Major party politicians are rushing to back the US alliance despite the president's unpredictability amid calls for an independent review of Australia's other options.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton have spent large chunks of their campaigns in the run up to the May 3 election positioning themselves as the best person to handle Donald Trump.
Labor has chastised the Liberals for copying Mr Trump's populist policies.
The coalition's attempt to avoid comparison to the president, who's unpopular in Australia, wasn't helped when government efficiency spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price - a role modelled on Elon Musk's department in the US - proclaimed she wanted to "make Australia great again".
Asked about the use of the statement, coalition campaign spokesman James Paterson said "that's not my style of politics".
"What we're focused on is the fall in living standard that's occurred on Labor's watch," he said on Sunday.
Nationals Leader David Littleproud also defended the comments, saying it was an impromptu speech, during which "you got a whole lot of words going around your head".
"She inadvertently made these comments, it's nothing about trying to channel Trump at all," he said.
Independent MP Monique Ryan rejected using inflammatory language the Greens have employed against the US president, calling it "undergraduate populism" but echoed concerns about the trade and defence alliance.
The Kooyong MP has joined calls for a parliamentary inquiry into the AUKUS alliance.
Volatile global politics meant Australia had "to think about the fact that the US might not always be a country which works to act in our best interests, both in trade and on defence", she said.
Defence Minister Richard Marles defended the alliance and AUKUS deal under which Australia will buy nuclear-powered submarines from the US, saying it was in Mr Trump's interests to proceed.
"I get that people are going to constantly ask the question about AUKUS and maybe that's fair enough in the sense that this is a multi-decade, multi-billion dollar program," he said.
"But when you look at what people are saying here, in the United States, in the United Kingdom, there is support across the political spectrum."
