WASHINGTON — A phone call between President Donald Trump and the Australian prime minister is threatening to develop into a diplomatic rift between two stalwart allies after the two men exchanged harsh words over refugee policy and Trump abruptly ended the call.
The phone call Saturday between Trump and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull turned contentious after the Australian leader pressed the president to honor an agreement to accept 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention center.
Late Wednesday, Trump reiterated his anger over the agreement on Twitter. He called the agreement a “dumb deal” and blamed the Obama administration for accepting it but then said he would “study” it. The tweet was posted after the Washington Post reported details of the phone call.
The leaders of the two allies did not seem to agree on the outcome of the conversation. Trump’s tweet suggested the agreement could be at risk while Turnbull, speaking Thursday at a news briefing in Australia’s southern state of Victoria, said that the United States had committed to upholding the arrangement.
A senior Trump administration official said the president had told Turnbull on Saturday that the refugees could include the “next Boston bombers.” He also said he was “going to get killed” politically by the deal, given that the day before he had signed an executive order to stem the refugee flow into the United States and refuse visas for all citizens from seven Muslim countries.
The Trump administration official said the call was shorter than planned and ended abruptly after Turnbull told the president it was necessary for the refuges to be accepted.
The Australian government has a policy that bars any refugees who attempt to arrive by boat from setting foot in the country. The majority of the refugees being held on the Pacific islands of Nauru and Manus are from Iran and Iraq. Both are Muslim-majority nations that are among the seven countries — including Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — whose citizens are barred from entering the United States for at least 90 days under an executive order signed by Trump last week.
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