No worries....They roll over, pussies....

Australia to Trump: Sure, We’ll Help You Pursue Your Political Vendetta

Trump co-opts more than 100 years of Australian “mateship” for himself—and Australia says “no worries!”

JAMES WEST

Australia rarely makes the US news unless there’s a killer shark attack or a killer leadership coup. But like so many others in the Trump era, this week is not normal.

The New York Times reported Monday afternoon that President Donald Trump pushed Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison “during a recent telephone call” to help prosecute his political vendetta against the people he thinks started the Trump-Russia investigation. That’s a big deal. Trump and other US officials, including Attorney General William Barr, appear to be trying to recruit all sorts of governments (Italy, the UK, and, of course, Ukraine) to do the same—and in some cases, they are covering their tracks by stashing unsavory conversations in a super-classified White House server.

Watchers of the far-right conspiracy machine know Australia plays a special role in sparking Trump’s anger. You might recall it was an Australian official, Alexander Downer, who sort of put this whole thing in motion. During a “night of heavy drinking” with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos in a London bar in May 2016, Downer, Australia’s top diplomat in Britain at the time, learned some juicy gossip that the Aussies eventually passed onto the US: Papadopoulos had been told that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of her emails. That bar-chatter, when it reached Washington in July 2016, sparked the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia, which the following year morphed into the Mueller inquiry.

For some time now, Trump-defending conspiracy-mongers have assailed Downer as some kind of Clinton stooge, doing the bidding of dark, anti-Trump forces. That is, Downer, in cahoots with the Deep State, passed along this information to orchestrate the Russia probe in order prevent Trump from becoming president.

For Australians, this is hilarious: Downer is a lifelong soldier of conservative Australia, and happily so. He’s a former foreign minister in Australia’s conservative party, confusingly called the Liberal Party, and once led the party when it was in opposition. The thought of Downer in league with some kind of liberal, global deep state is fantastical enough to be instantly discounted. Nonetheless, in one example of how this disinformation was concocted and spread, The Hill ran a story in March 2018—co-bylined by John Solomon of whistleblower-complaint fame—highlighting Downer’s work to help end the scourge of HIV in the region. This effort, it reported, included awarding taxpayer money to the Clinton Foundation in 2006, and was painted as nefarious. Fox News picked it up. Papadopoulos himself has waged a long Twitter war against Downer:

Twit: George Papadopoulos
"I have been right about Downer from the beginning. A wannabe spy and Clinton errand boy who is about to get exposed on the world stage. Great reporting, NYTs! Mifsud is next."

Now, Trump has come knocking.

Prime Minister Morrison just last week stood in front of the White House beaming as the president lavished him with the pomp and ceremony of a rare official state visit, only the second of Trump’s presidency. Morrison praised the “amity” between the two countries; Trump, the “unwavering friendship.” It was the kind of diplomatic theater any Aussie PM relishes: wall-to-wall coverage back home, with enough red meat to keep Rupert Murdoch happy.