TRUMP MEETS with Australian prime minister.
NEW YORK — President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia on Thursday downplayed the testy phone exchange that began their working relationship as they met face to face aboard the aircraft carrier Intrepid in Manhattan.
“We get along great. We have a fantastic relationship. I love Australia, I always have,” Trump told reporters who witnessed a part of the meeting between the leaders in a room near the ship’s main dining area.
The two attended a dinner aboard the Intrepid, now a museum docked in the Hudson River, to honor the 75th anniversary of the strategic victory of the United States and Australia over Japan in the Battle of the Coral Sea during World War II.
In their first phone call, in January, Trump reacted with hostility to a deal with Australia that President Barack Obama had negotiated in the final weeks of his second term. In it, the United States agreed to take in as many as 1,250 refugees that Australia was holding at offshore detention centers.
During that call, Trump told Turnbull that the agreement would hurt his new administration politically, officials said at the time. The president said on Twitter after the phone conversation that the deal was “dumb” and that he would study it, raising concerns that the United States might back out.
The White House later agreed to honor the agreement, provided the refugees were subject to “extreme vetting.” Since then, the two leaders have worked to move beyond the phone call.
“We can put the refugee deal behind you and move on,” Turnbull said Thursday.
“It’s all worked out. It’s been worked out for a long time,” Trump said. “We had a great telephone call. You guys exaggerated that call. That was a big exaggeration. We’re not babies.”
Turnbull chuckled and said, “Young at heart.”
“We had a very, very good call. That was a little bit of fake news,” Trump said. “That’s exactly right,” Turnbull chimed in.
Speaking soon after the phone call, Kim Beazley, a former Australian ambassador to the United States, said, “The saving grace of all this is that the alliance relationship is so deep it is now function- driven rather than leader- driven.”
An earlier meeting for Thursday between the two that had been planned at a hotel in Manhattan blocks from Trump Tower was scrapped when the president remained in Washington for the passage of the House bill to repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The delay in Trump’s schedule allowed him to circumvent some of the noisiest protests of his trip in Manhattan.
The military alliance between the United States and Australia dates from World War I and has grown to encompass extensive intelligencesharing, joint military exercises and shoulderto- shoulder combat campaigns.
During their meeting in New York, Trump briefed Turnbull about his strategy for dealing with the mounting nuclear threat from North Korea. They also talked about the U. S.- led multinational campaign against the Islamic State.
Turnbull, a member of the progressive wing of the Liberal Party of Australia, has little in common with Trump on many of his positions. But he has borrowed some of his populist language on immigration, an issue that is as fraught in Australia as it is in the United States.
The Australian leader recently announced proposals that would limit the number of permanent residents settling in his country and that would make it harder for immigrants to become citizens. Fluency in English, a test of “Australian values” and a longer waiting period are part of the proposal.
“We are putting jobs first; we are putting Australians first,” the prime minister said.
Information for this article was contributed by Damien Cave of The New York Times.