Former US President Donald Trump told then-prime minister Scott Morrison that China ‘f**ked the world’ by unleashing Covid, a new book claims.
The reported phone conversation between the two leaders happened on July 17, 2020, in a secure room in Canberra.
Covid was staring to run rampant around the globe and Mr Trump apparently had no qualms about expressing his feelings about who was to blame.
‘It was a disgrace,’ Mr Trump said, according to the book Plagued, by journalists Simon Benson and Geoff Chalmers that details Australia’s political history during the pandemic.
‘Look what they (China) have done to the world. They have f**ked the world.’
Donald Trump reportedly told Scott Morrison, when they were leading their respective countries in 2020, that by unleashing Covid China had ‘f**ked the world’
According to the book, Mr Trump’s crude expression surprised none of Mr Morrison’s staff listening to the call because ‘they had come to expect the unexpected when it came to Trump’.
A year earlier Mr Trump reportedly had already introduced Mr Morrison to a private meeting of G7 leaders as ‘president of Australia’.
Australia’s deteriorating relationship with China was a major international focus of Mr Morrison’s time in office
The G7 is the gathering of the leaders from the world’s largest democratic economies.
Not that Mr Morrison fared too much better with the next American president.
During a 2021 press conference to announce the AUKUS defence pact between Australia, the US and the UK, Joe Biden called Mr Morrison ‘that fella Down Under’.
This was widely interpreted by Mr Morrison and his staff as showing Mr Biden had forgotten the prime minister’s name.
The book, which seems to have very close and candid access to recollections and records kept by Mr Morrison and those around him, paints a somewhat worrying picture of Mr Biden being directed by staff at another G7 meeting.
According to a new book by two Australian reporters Joe Biden’s staff ‘kept him under wraps’ during a G7 meeting of world leaders and worried he would say something embarrassing to the press
At another G7 meeting, the book stated ‘Biden’s handlers kept him under wraps… limiting his contact with leader’.
‘He was late to functions, often left early and was kept away from press conferences to avoid embarrassing slip-ups.’
While the main thrust of Plagued is detailing Australia’s domestic response to Covid, the international challenge posed by a rising and belligerent China is another major theme.
Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, China has spread its influence around the world while cracking down on domestic dissent and subduing protesters in Hong Kong, Tibet and in the largely Muslim Xinjiang province.
According to the book, Mr Morrison was a major early force in shaping a more staunch Western approach to resisting China’s expansion and heavy-handed dealings.
A new book claims that the world’s top democratic leaders were stunned into silence when Mr Morrison showed them a list of demands China was making of Australia
As a special guest to the G7 summit in 2021, Mr Morrison reportedly presented other world leaders in attendance with a list of demands China presented Australia with in late 2020.
The leaders including Mr Biden, Britain’s Boris Johnson, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Japan’s Yoshihide Suga reportedly sat in ‘semi-stunned silence’ after reading it.
The list detailed China’s grievances against Australia that would have to be remedied if the deteriorating relationship between the two nations was to be repaired.
China’s president Xi Jinping has led the nation into a much more assertive presence on the world stage, with sometimes brutal tactics to those resisting his rule internally
A chief and ongoing source of tension was Australia’s insistence on an independent inquiry into the origins of Covid, which first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
But the list also complained about ‘outrageous condemnation of the governing party of China by MPs’ and also Australian media needing to curb its ‘unfriendly or antagonistic’ reporting.
Such demands were seen by many as a bullying challenge by an authoritarian party to a democratic society demanding it curb freedoms and be submissive.
‘This is what they are doing, this is what we are dealing with,’ Mr Morrison reportedly told the shocked room.
‘If we give up on any of them, it will be after you for yours.’
French President Emmanuel Macron called Mr Morrison a liar after Australia backed out of buying submarines from France
The book Plagued also details the falling out Mr Morrison had with French President Emmanuel Macron, when because of the AUKUS pact, Australia cancelled an order for French submarines.
At one stage Mr Macron even called Mr Morrison a liar, which the book claims was unfair as the French were well aware the submarine deal was faltering.
Former Japanese prime minister Yoshihide Suga reportedly signed off a phone call to Mr Morrison by saying ‘Goodbye Scomo, my forever friend’
Happily not all of Mr Morrison’s relationships with foreign leaders were so fraught.
According to the book, Japanese Prime Minister Mr Suga signed off a late night phone call by saying: ‘Goodbye Scomo, my forever friend’.
Mr Morrison so cherished the phrase that in announcing the AUKUS partnership he called it a ‘forever partnership’.
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