Meet the OTHER Aussie who attended Trump’s victory bash – and her brutal message for his haters
While Gina Rinehart was perhaps the best-known Australian at Donald Trump’s victory party in Florida, she shared a table with another devoted Down Under fan of the new president.
Outspoken former Liberal Vice President Teena McQueen was also spotted at the soiree, held at Trump’s Florida home base of Mar-a-Lago, at a table with billionaire mining magnate Ms Rinehart and right-wing British MP Nigel Farage.
Ms McQueen revealed on ABC’s Q&A in 2019 how she met the future US president.
She spoke out to defend Trump after Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi called him a racist and “a standard-bearer of sexism” live on the ABC show.
Ms McQueen responded that she was probably the only panelist who had spent time with him.
“You don’t have to spend time with Trump to know what he stands for, just be honest,” Senator Faruqi interrupted, drawing applause from a sympathetic audience.
However, Mrs. McQueen continued undeterred.
“In 2006, I was a chaperone for the Miss Australia Australia contestant in the Miss Universe competition when Trump was still running it,” she said.
Former vice president of the federal Liberal Party Teena McQueen (pictured left with Gina Rinehart center and Nigel Farage right) was photographed at Trump’s victory party in Mar-a-Lago, Florida
“So he was there all week and I mean, I had a lot of time to talk to him about politics.
“He always said he was planning to run for president.
“He was none of those things. He wasn’t racist, he wasn’t sexist, none of that.”
American academic, author and political activist Roxane Gay was not convinced.
“Just because you didn’t have experience with him doesn’t mean he didn’t do these horrible things,” she said.
“I mean there’s audio of him talking about grabbing p***y.”
After Ms McQueen said at a right-wing conference in 2022 that she was happy to see “left-leaning” Liberal MPs lose their seats at the last federal election, she was barred from re-election as the party’s federal executive in June 2023.
Ms. MsQueen revealed in a 2019 episode of the ABC show Q&A that she first met Trump when she was a beauty queen chaperone
Since losing her job with the Liberal Party, Ms McQueen has been an irregular contributor to Sky News, a stable of conservative pundits.
According to a source with knowledge, both Ms. McQueen and Ms. Rinehart are “very, very close.”
The only other Australian reportedly at Trump’s party is Brisbane-based Andrew Cooper, co-founder of CPAC in Australia.
Ms McQueen told Nine Newspapers that the atmosphere at Wednesday’s Trump party was “electric”.
“Unbelievable, the best night of my life,” she said.
She joked that if Trump won the mining state of Virginia, it would be because she and Ms. Rinehart, CEO of iron ore giant Hancock Prospecting, were going to a meeting in Salem.
As it turned out, Trump didn’t win the traditionally Democratic state, but that made little difference as he cruised to a resounding electoral college victory in Wednesday’s election.