Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
Charted: Donald Trump’s Recent Flurry of Phone Calls With World Leaders
Trump spent more than twice as long with leaders of Saudi Arabia and Russia than one of the U.S.'s closest allies, Australia.
President Donald Trump held a flurry of phone calls with other world leaders in his second weekend in office—some of them much longer than others.
His call with the U.S.’s closest ally among them, Australia, was unceremoniously cut short after he told prime minister Malcolm Turnbull that an agreement reached by the Obama administration to take in 1,250 refugees sent to detention centers in the Pacific islands was “the worst deal ever,” the Washington Post reported. In all, president Trump spent less than half the time on the phone with Turnbull than he did with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman (that call lasted over an hour, Reuters reported), or Russian president Vladimir Putin, which the White House said also lasted about an hour.
Calls with leaders from other US allies, including Germany’s Angela Merkel and Japan’s Shinzo Abe were also considerably shorter than the time Trump spent with Putin and king Salman.
Not included on the chart are calls with French president Francois Hollande on Jan. 28, or the Abu Dhabi crown prince Sheikh Muhammad bin Zayid Al Nuhayyan on Jan. 29. The length of those calls were not disclosed be either side, and a White House spokesman said he had no further information beyond the press statements.
Judging from the subjects covered with Hollande, which were detailed by the French president’s office, that call may not have lasted long—Hollande warned Trump that an isolationist policy would be a “dead-end” and stressed the importance of the Paris climate accord, NATO, and the United Nations, things the Trump administration has said it may pull out of.