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The founder of a key support group for the US president has praised Gina Rinehart as a “female Donald Trump” and backed a push by the mining magnate to bring Trump’s policy ideas to Australia.
Toni Holt Kramer, the president and founder of The Trumpettes USA, told Guardian Australia she had been friends with Rinehart since the first Trump presidency in 2016, describing her as an “extremely brilliant woman”.
She has also thrown her support behind Rinehart to be a future Australian ambassador to Washington under a Dutton government.
“She’s an incredible woman … She does so much good. I’m so impressed with her through the years. To me, she’s sort of like a female Donald Trump,” Holt Kramer said of Australia’s richest person.
“She has the right values for me ... She thinks so normally, so intelligently, and she’s only for the betterment of Australia. She loves Australia with her heart and soul.
“I have no doubt she’d be a great ambassador. I wish she would be an ambassador to Washington from Australia.”
The praise from Holt Kramer comes after Rinehart, who has described herself as a Trumpette, revealed to her staff last month that a renovation of her Perth company headquarters would be inspired in part by the Make America Great Again (Maga) movement.
The redevelopment will include a silver sculpture of Peanut the squirrel, an American pet squirrel that has become a cause célèbre of the Maga movement in the US after it was euthanised by authorities. The plans also include a plaque etched with a quote from Elon Musk on freedom.
Rinehart has long had strong views on government overreach and she is now pushing for a Maga-like crusade in Australia, calling on the country’s leaders to follow in the US president’s footsteps.
She has been openly cultivating her relationship with the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, since the 2022 election, and has also hosted multiple fundraisers for his campaign. Her company, Hancock Prospecting, is now the Coalition’s second-largest donor.
At an event at her national mining day last November, Rinehart said Australia should learn from the success of Trump.
“As I have repeatedly stated, we need to cut government tape, regulations, governments’ wastage and tax burdens across Australia,” Rinehart said.
“We need a USA-style Doge [Department of Government Efficiency] that delivers action, one that helps to return dollars to our pockets and investment back to Australia.
“Don’t be frightened to call for ‘make our bank accounts great again’,” she said.
Rinehart said she wanted to cut the company tax rate and abandon and end subsidies for green energy.
Holt Kramer, who describes the Trumpettes as an “awareness group” that has campaigned for Trump over the past decade, said she believed Rinehart would be successful in her campaign to bring similar policies to Australia.
The pair sat together on the night of the US election in Mar-a-Lago last November, and were pictured alongside Nigel Farage. They also celebrated Trump’s inauguration together at an event in January.
“I think she has her own great ideas. I think she’s inspired by Trump, but I think Gina herself has a lot of great ideas,” Kramer said.
“She too has that force that Trump has. Her belief is part of her blood. It’s part of her brain. She didn’t all of a sudden become a believer in the better things for Australia.”
Rinehart’s ties to Trump and the US have deepened since he was first elected in 2016, when she first met with his campaign team in Washington. At this year’s inauguration, Rinehart appeared at several official events attended by the new president and took out full-page ads in US papers congratulating him on his victory.
One event was a “candlelight dinner” with Trump, which she attended with Hancock Prospecting chief executive, Garry Korte. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and X’s Elon Musk – whom Rinehart has also met and expressed admiration for – were also there.
Rinehart also attended the Starlight Ball the night after the inauguration, at which many major donors were present.
Trump thanked attenders at the ball for their support, saying: “You believed in us very early.”
Australia’s richest person has also increased her investments in the US, with the Australian Financial Review reporting she now owns a $1.3bn portfolio in US stocks. This includes shares in Murdoch’s Fox Corp, Musk’s Tesla and the president’s Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs Truth Social.
She has also flagged other potential investments under the Trump administration, including in mining, oil and gas and agriculture.
Rinehart has spoken personally with Trump since he assumed office.
In a speech to her staff at Hancock Prospecting last month to mark her birthday and to acknowledge long-serving staff, Rinehart said she spoke to the new president in early February.
“By the time I was able to chat to President Trump [on] Friday night almost two weeks after his inauguration, the president told me more than $3tn dollars had flowed into the USA,” she said.
“It will take much more than a tiny tinkering around a few edges to start bank accounts opening and returning the investment flow to Australia. Somehow, we need to get this message to the out-of-touch Canberra cocoon.”
She also spoke about her “inspiring” attendance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) in Maryland in February and included a 15-minute extract of a speech from the Argentinian president, Javier Milei.
She said the sculpture of Peanut the squirrel and the plaque with the etched quote from Elon Musk would hang in a new teppanyaki area at her Perth company headquarters.
The quote from Musk selected by Rinehart was:
The larger government gets, the less individual freedoms you have … Your freedoms have just been eroded year after year with more and more government, laws and regulations and regulatory authorities.
Rinehart’s speech also referenced an image of a kangaroo wearing a Driza-Bone – an Australian fashion brand acquired by Rinehart in 2023 – with a sign saying “drain the billabong”. She said she was “borrowing from President Trump’s successful policy, much welcomed by American taxpayers, to drain the swamp”.
