Dr Emma Shortis is in The Conversation today on how the Trump comparisons have hurt Dutton. (As the originator of Temu Trump I was surprised at how much it took off – but as Emma points out, it’s because it seemed to fit)

You can read the whole thing here, but Emma points out the press conference where JD Vance began berating the Ukrainian leader as a turning point (Or as I like to call it the ‘find out’ era after having ‘f*cked around’)

After this incident, Dutton was careful to distance himself from Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine. He even went so far as to say that leadership might require “standing up to your friends and to those traditional allies because our views have diverged”.

Similarly, influential Coalition powerbroker Peta Credlin wrote in The Australian:

it’s hard to see America made great again if the Trump administration’s message to the world is that the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.

Therein lies the bind for the Coalition – an ideological alignment with “Make America Great Again” cannot be fully reconciled with a nationalism that puts Australian interests first.

MAGA ideology is all-or-nothing, not pick-and-choose.

During the election campaign, the Coalition attempted to walk the path of “pick-and-choose”. And Labor quite successfully used this against them. Assertions the opposition leader was nothing but a “Temu Trump”, or “DOGE-y Dutton”, stuck because they had at least a ring of truth to them.