Trump has no time for ‘mateship’ sentimentality and neither should Australia

When The Washington Post published a leaked transcript of Donald Trump’s notorious 2017 phone call with Malcolm Turnbull, the US capital was scandalised. Not just by the leak — an extraordinary breach of diplomatic protocol and trust between the two allied leaders — but by the unvarnished raw content. Turnbull pressed an irritated Trump, still in his first week in office making his first round of calls to world leaders, to honour a deal struck with Barack Obama in late 2016 to accept around 1200 asylum seekers from offshore detention. Infuriated, Trump told the prime minister the agreement would make…