The White House has condemned the “horrible” deal struck by Barack Obama to resettle refugees from Australia, but indicated the US may still take them despite an angry phone call between Donald Trump and Australia’s prime minister.
The deal brokered between Obama and Malcolm Turnbull last November originally forecast the resettlement of up to 1,250 refugees from Australia’s offshore detention islands of Manus Island and Nauru.
But the plan inherited by Trump has blown up into a diplomatic incident after it emerged that a first call between the two allies degenerated into acrimony.
Trump used Twitter to deride the “dumb deal” and even made reference to the call during a traditionally tranquil address at the annual National Prayer Breakfast.
“When you hear about the tough phone calls I’m having – don’t worry about it. Just don’t worry about it,” Trump told the crowd of faith leaders, diplomats and members of Congress in Washington on Thursday. “They’re tough. We have to be tough. It’s time we’re going to be a little bit tough, folks. We’re taken advantage by every nation in the world, virtually. It’s not going to happen any more.”
The remarkable political spat continued at the White House daily briefing, where the press secretary, Sean Spicer, attempted to pass off the tenor of the call as “cordial” despite reports that it was anything but.
The Washington Post reported that Trump had abruptly ended the call, scheduled for an hour on Saturday afternoon, after just 25 minutes. Trump reportedly told the prime minister: “This was the worst call by far.” Trump had spoken earlier that day with four world leaders, including the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
News of the phone call, followed by Trump’s tweet, led to immediate fears that the deal to resettle refugees from countries including Iran, Iraq, Somalia and Sudan could not survive Trump’s travel ban.
However, speaking on Thursday at his daily briefing, Spicer did not go so far. The refugees, he said, would be subject to an “extreme vetting” process to ensure that they came with “peaceful intentions” and did not pose a threat to US security. The remarks indicated that the resettlement deal had not been scrapped despite the president’s outrage.
“He has tremendous respect for the prime minister and for the Australian people and has agreed to continue to review that deal and to ensure that as part of the deal – which was always a part of it – that we would go through a very extreme vetting process to ensure that every single person that is coming here with peaceful intention and poses no threat to the US.”
Spicer said the president was “unbelievably disappointed” about the “horrible deal” negotiated by Obama and Turnbull last year. He added that Trump was “extremely, extremely upset with it – he does not like it”.
It is not clear why Obama cut the deal to take refugees from the Australian camps. However, last year Turnbull announced that his country would take some Central American refugees from a Costa Rican camp as part of a US-led effort. That deal was announced in a speech when he attended Obama’s leaders’ summit in September 2016.
Turnbull has stated emphatically in radio interviews that he secured a personal commitment from Trump, saying the deal had been “confirmed several times now by the [US] government”.
“We have a clear commitment from the president,” Turnbull told the Melbourne radio station 3AW. “We expect that the commitment will continue.”
The prime minister added: “I can confirm the report the president hung up on me is not correct.”
During a lunch with Harley-Davidson executives and union representatives in the White House’s Roosevelt Room on Thursday, Trump reaffirmed his view of the resettlement deal.
“I love Australia as a country but we had a problem,” Trump said. “For whatever reason, President Obama said we’d take probably well over 1,000 illegal immigrants who were in prisons and take them into this country and I just said why? ... Why are we doing this? What’s the purpose? We’ll see what happens. Previous administration does something, you have to respect that, but you can also say: why are we doing this?”
News of the call prompted Senator John McCain, one of the Republican party’s leading foreign policy experts, to call Australia’s ambassador to express “unwavering support” for the countries’ alliance.
“I asked Ambassador [Joe] Hockey to convey to the people of Australia that their American brothers and sisters value our historic alliance, honor the sacrifice of the Australians who have served and are serving by our side, and remain committed to the safer, freer, and better world that Australia does far more than its fair share to protect and promote,” McCain said in a statement.
Details of Trump’s punchy call with Turnbull came hours after a report of a leaked transcript of a call between the US president and his Mexican counterpart, Enrique Peña Nieto, in which Trump reportedly said he would send troops south of the border if the Mexican president didn’t control “bad hombres”.
House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer said Trump’s apparent rhetoric during the calls was an indication “of an administration deeply incompetent on matters of foreign policy and national security” and said he too had called Hockey to reiterate the US-Australia alliance.
“I urge the president to apologize both to Prime Minister Turnbull and to President Peña Nieto for his childish behavior, which embarrasses our country and hinders America’s ability to lead in the world,” Hoyer said in a statement. The refugees will be subject to the “extreme vetting” process to ensure that they come with “peaceful intentions” and do not pose a threat to US security, Spicer said, indicating that the resettlement deal had not been scrapped despite the president’s outrage.
