By Kirsty Needham
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Prime Minister Anthony Albanese endorsed Australia’s ambassador in Washington as doing a “fantastic job”, describing comments by U.S. President Donald Trump that he does not like Kevin Rudd as “light-hearted”.
Australia’s main conservative opposition party has called for Rudd, a former Labor prime minister, to be sacked after Trump made the comments at a press briefing in Washington on Monday.
Asked by an Australian reporter about Rudd’s past criticism of the president on social media, and told Rudd was sitting across the table from him, Trump said: “I don’t like you either, and I probably never will.”
Albanese said Trump had later told Rudd “all is forgiven”.
“It was pretty light-hearted, was what it was,” Albanese said in a television interview with Australian broadcaster Nine in Washington on Tuesday.
“Kevin said, ‘Oh, sorry about comments in the past’, and they moved on,” he added.
Albanese, who previously served as Rudd’s deputy, praised the ambassador’s work to build support for the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal in Congress and to prepare for the first summit with Trump, which Australia has declared a success.
“Kevin Rudd is doing a fantastic job as the ambassador,” Albanese told reporters in Washington.
Rudd in 2020 called Trump “the most destructive president in history,” later deleting the comment from social media when he was appointed ambassador.
He swept to power as prime minister in 2007 as a Mandarin-speaking progressive, returning the centre-left Labor to office after a decade in opposition. He was dumped by his party in 2010, but returned as prime minister briefly in 2013.
During the 2024 U.S. presidential election campaign, Trump called Rudd “a little bit nasty” after being asked in a television interview with populist right-wing British politician Nigel Farage about Rudd’s social media posts.
This fuelled calls from Australia’s opposition Liberal Party, which suffered a resounding loss at this year’s national election, for Rudd to be sacked when Trump won office.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney; Editing by Jamie Freed)
Comments