Malcolm Turnbull has been forced to wait for his date with Donald Trump, after the US president was delayed by the passage of legislation to replace Obamacare.
Turnbull arrived in New York on Thursday for a full day program. The Australian prime minister was briefed by the joint terrorism taskforce and toured the joint operations centre in the city.
But a meeting with Trump scheduled for late afternoon was put back when House Republicans narrowly approved a plan to dismantle Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Trump remained in Washington to celebrate the vote.
The president phoned Turnbull to tell him he would be three hours late for their New York meeting. The leaders had been scheduled to meet at Manhattan’s Peninsula Hotel at 4pm local time on Thursday (6am AEST on Friday), but it was pushed back to 7.15pm (9.15am AEST) on the USS Intrepid aircraft carrier.
In Washington, the president told reporters: “We suffered with Obamacare. People were suffering so badly with the ravages of Obamacare.”
If victorious, Republicans will be having a big press conference at the beautiful Rose Garden of the White House immediately after vote!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 4, 2017
Trump said he was confident the bill would win the requisite Senate support.
Turnbull travelled to New York in the week before the May budget at Trump’s invitation for a dinner to mark the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea.
It will be their first face-to-face meeting since the now infamous bruising phone call after Trump’s inauguration in which the president blasted the refugee resettlement deal agreed with Australia by the Obama administration.
