Trump’s Leaked Convo with Aussie PM Reveals His Terrible Negotiation Style

Spoiler, it's mostly a lot of yelling.

By Jordan Breeding  |  August 3, 2017 | 11:20am
Photo by David Becker/Getty
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Trump’s Leaked Convo with Aussie PM Reveals His Terrible Negotiation Style
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Since nobody at the White House likes Trump any more than you do, all the president’s men (and women) have been consistently leaking unflattering information about their leader—almost as fast as he can produce it. The most recent leak involves transcripts from some of Trump’s more volatile phone conversations with other world leaders, per a WaPo report. We’ve already talked about Trump’s ridiculous conversation with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, but our president’s dealings with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is even more revealing.

For you see, Trump is very selective with his friends. Even if Trump and Putin haven’t had backchannel talks in hours, they always pick up right where they left off. Unfortunately, Turnbull isn’t as delightful a phone buddy for Trump as the Russian prez. During an argument about refugees, Trump decided he’d had all he could stand:

I have had it. I have been making these calls all day, and this is the most unpleasant call all day… Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous.

The problem for Trump was that he just couldn’t justify reneging on any campaign promises. After all, Trump prides himself as the world’s leading anti-immigrant leader:

This is going to kill me. I am the world’s greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. And now I am agreeing to take 2,000 people.

After all, Trump knows the 1,250 immigrants Obama agreed to let into the U.S. on humanitarian grounds after UN intervention—the refugees come from Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and the island nation of Nauru—are all going to become terrorists of some kind:

I hate taking these people. I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people.

And what will these immigrants do if they’re not working on dairy farms? Why “become the Boston bomber in five years,” of course.

So it’s not even surprising that Trump said that he thinks, “It is a horrible deal, a disgusting deal that I would have never made. As far as I am concerned, that is enough, Malcolm. I have had it.”

Which sounds pretty tough, until you realize Trump still went through with it. Now that is the art of the deal.

 
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