Just hours after president Donald Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer announced the US would honor a refugee deal with Australia, the White House is reportedly backtracking on the agreement.
In a phone call to the ABC after Spicer’s comments this morning, a representative from the White House said if Trump did choose to honor the deal, it would only be because of America’s "longstanding relationship with Australia."
Earlier Spicer confirmed Trump would “honor” the agreement which would see 1250 refugees, mostly being held in Papua New Guinea, settled in the US.
“There will be extreme vetting applied to all of them, that is part and parcel of the deal that was made and it was made by the Obama administration with the full backing of the United States government”, he said.
Senior US sources had also told The Australian that the White House was “not happy” about the conflicting message it sent in its final executive order.
They also said the Australian government had depleted its political favors with the US over the one time deal.
The exception made for Australia came after Trump signed a controversial executive order that would see all citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries barred from entering the US for 90 days.
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