create more problems for Mr Turnbull.

David Smith, a senior lecturer in American politics at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, said the worst that could happen after the release of the video was an angry tweet from Mr Trump. “If he sees it, yes, then Trump might be angry with Turnbull, we might even get an angry tweet about it. But it is not necessarily (the case) that the actual relationship in any way between Australia and US is going to change.”

Dr Smith said the US-Australia ­relationship was so embedded in diplomatic and military structures that it would outlast any sort of frostiness between the two leaders.

“I don’t thank this is likely to have much effect, if any, on Australia-US relations,” he said. “We can see that throughout the world, Trump’s got pretty stormy relationships with a wide range of people. We can see it from (French President) Emmanuel Macron yanking Trump’s arm out of its socket; we can see it in Trump’s continuing feud with Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London. But it’s important to note with all of these things it doesn’t actually have any effect on the relationship between the US and these countries.”

In reaction to Mr Turnbull’s disappointment at the leaking of the contents of the speech, Oakes said he was not present at the event and therefore was not bound by any undertakings not to disclose the speech.

“The PM presumably thought that Mr Trump would never find out because journalists attending the ball agree not to report what happened,” Oakes said on a video posted on the 9 News website. “But I don’t go to the ball and audio just happened to leak, plus a sample was posted on Instagram.”