{"id":333004,"date":"2025-10-26T04:02:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T04:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/333004\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T04:02:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T04:02:19","slug":"anthony-albanese-dismisses-lingering-questions-about-relationship-between-donald-trump-and-kevin-rudd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/333004\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Albanese dismisses lingering questions about relationship between Donald Trump and Kevin Rudd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthony Albanese has dismissed concerns over Kevin Rudd’s future after Donald Trump said he does not forget when people “say bad” things about him, referencing tweets Mr Rudd posted before becoming Australia’s ambassador to the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He also described reporting about Australia’s relationship with the United States as “fake media” and said Mr Trump only made the remarks because a journalist asked him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The prime minister’s much-anticipated meeting with the US president earlier this week was coloured by an awkward interaction over Mr Rudd’s past criticism of the president.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During Tuesday’s meeting, Mr Trump appeared not to know who Mr Rudd was, and when the ambassador was pointed out, asked, “you said bad?”.<\/p>\n

“I don’t like you either, and I probably never will,” Mr Trump continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Ambassador Kevin Rudd (left) and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Washington earlier this week.\u00a0 (AAP: Lukas Coch)<\/p>\n

The Australian government said the remark was “tongue in cheek”, insisting the president forgave Mr Rudd afterwards following an off-camera apology.<\/p>\n

But when asked by a reporter on Friday night, Washington time, whether they had patched up the relationship<\/a>, Mr Trump responded: “When they say bad about me, I don’t forget.”<\/p>\n

Questioned about the remark on Sunday, Mr Albanese was adamant that there was no issue in the relationship, describing it as a “trivia” and blaming the media for asking about it.<\/p>\n

“Frankly, it says more about the journo,” he told the Today show.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I was in the room. It was fine.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a separate interview on Sunrise a short time later, the prime minister said there was a lot of “what some might call fake media” before his visit to the United States, appearing to reference the American president’s regular use of the term “fake news”.<\/p>\n

“I’m focused on substance. That’s my job. And Kevin Rudd’s doing a great job as ambassador. The delivery last week reinforces that,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"Anthony<\/p>\n

Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump had their first sit-down meeting earlier this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0 (AAP: Lukas Coch)<\/p>\n

The White House meeting \u2014 the first sit-down between the two leaders since Mr Trump’s re-election \u2014 was widely heralded as a success.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While no deal was struck on reduced tariffs, the leaders signed a multi-billion-dollar critical minerals deal to boost the processing and supply of rare earths, integral to technologies including mobile phones, solar panels and weapons.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump also voiced his strong support for the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine pact between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of the meeting, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley initially called Mr Rudd’s position “untenable” but she ended up cooling her criticism as the week progressed<\/a>, after members of her backbench defended the ambassadors’ work.<\/p>\n

The United States president is yet to pick a new ambassador to Australia, but in the same media conference on Friday, he said he would be sure to choose someone that Mr Albanese likes.<\/p>\n

“Your leader [Mr Albanese] was just here, and he’s a great guy, and I’m going to make sure we have somebody that he likes,” he said<\/p>\n

“Here’s the good news: everybody wants to be ambassador to Australia.”<\/p>\n

Mr Albanese and Mr Trump are both heading to Malaysia for the ASEAN summit this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anthony Albanese has dismissed concerns over Kevin Rudd’s future after Donald Trump said he does not forget when…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":333005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[65587,4740,156604,50,277,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-333004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-albanese","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-kevin-rudd","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-trump","13":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115438482697046748","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}