Vic
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Australian Politics
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Melbourne Victoria
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Poor old trumpy
"Prime Minister Anthony Albanese finally held his long-awaited meeting with US President Donald Trump overnight, and it was all going fine until a journalist asked what had delayed the meeting so.
Could it be, for example, US ambassador Kevin Rudd’s comments, in the aftermath of Trump’s baseless and ultimately deadly lies about having the 2020 election stolen from him, that the president was a “traitor to the West” and “destructive”?
This prompted a toe-curling exchange where Trump, sounding like a mean, scary baby, asked Rudd, “You said bad?” and, when Rudd confirmed he had indeed said bad, added, “I don’t like you either, and I probably never will”. Everyone around him then nervously tittered like a Joe Pesci character’s anecdote had just started to take a worrying turn.
The saboteur who tossed this little cherry bomb into the White House cabinet room? None other than Sky News political editor Andrew Clennell — and the network was quick to take credit.
News Corp’s Australian publications are far from alone in having an animus of one kind or another towards Rudd. But surely they — particularly in the guise of Sky News — count as the most committed and least subtle. Who can forget…
A total Farage-O
The issue had already been ventilated in a March 2024 interview with Nigel Farage on GB News, when then presidential candidate Trump was asked about how he would approach diplomacy during a second term as president, including with Australia.
“Things have changed in Australia, we’ve got a Labor government,” Farage said. “The previous ambassador Joe Hockey I think was quite a good friend of yours … now they’ve appointed Kevin Rudd, former Labor MP. He’s said the most horrible things. You were a ‘destructive president’, a ‘traitor to the West’.”
“He won’t be there long if that’s the case,” Trump responded. “I don’t know much about him. I heard he was a little bit nasty. I hear he’s not the brightest bulb, but I don’t know much about him. If he’s at all hostile, he will not be there long.”
Why was this British populist politician asking about Australia at all? Farage prefaced the question by noting that “our friends at Sky News Australia” had asked him to raise it.
A total drag
“Well, you won’t believe what Kevin Rudd is up to now, he has blown the taxpayer dime on gay pride parties. Yes, you heard that correct,” Sky News Australia host Danica De Giorgio incredulously reported in August last year.
Picking up on an item in the Nine papers’ CBD column reporting on the costs of a pride party held by Rudd in June the previous year, De Giorgio was outraged at Rudd spending $20,000 of taxpayers’ dollars to turn his Washington residence into some kind of “bizarre drag queen nightclub”.
As noted at the time, we must have missed Sky’s fury when it was revealed Rudd’s predecessor Hockey spent more than $45,000 on a “garden party” — including $7,690 for “entertainment” — for various US dignitaries, the exact names of whom successive governments fought to keep secret for years.
A total consensus
It’s just the expected price of being a non-Liberal candidate these days, but the transparent unanimous hatred Rudd received from the Murdoch tabloids was striking in the more innocent days of 2013 — from the infamous “Kick this mob out” headline, to dressing up Rudd and his colleagues as Nazis, to headlines calling them clowns.
It wasn’t the last time they would show a notably unified take when it came to Rudd. In 2021, having managed to steadfastly ignore Rudd’s views on them for a while, News Corp papers castigated Rudd’s appearance at a Senate inquiry using nearly identical terms in eight separate front pages..."
Good old honest Sky reporting
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