Liberal says he will be ‘cheering on’ Trump while One Nation senator echoes insistence Hillary Clinton should be jailed

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

As the US presidential election race gets tighter and tighter, Donald Trump has gained two more supporters, albeit ones who can’t vote: the rightwing Australian senators Cory Bernardi and Malcolm Roberts.

The Liberal party and One Nation senators came out for the controversial Republican candidate as the US heads into the last week of campaigning before the vote on Tuesday.

Bernardi, who tweeted a photograph of two children dressed for Halloween as Trump in a suit and Clinton in prison garb, said Trump was the “least bad candidate”.

Cory Bernardi (@corybernardi) It's Halloween and sometimes the kids nail it! @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/MvzRZ4Yoig

“Unlike most of my colleagues Down Under, I’ll be cheering on a Trump victory,” he wrote on Wednesday in his weekly newsletter. “I hope there’ll be something to celebrate.”



Bernardi, on secondment to the UN in New York, said Trump was unorthodox, deeply flawed and somewhat erratic but has tapped into a deep well of discontent in the US.

“I disagree with a number of his policy positions but there’s a lot of what he is saying that I do agree with,” the South Australian senator said.

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“The hostility with which he has been treated by sections of the media, some political insiders and the militant left only reinforces the need for change.”

He said the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, was the poster child for everything that is wrong with the American political system.

Roberts went further and echoed Trump’s insistence that Clinton should be jailed.

He wrote on Facebook: “After imprisoning Hillary Clinton, the first act of a Trump administration could well be, to wind back the outrageous job destroying climate policies that we have had to endure for the last 8 years of the destructive and rudderless Obama Presidency. Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party wholly aligns, in this case, with the US Republicans against the dangers of a Clinton Presidency.”

Roberts, an outspoken climate change denier, did not specify what charges Clinton could face other than to say that she was “the most corrupt and unsuitable candidate to ever seek the office”.

“Clinton may well drag Australian troops, our own sons and daughters, into her twisted wars, all-the-while her attitude will smack of arrogance, smugness and contempt,” he wrote. “Her policies may well destroy the global economy.

“What is worse, Clinton has clearly surrounded herself with a gang of liars and odious swindlers, scammers and serial sex pests of the worst order, including her deplorable and disgraced husband.”