Donald Trump’s presidential victory means some U.S. allies may have to consider previous harsh words as their countries prepare to enter diplomatic relations with a president-elect they may not have expected.
“The most destructive president in history,” Kevin Rudd, Australia’s ambassador to the United States, said of Trump in 2020, who “drags America and democracy into the mud.”
David Lammy, the current British Foreign Secretary, said in 2018 that “he is a sociopath who hates women and sympathizes with neo-Nazis” and is a “serious threat to the international order.”
“A political pyromaniac must face a criminal court trial,” the then Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said of Trump after the riots at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Also in 2021, Croatian President Zoran Milanovic said: “Trump ruined it all. He incited[s] Hatred, he was a demagogue, nothing more.
After Trump’s election, at least two of America’s allies – Britain and Australia – had to backtrack on some of their previous attacks.
After Trump’s victory, Rudd deleted his post “out of respect for the office of the United States President” and “to eliminate the possibility that such comments could be misinterpreted as reflecting his position as ambassador,” an Australian government statement said. sex, thus eliminating the possibility of such speech.” , the Australian Government’s perspective. ”
Trump, for his part, responded to Rudd’s comments by calling him “obnoxious” and saying Rudd “will not be Australia’s ambassador to the United States for a long time.”
Lamy’s transformation from harsh critic to polite well-wisher showed that diplomacy sometimes means shaking hands with those you once blamed.
In 2018, when he was a backbench minister in parliament, Lamy commented in Time magazine that Trump was “a sociopath who hates women and sympathizes with neo-Nazis.” He also protested that the then government “surrendered to this tyrant.”
By Wednesday, as Trump claimed a decisive election victory, Lamy’s tone as foreign secretary had changed considerably, congratulating Trump and highlighting the special friendship Britain and the United States cherish.
The relationship between Britain’s ruling centre-left Labor Party and Trump had been hostile ahead of the election, with Trump accusing Britain of interfering in the election.
In October, the Trump campaign asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate after a senior Labor official issued a rallying cry for current and former staffers to travel to swing states to campaign for Harris.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer offered Trump his “heartfelt congratulations” after his “historic victory” in the two men’s first phone call since the U.S. election, a spokesman for the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement on Wednesday. .
Charles Parton, a British diplomat for nearly four decades, said “Labour has some ground to make up” after Starmer’s party was seen to be leaning towards the Democrats.
Lamy’s comments aside, Parton believed Starmer’s “somewhat impassioned statement” was an attempt to “try to make up lost ground”.
Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right Reform Party, offered to help heal Labor’s awkward relationship with Trump, whom he considers a personal friend and with whom he is ideologically aligned, but Labor rejected the offer.
