Six years and one week ago, Scott Morrison walked into a box factory in a small Ohio town and found himself face-to-face with nearly 2000 people, at least half clad in red MAGA hats.
Morrison and his staff went into the Wapakoneta event thinking it was a joint opening of a new Pratt Paper factory that underscored the point they wanted to make to Donald Trump about Australians pulling their weight.
To viewers back home — including the then-opposition leader Anthony Albanese — it looked and sounded like a Trump campaign rally.
It felt like that on the factory floor as well.
Trump 2020 flags were waved and people sported T-shirts with slogans like “Bikers for Trump” and “Mission Accomplished: Make America Great Again”.
The meander through stacks of wadded up cardboard boxes waiting to be