Tom Minear: Why Australia should take Donald Trump seriously and literally

Donald Trump’s attack on Kevin Rudd was mild, particularly compared to the views of the ex-PM’s Labor colleagues. But Tom Minear argues he still has a problem.

The conventional wisdom about dealing with Donald Trump is to take him seriously, not literally.

Given his mind-bending capacity to “flood the zone with shit”, as his adviser Steve Bannon famously put it, this has been an understandable approach for much of his political career.

It also helps to explain why Kevin Rudd and Anthony Albanese are not overreacting to the former president’s threat to cut out our ambassador to the US if he is re-elected.

Australia’s ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd. Picture: Noah Willman

As far as Trump sledges go, “a little bit nasty” and “not the brightest bulb” are on the very mild end of the spectrum. Rudd’s Labor colleagues have certainly offered far sharper assessments of the former prime minister over the years.

This is not to say Rudd doesn’t have a problem. He knows he needs a workable relationship with Trump if he beats Joe Biden this November, hence his recent efforts to back-pedal from his previous strident criticisms and to shore up his position with other senior Republicans.

Rudd the politician would have bolted out to bite back at Trump last week (and he was surely itching to do so). Rudd the diplomat wisely kept his mouth shut.

The broader challenge, however, is that the lessons the world learned from Trump’s first term may not apply so evenly in a second term.

Trump spent most of his four years in the Oval Office comprehending and testing the limits of his presidential power. While he blew by countless norms, his actions were regularly constrained by advisers who refused to bend the knee and deliver on any harebrained idea.

Donald Trump attacks Kevin Rudd in GB News interview. Picture: Supplied

In the end, most of them quit or were sacked. Vice President Mike Pence, one of the last men standing even as his boss’s supporters spoiled to kill him during the January 6 Capitol riot, pointedly refuses to endorse his re-election.

But the Republican Party is a now wholly owned Trump subsidiary. Those who limited his worst impulses are on the outer; his loyalists are back in the fold, even the ones convicted of crimes; and plans are afoot to turn some 50,000 public servants into political appointees.

A second Trump term will be about making up for lost time with an army of people who take him both seriously and literally.

Foreign policy analysts rightly point out Australia fared well under Trump. Perhaps we will again. But Rudd and Albanese should not rely on the conventional wisdom to prevail.

Originally published as Tom Minear: Why Australia should take Donald Trump seriously and literally