Ex-PM Tony Abbott says Donald Trump’s supporters are ‘decent,’ his policies are ‘reasonable enough’

Australian ex-prime minister Tony Abbott has defended Donald Trump, saying the US presidential candidate’s policies are “reasonable enough.” The former Liberal Party leader has also referred to Trump’s supporters as “decent,” as opposed to the “deplorables” that Hillary Clinton previously called them.

Abbott, in an interview with Sky News on Thursday, has some positive things to say about Trump and his supporters. Despite Trump’s controversial remarks and his supporters’ reputation to be intolerant, Abbott said the Republican candidate’s campaign actually makes sense.

“The vast majority of Trump supporters are not deplorables, they really aren’t,” he said, referring to Clinton’s remark last month, in which she called half of Trump’s supporters as “basket of deplorables.”

“They are decent people who want to see change inside their country, and that’s fair enough,” he continued, adding that many of Trump’s positions are “reasonable enough.”

His successor, Malcolm Turnbull, on the other hand, has refused to engage in the discussion, telling 3AW host Neil Mitchell on Friday, “I’m sure Mr Abbott has carefully read all of Donald Trump’s policies before he made that comment, but I’m not going to buy into the policy debate in the United States.”

He reiterated that as the Australian prime minister, he respects other countries’ internal democratic processes, and so he was not “going to go any further into engaging into US elections.”

Like Turnbull, who said Trump’s comments were “loathsome,” Abbott has also condemned Trump’s recently unearthed comments about women, in which he was heard bragging about grabbing women by the “p---y” just because he could. Abbott described them as “gross beyond belief” and “completely indefensible.”

On Friday, Abbott took to Twitter to defend his statements about Trump, saying that while has some outlandish views, some of his policies were “classic conservatism.”

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