Too funny. Australia Herald Andrew Bolt outlines “the leaker” of the phone call between Australian Prime Minster Malcolm Turnbull and U.S. President Trump came from down under – Turnbull leaked it. Malcolm Turnbull tried to play a game of dirty politics with terrible results.

Australia has their own version of the “Calais jungle” filled with economic migrants unwanted by the majority of the Australian people.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull won’t accept any asylum seekers, migrants or refugees who arrive by boat. Instead, [Australia] intercepts such vessels and sends them to remote Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea – link –

Prime-Minister Turnbull is stuck betwix a big rock and a political hard place. He can’t accept the economic migrants, and he’s too weak to repatriate them, so he thought he could turn to a fellow traveler in a lame-duck President Obama to bail him out.

On November 13th, 2016 Turnbull announced he entered an agreement with exiting Obama to take 1,250 of the pesky migrants despite the U.S. election a week earlier delivering an election victory by a U.S. presidential candidate who would be antithetical to such an agreement.

When questioned about the prudence of such a decision Malcolm Turnbull stated: “We deal with one administration at the time. There is only one president of the United States at a time.”

Dirty deed Mr. Turnbull. Bad, bad mojo.

That sets the backdrop for the now public phone call and President Trump’s admonishment therein… Having just had the atomic sledgehammer of Trump rightly delivered upon his grand scheme, Turnbull nervously turned his political objectives toward the media. Prime Minister Turnbull figuring he would be able to back-up his position by leaking the tone of the conversation to the media and subsequently undermine President Trump.

However, what Turnbull didn’t anticipate is a new type of U.S. President willing to call out the scheming of the traditional political class regardless of their location:

Oh snap, an American president actually looking out for the best interests of America? Rut roo, this is a new and unexpected dynamic. President Trump doesn’t fear transparency, he welcomes it.

Now Turnbull has put himself, and more consequentially the relationship between the leadership in Australia and the United States, into a position of adversity.

Prime Minister Turnbull, too weak to effectively repatriate the migrants on his own, has allowed his own weakness to embarrassingly damage a relationship with a key ally.

[…] Turnbull has a very nervous wait now to see if his boat people “solution” will survive. He’s also learned a very hard lesson: don’t try messing with Trump. (link)