Top Republicans in Washington are trying to damp down a row between President Trump and the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
The dispute arose during a telephone call between the two leaders on Saturday when Mr. Trump expressed fury over a resettlement agreement that foresees the United States taking more than one thousand asylum seekers from Australia.
The US now says that arrangement can only go ahead after each one of the migrants has gone through "extreme vetting".
The episode has cast a dark shadow over usually positive relations between the US and Australia, as our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks reports.
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Like any good Australian soap opera - Neighbors for example - this is a story with twists and turns you never saw coming.
A fit of pique….a telephone slammed….tears, bitterness, anger….and a broader community dealing with the unexpected fallout.
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It seems that when President Trump and Prime Minister Turnbull began that process of getting to know one another, everything went off the rails rapidly.
It's unclear whether Donald Trump knew about the immigration resettlement deal that is supposed to see 1246 asylum seekers released from Australian off-shore detention centers and moved to the United States.
But what we do know, from Donald Trump's own explanation of the call that went so wrong….is that when he learned about it, he wasn't happy.
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President Trump talking there to executives and workers from the Harley Davidson motorcycle factory who visited the White House - in leathers - on Thursday.
The idea that out of all the world leaders he telephoned last weekend - Angela Market, Francois Hollande, Shinzo Abe and of course Vladimir Putin - it was the leader of such an ally like Australia who got under his skin has stunned Washington.
Republican Senator John McCain, himself a former Presidential candidate, telephoned the Australian Ambassador to offer what he called his "unwavering support".
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, tried to damp everything down publicly.
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But at the White House, poor old Sean Spicer - President Trump's press secretary - couldn't even get the Prime Minister's name right….just at the point where he was insisting the US has great respect for Mr. Turnbull.
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Foreign policy hands in Washington - including many former Republican officials - are wondering if this is the way President Trump treats his friends….imagine how he's going to treat his enemies.
The President, at a National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning, almost seemed to channel his inner Tony Soprano as he addressed that issue.
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The President is certainly establishing quite a track record….pulling the rug out from under British Prime Minister Theresa May by announcing his immigration ban hours after she left the Oval Office….now losing his temper with the leader of Australia, a country that has been militarily allied with Washington all the way back to World War One.
He's warning again that the rest of the world just needs to get used to an America that always puts its own interests first….suggesting that he doesn't entirely buy in to the harmony that has underpinned America's alliances for decades.
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