04 August, 2017
Mr Trump said it was "a awful deal, a disgusting deal", that would make him look like a "dope" and "a weak and ineffective leader", and he feared the refugees would turn into terrorists who would pull off San Bernardino or World Trade Centre-style terror attacks in the US.
Transcripts of the two phone calls from January revealed unusually contentious conversations with President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia.
In our almost six decades of working at the State Department, it's our assessment that leaks generally fall into four categories: personal, political, bureaucratic and authorized.
"Does anybody know who these people are?"
After all, the President was newly elected and had spent the day talking to a host of world leaders on a range of issues when he took Turnbull's call just after 5pm. It no longer had a caveat for non-Muslim refugees, but the White House admitted that the new ban was essentially the same as the old one.
Mr Turnbull then asked: "Do you want to talk about Syria and DPRK?" He said the leak may be "reflective of a chaotic White House", but regardless still constitutes a major problem meriting congressional inquiry.
Ultimately, Trump made a decision to honor the deal despite his firm opposition to it.
The majority of the conversation consisted of Turnbull trying to convince Trump to stick with an Obama-era deal in which the United States agreed to welcome up to 1,250 refugees, in exchange for Australia taking Central American refugees.
"I gave [Mr Turnbull] a few messages but one of the messages is, it's not around preventing suicide", the youth development officer said. "As far as I am concerned, that is enough, Malcolm".
Mr Turnbull explained Australia's policy was to stop people smugglers and said even a Nobel Prize victor would not be allowed into the country if they arrived by boat.
Trump: It is important to you and it is embarrassing to me. The "ask" reflects a remarkable degree of both naiveté and cynicism.
In his discussion with Peña Nieto on January 27, he decried Mexican "drug lords" coming across the border and bringing drugs into USA cities. And because Trump has only a casual relationship with the truth and thinks nothing of misleading the American public, he naturally assumed that his Mexican counterpart would be equally unburdened by the same norms.
When Turnbull Had To Explain Numbers To Trump.
He acknowledges both leaders are "in a little bit of a political bind" because each has vowed not to pay for the wall.
No, you don't get it at all!
To be sure, Turnbull comes across as the adult in the January 28 phone chat, but that's not hard given Trump's nearly childlike petulance and ignorance.
If compliments from plutocrats like Donald Trump are what Turnbull got into politics for, then he's on the right course. "I have been making these calls all day, and this is the most unpleasant call all day", Trump apparently said. He also called the deal "ridiculous", "rotten", and "stupid".
He added that Australia would act in good faith and allow the United States to make its own decisions based on the vetting, as had always been the conditions of the deal.
Trump: Well, maybe you should let them out of prison. Who are they? Where do they come from? This is what I am trying to stop.
