Anthony Albanese‘s social media post congratulating Donald Trump on winning the US presidential election has been flooded with comments that he is the next left-leaning leader facing electoral extinction.
‘You’ll be out of here next election too,’ one person replied.
‘The world is standing up to you weak lefties.’
‘Start packing your bags buddy, you’re out of the lodge,’ another said.
In his social media message, Mr Albanese said, ‘Australians and Americans are great friends and true allies’.
‘Working together, we can ensure the partnership between our nations and peoples remains strong into the future,’ he said.
However, some Aussies were unconvinced of the Prime Minister’s sincerity.
‘What a disingenuous message,’ one person wrote.
‘You’ve done nothing but smugly talk down about him for the last 10 years. We can only hope in Australia they throw you out at the next election.’
On Thursday Mr Albanese revealed he had rang Mr Trump ‘to personally congratulate him on his election victory’.
‘We talked about the importance of the Alliance, and the strength of the Australia-US relationship in security, AUKUS, trade and investment,’ Mr Albanese said.
‘I look forward to working together in the interests of both our countries.’
Mr Albanese expressed a far different attitude to Mr Trump, who was then six months into his first stint as President, at a 2017 Q&A for music festival Splendour in the Grass which many have pointed after it recently resurfaced online.
Mr Albanese, who was in opposition at the time, replied when asked how if elected he would deal with Mr Trump replied ‘with trepidation’ and went on to say the brash real estate mogul turned politician ‘scared the ‘s**t out of me’.
Sunrise host Nat Barr suggested Mr Albanese may need to apologise after Trump was voted in as president of the United States on Wednesday night with Mr Albanese further probed on the matter by reporters on Thursday morning.
‘No, I look forward to working with President Trump,’ he insisted.
‘I’ve demonstrated, I think, my ability to work with world leaders and to develop relationships with them, which are positive.
‘And I think that I’ve demonstrated in the two-and-a-half years that I’ve had the honour of being Prime Minister.’
While government minister maintain a calm and polite exterior towards the incoming administration Trump’s stunning win has reportedly rippled electoral fear through Labor ranks.
The ABC reported an unnamed Labor source as saying there were stark lessons for left-of-centre parties from Mr Trump’s banishing of Democrat Kamala Harris, who along with her electoral college thumping is set to lose the popular vote.
Before Mr Trump turned the tide it had been two decades since a Republican presidential candidate won the popular vote, that being George W Bush in 2004.
One reason for this is Mr Trump’s huge appeal to blue collar male voters, traditionally a bastion of election strength for Australia’s Labor party.
The unnamed Labor source told the ABC that Americans who voted on ‘hip pocket’ issues ‘personally felt shafted’ by the rise in prices under Democrat Joe Biden, despite official inflation figures falling in the US.
It’s an electoral nightmare that the Albanese government faces in Australia where wage rises have lagged sky-rocketing prices for the past three years, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The international body said Australia has seen ‘one of the largest drops in real wages among OECD countries’.
‘Real wages grew in 2024 for the first time in nearly three years, but households are still facing pressure under the cost-of-living crisis,’ an OECD report said in July.
This made Australian workers even worse off than their rich-world counterparts in Spain, Germany and the US, where wages have also fallen in real terms.
Another unnamed Labor source told the ABC Mr Trump’s opposition to the Paris climate deal “makes life difficult for us” on energy and emissions policies.
