Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a member of the center-right Liberal Party, says that he's worried about what a second Trump term will mean for Western security.
Turnbull, who had his share of contentious interactions with Trump during his tenure as PM, told Australia's ABC News that the former president is in "awe" of Russian President Vladimir Putin for reasons he doesn't quite fathom.
"When you see Trump with Putin, as I have on a few occasions, he's like the 12-year-old boy who goes to high school and meets the captain of the football team," said Turnbull. "My hero!"
Turnbull went on to explain that Trump is "attracted to dictators and tyrants like Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping" and added that Trump "threatened to undermine or pull out of America's longest standing alliances."
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As if to put a fine point on it, Turnbull added of Trump's admiration of dictators that "it is really creepy" and "the creepiness was palpable."
Turnbull also made the case that Trump would present a threat to the security of Australia should he win a second term this November.
""What if Donald Trump forces Ukraine to surrender to Putin?" he asked. "What if Donald Trump pulls out of NATO? Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of NATO. Donald Trump stood up in front of an audience and he said to an unnamed European leader, if you don't spend more money on defense I'm going to encourage Putin to have a go at you. That's more or less what he said."
While many Republicans have dismissed Trump's attacks on NATO as simple campaign rhetoric, former Trump national security adviser John Bolton has been warning that the former president is deadly serious about leaving the alliance.
