Like many social media users, Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister of Australia and its current ambassador to the United States, has posted a range of things online: a plug for his new book, cheers for his Australian rules football team and many photographs of his cats.
But some of Mr. Rudd’s posts appear to have become a liability and an unwanted distraction after the re-election of Donald J. Trump.
“The most destructive president in history,” Mr. Rudd wrote on Twitter, now X, in 2020. “He drags America and democracy through the mud.”
Mr. Rudd deleted that post, and others criticizing Mr. Trump, as the results of the election became clear on Wednesday. In a statement on his personal website, Mr. Rudd said that he had made those remarks in his capacity as a commentator on American politics and removed them “out of respect for the office of president of the United States.” He added that he did not want them to be construed as reflecting the views of the Australian government.
It remains to be seen whether Mr. Rudd’s past criticisms of Mr. Trump will affect relations between Australia and the United States, which are close allies. (Apprised of those remarks during a British television interview in March, Mr. Trump said of Mr. Rudd, “He won’t be there long if that’s the case.”)
But the deletion of the comments highlighted the sensitivities and challenges ahead for some of Washington’s closest partners in dealing with a president who has expressed antipathy for many of the foundational tenets of American alliances.
Sam Roggeveen, director of the international security program at the Lowy Institute, a think tank in Sydney, Australia, said, “There’s only a handful of things that the president has been consistent about in public life, but one of those is skepticism of America’s alliances and his view that the U.S. is being exploited by its allies.”
The current Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, defended his appointment of Mr. Rudd and rejected calls to withdraw him. The Australian government has said that Mr. Rudd has been effective in building relationships on both sides of the political spectrum in the United States to promote Australian interests.
On Thursday, Mr. Albanese said that he had spoken with Mr. Trump and congratulated him on his victory. He also signaled that his government was ready for a shift in Washington.
“President Trump has run a campaign based on change, and he’s made it clear he’s going to do things differently. So we shouldn’t be surprised if things change,” Mr. Albanese said. “But equally, we should be really confident in ourselves and our place in the world.”
Australia has deepened ties with the United States in recent years. In 2021, the two countries, along with Britain, signed a defense agreement — which includes the deployment of nuclear-powered attack submarines — to counter China’s military growth.
But that deal will now be under the purview of Mr. Trump and his transactional approach to alliances. Australia could also be vulnerable to fallout from any renewed trade war between Washington and Beijing, which is Canberra’s largest trading partner.
Mr. Trump’s first dealings with Australia as president began with an infamously frosty call with the country’s leader at the time, Malcolm Turnbull. It raised early alarms about how Washington’s alliances would endure during his unorthodox presidency. Then, Senator John McCain made a point of releasing a public statement saying that he had called Australia’s ambassador to the United States to express his “unwavering support for the U.S.-Australia alliance.”
Those guardrails may no longer be present.
“There is no one in the U.S. Congress for whom any international relationship supersedes the will of Donald Trump,” said Gordon Flake, head of the Perth USAsia Center at the University of Western Australia.
Despite the rocky start, Australia emerged from the first Trump administration relatively unscathed, said Bruce Wolpe, a senior fellow at the United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney and the author of “Trump’s Australia.”
Still, Mr. Wolpe said, Mr. Trump may want to revisit the defense agreement, known as AUKUS, as he has done with trade pacts.
“Trump could want to examine it as a business deal. He’s ‘America First’ — where are the jobs going, where is the money going?” Mr. Wolpe said. But he added that it was unlikely Mr. Trump would upend the defense agreement because there was broad consensus that it was beneficial to both countries.
Mr. Rudd, a scholar on China who served as Australian prime minister from 2007 to 2010 and then briefly in 2013, had not held back on his criticisms of Mr. Trump’s former administration, including in commentary about trade policy or the abandonment of American leadership during the pandemic.
At the same time, he said this year that he had been laying the groundwork for either outcome of the U.S. election.
“It’s a democracy, anything can happen here,” Mr. Rudd said during the Republican National Convention in July — in an interview that he also posted on his social media account.
