An Australian politician broke off mid-way through a live TV interview about the Trumpy direction his party is headed in to instead scream at his dog.
The on-screen snafu occurred while right-wing One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce, 59, was speaking with ABC host Sarah Ferguson, 61, on Monday about his party’s leader, Pauline Hanson, 72, and her calls for Trump-style mass deportations.
“[Hanson] is dragging you further into a place of intolerance and racial discrimination,” Ferguson put it to Joyce. “You’re defending your leader, but are you really comfortable with where she is taking you?”
“I think… SIT DOWN!!!” Joyce responded by bellowing off-screen. “Sorry, it’s the dog,” he clarified as the blood rushed back out of his face.
It’s not the first time Joyce’s fury has been directed at a household pet.
The Daily Beast previously reported in May 2015 how the Australian MP made headlines for threatening to kill Johnny Depp’s dogs.
Authorities had accused Depp of illegally smuggling two Yorkshire terriers, owned with his then-wife, actress Amber Heard, into the country on their private jet the previous month in violation of the country’s strict biosecurity and import laws.
Depp and Heard faced an ultimatum: remove the dogs, Pistol and Boo, from the country, or they’d be put down.
Joyce, who served as Australia’s minister of agriculture at the time, was quick to weigh in on the controversy. “If we start letting movie stars—even though they’ve been the sexiest man alive twice—to come into our nation [and break the laws], then why don’t we just break the laws for everybody?” he told reporters.
“If he doesn’t take Boo and Pistol back, we do have to euthanize them,” he went on. “The reason you can walk through a park in Brisbane and not have in the back of your mind, ‘What happens if a rabid dog comes out and bites me or bites my kid?’ is because we’ve kept that disease out.
“So this is not fanciful stuff, and therefore we’re very diligent about what comes into our nation,” he added.
Heard, despite issuing an online apology for the incident, didn’t let it go.
Joyce inherited New Zealand citizenship from his father, who was born there, and discovered in 2017 that it made him a dual national. Australia’s constitution bars dual nationals from sitting in parliament, and he briefly lost his seat as a result.
Heard ridiculed the politician on Twitter. “To comfort Mr. Joyce in his hour [of] need, I have sent him a box of New Zealand’s finest kiwi fruit (assuming this passes his biosecurity laws),” she wrote.
She made it clear she still held a grudge years later in 2021, when she adopted a new dog and named it Barnaby Joyce. The MP and two-time deputy prime minister, for his part, said he was flattered, figuring it showed he was still living in her head rent-free.
The Daily Beast has contacted Joyce’s office for comment on this story.
