In the leaked transcripts of President Donald Trump’s phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the two world leaders argued over a deal President Obama made in 2015 concerning refugees.
Obama had agreed to accept about 2,000 refugees who had been denied entry to Australia and were currently stuck on the island of Naru and Papau New Guinea’s Manus Island at detention camps.
“I hate taking these people,” Trump said in the transcripts, which were obtained and published by The Washington Post Thursday.
“I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people,” he said in an apparent reference to the United States massive dairy industry.
In 2015, agriculture and related industries contributed $992 billion to the U.S. gross domestic product, according to the USDA.
“There is nothing more important in business or politics than a deal is a deal,” Turnbull, also a business man, replied per the transcript. “You can certainly say that it was not a deal that you would have done, but you are going to stick with it.”
As was reported in February, the call was supposed to last an hour, but Trump cut it off after only 25 minutes. He also told Turnbull that of all his phone calls with world leaders, “this was the worst call by far.”