The minute Trump labelled Rudd ‘nasty’, calls started flooding the Australian embassy

Washington: Kevin Rudd was on a mission. It was the first weekend of December last year and the former prime minister had travelled to California for the Reagan National Defence Forum, an annual gathering of politicians, diplomats and industry leaders to talk about US national security policy.

But Rudd wasn’t strictly there for the panel discussions involving top military brass or members of Congress. Nor was he strictly there to listen to a fireside chat with the new chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, nor to hear the keynote address by Defence Department Secretary Lloyd Austin about the need for American leadership in the face of escalating global conflicts.

With only a few weeks before Congress adjourned for 2023, the Albanese government’s ambassador to the United States knew time was running out to pass a long-awaited bill to secure the sale of AUKUS submarines to Australia before Republicans and Democrats entered a politically charged presidential election year.

To that end, the weekend-long defence forum was yet another opportunity to aggressively push for the deal to be sealed before the bill could be delayed even further in the deeply divided nation’s capital.

Kevin Rudd at the Reagan National Defence Forum last December. Credit: Instagram

“He wasn’t there rubbing elbows at the social gatherings – he was really working,” recalls Democrat Congressman Joe Courtney, who attended the event alongside other Republicans and Democrats from the US House of Representatives’ powerful armed services committee.

“It was actually a very significant moment in terms of the fact that we still hadn’t agreed on the final language [of the bill], and negotiations were going on in the hallways of the event. He was just relentless.”

After months of hard work from US and Australian proponents of AUKUS, the bill facilitating the landmark pact ended up passing two weeks later, marking another historic moment in the alliance between the two countries.

But this week the future of Australia’s relationship with its most important security partner was thrown into doubt after Trump launched a brutal attack on Rudd, who had previously described the former president as “nuts”, a “traitor to the West” and “the most destructive president in history”.

The widely known comments were made before the Albanese government appointed the former prime minister and leading China expert to represent Australia’s interests in Washington.

Since then Rudd and his embassy team have worked overtime to engage with Republicans who are likely to be aligned with a potential future Trump presidency: from senator and potential running mate Tim Scott and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, to Texas governor Greg Abbott and former national security adviser Robert O’Brien.

But less than a year after he started the job as Australia’s 23rd ambassador, Rudd’s past remarks have come back to haunt him.

Donald Trump speaking with Nigel Farage.Credit: GB News

Presented with the comments in an interview with former Brexit party leader Nigel Farage on Britain’s right-leaning GB News, now run by former Sky News Australia boss Angelos Frangopoulos, Trump replied: “He won’t be there long if that’s the case.

“I don’t know much about him. I heard he was a little bit nasty. I hear he’s not the brightest bulb. But I don’t know much about him. But if, if he’s at all hostile, he will not be there long.”

Trump’s rebuke hit like a thunderclap in the corridors of power in Canberra, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accusing the opposition of undermining diplomacy by questioning whether Rudd should remain in the crucial position.

At the Australian embassy’s glitzy new $330 million-plus headquarters in Washington, the phones started ringing immediately – including from Republicans seeking to assure the team that Trump’s incendiary words shouldn’t necessarily be taken as a serious threat.

Rudd has worked overtime to deepen ties with senior Republicans, including former secretary of state Mike Pompeo. Credit: Bloomberg

After all, there’s no shortage of people who have criticised or stood up to the former president – from US senator Lindsey Graham and South Carolina congresswoman Nancy Mace, to Kim Jong-un, who called him “mentally deranged”, and former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who criticised his “loathsome” comments about grabbing women by their genitals and later argued with him over refugees. In all cases Trump got over it.

As for Rudd, he opted to remain silent while Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong insisted that he would keep his job.

The next day, however, he took to social media to post a cryptic photo with Republican Mike Gallagher, who co-chairs the Friends of Australia caucus in Congress, as well as a House select committee that was set up to probe the Chinese Communist Party.

“Huge week in Congress. House passed legislation on Tiktok on 3/13 and voted unanimously to support the digital privacy bill,” Rudd wrote. “Amid all this, I caught up with @repgallagher.”

Rudd made no mention of the diplomatic drama involving Trump, the presumptive nominee of Gallagher’s party, who polls suggest is leading Joe Biden in the race for the White House.

But for interested observers, the post looked like it was designed to send a clear signal about the connections the ambassador had built across the political aisle, his clout among the China hawks of Washington, and the co-operative partnership between America and one of its top allies.

Rudd also knew it was only a matter of time before his past views on Trump would come to the former president’s attention.

Asked by this masthead during an exclusive interview late last year whether he stood by the comments, he noted that he made them as “an independent think tanker” – a reference to his role as president of the New York-based Asia Society, where he was at the time – and that think tankers “are engaged to be free and frank in their contribution to the public debate”.

“But I would also contrast that with, for example, statements made in the past by the likes of prime minister John Howard, who described an impending victory by president Obama in the then-presidential elections as a victory for al-Qaeda,” Rudd added.

“Saying that as a sitting prime minister about an incoming president is somewhat different to the random observations of an independent think tanker.”

Howard did indeed come under fire for comments he made in 2007 suggesting that a victory for then-Democratic senator Barack Obama the following year would be a boon for terrorists.

The conservative prime minister had committed Australian troops to help the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003; had been a strong supporter of Bush; and didn’t agree with Obama’s pledge to withdraw US troops from Iraq by March 2008.

“If I were running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama but also for the Democrats,” Howard told the Nine Network’s Sunday show at the time.

Labor, then led by Rudd as opposition leader, described the attack as “unprecedented”, while Obama also hit back, saying he would take it “as a compliment” that one of Bush’s allies attacked him.

And by the following year a new partnership had formed, with Obama elected as US president, and Rudd as Australia’s prime minister.

The shift is emblematic of something Rudd himself told this masthead last year.

“The US-Australia relationship is never static; it’s dynamic,” he said.

However, when asked what might happen to the alliance if Trump were to be elected, he replied: “That’s a matter for the American people. My job as ambassador is to work with both Republicans and Democrats.”

Maybe so, but the fate of Kim Darroch, Britain’s former ambassador to the US, presents a cautionary tale.

In 2019, when Trump was still in office, Darroch described the US administration as dysfunctional, clumsy and inept in diplomatic cables that were leaked to a British newspaper.

British ambassador to the US Kim Darroch quit his post in 2019 after Donald Trump said he wouldn’t work with him. Credit: AP

This led to him resigning after Trump branded him a fool and essentially froze him out, making it impossible to do his job.

While the Albanese government hopes the same fate doesn’t befall Rudd, his appointment was always going carry risks, given his political reputation.

Indeed, no sooner had it been announced that he would be taking the post than some questioned whether his strong opinions and supposed temperament could be risky in the buttoned-down world of foreign diplomacy.

Would he be haunted by his past attacks on the Murdoch media empire, which included describing Rupert Murdoch – who owns large swaths of the US press – as an “arrogant cancer on our democracy”?

And what about the rhetorical attacks of his own Labor colleagues in the aftermath of his ugly leadership battle with Julia Gillard, when former NSW premier Kristina Keneally described him as a “psychopathic narcissist” and former attorney-general Nicola Roxon claimed public servants who worked for him “were burnt through like wildfire”?

But those who have known Rudd for some time say he has mellowed considerably since his Labor leadership days.

Shortly after he arrived in Washington, the ambassador addressed staff at the embassy, where some were worried about how to refer to him. Prime minister? His excellency? Ambassador?

“Just call me Kevin,” came the reply. “I’m from Queensland – that’s pretty formal up there.”

Since presenting his credentials to Biden at the White House last April, the former PM has wasted no time making his mark.

He’s met with Republicans and Democrats across Capitol Hill, including Democrat majority leader Chuck Schumer and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi. He’s hosted numerous gatherings at his residence in north-west DC, from high-level meetings with foreign dignitaries to LGBTQ Pride celebrations with drag queens performing Kylie hits.

And he’s been front and centre at Albanese’s state dinner at the White House and Albanese’s visit to San Francisco for the APEC summit.

It’s a new style of diplomacy compared with that of his predecessor, Arthur Sinodinos, who worked hard behind the scenes to bolster home-grown trade and investment in the US but rarely put himself in the spotlight and was known for his low-key nature.

Sinodinos’ gregarious predecessor Joe Hockey, on the other hand, enjoyed courting the media, had a penchant for social soirées and famously shared a few rounds of golf with Trump.

Rudd now brings his own gravitas and work ethic to the job. The question is: how long will the job last?

“My takeaway from that [Farage] interview is that Trump didn’t really know who Rudd was, and I think Farage was just egging him on,” says Courtney, who sits alongside Gallagher as co-chair of Congress’ so-called “AUKUS caucus”.

“I don’t think Australia needs to worry.”

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.