An AFR editorial about Trump on 31 October 2020 showed leanings and aversions that keep appearing – disgust at anything ‘Left’ and closeness to big business.
In 2016, Mr Trump offered a weary and disappointed US middle and working class a self-contained America that kept out migrants and unfair trade, and kept away from the wars of others. There were annoying kernels of truth in his complaints……Foreign allies piously calling for America’s global leadership also happily freeloaded under Washington’s huge defence budget burden. The identity politics of left progressives still too easily sneers at common people and veers into censorship…..The Democratic response to the Trump presidency has been a shift to the wacky left…. Mr Biden, though too old for the job, offers the better hope of return to some form of normality. President Biden, braked by a narrow Republican majority in the Senate, would be the only good result for America and the world.
A lot of that is in the language you see in another newspaper – identity politics, left progressives and the wacky left – but are these demons breathing so hard in the editor’s ear that his distrust of the ‘left’ is such that he thinks a divided country would best be served by a divided government, and that the interests of America and the world would best be served by Mr Biden having to put up for four years what Mr Obama had to put up with for eight years from Mitch McConnell? And might it not seem just a little presumptuous for an Australian newspaper to say how Americans should structure their government? By putting a brake on their president?
Bloopers
Judging by Biden’s first speech as effectively president elect, one of the chief dangers we will face from a Biden presidency is drowning in schmalz, slightly mangled.
The Australian, 9 November, 2020.
With Compliments 
In an otherwise very pedestrian column Sheridan was right In think to criticise Albo’s “we have warned the Kaiser” idea that the PM should have put a call in to Trump to tell him to stop calling foul, take a bow, and bugger off. Morrison’s earlier comment that he had the utmost faith in the ability of America’s institutions to deliver a democratic outcome basically said the same thing in public, while staying within the diplomatic lanes. The idea of an Australian PM leading the president of the United States into the room of mirrors to have a hard look at himself is laughable. It’s a thankless job being an opposition leader in crisis years but Albo is being poorly advised of late. I have another possible entry for Passing Bull – Kevin Rudd on TV saying Trump should stop sulking about losing, and piss off. Ahhh yes. Kevin would know all about how to accept defeat with grace and dignity.
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I agree, but he said something to the effect that the comment was the the most absurd he had seen in forty years of journalism. You can count the scars that remark reveals.He is beyond the absurd.