'Prime Minister Trumble': White House gaffe goes viral, as Trump set to honour Australia's refugee deal

As the president's spokesman Sean Spicer insisted the United States would honour its refugee settlement deal with Australia, his repeated mispronunciation of the prime minister's name sent social media into a frenzy.

While reiterating just how furious President Trump is over the deal his predecessor Barack Obama made with Australia for the United States to resettle 1250 refugees, Mr Spicer referred to the Australian prime minister as "Mr Trumble".

"The president has great respect for Prime Minister Trumble," Mr Spicer said during a press conference at the White House.

Any chance that it was just a slip of the tongue was quickly dismissed when the now viral name was repeated.

"The president had a very cordial conversation with Prime Minister 'Trumble'."

As expected, astute observers didn't let the gaffe slide either.

"Latest polls reveal Trumble now preferred Prime Minister," one person tweeted.

Mr Spicer said "extreme vetting" would be used to make sure that people coming to the US would be "coming here with peaceful intentions".

"I cannot underscore how disappointed he [Trump] was in the deal that was made, and how he thought it was just a horrible deal that was offered up in the United States by this previous administration," Mr Spicer said.

The weekend phone conversation between the two national leaders has been described as the most hostile phone call between an Australian Prime Minister and American President since the Vietnam War, after it was reported that Mr Trump yelled at Mr Turnbull and ended the call abruptly.

After labelling Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's refugee deal "dumb" - US President Donald Trump continues to make waves - declaring overnight his country is being taken advantage of.

"I love Australia as a country but we had a problem where, for whatever reason, President Obama said that they were going to take probably well over a thousand illegal immigrants who were in prisons and they were going to bring them and take them into this country," President Trump added.

But Mr Turnbull this morning continued to describe the conversation with Mr Trump as "cordial" and repreated his determination for the refugee resettlement deal to go ahead.

"The president had a commitment to honour the deal and that has been confirmed several times," Mr Turnbull told Sunrise.

"It's very important that it goes ahead because it will enable us to secure resettlement options for people on Nauru and Manus [Island],"

After talking with several world leaders on the weekend, including Russia's Vladimir Putin, President Trump told Prime Minister Turnbull their conversation on the Sunday was "the worst call by far", the Washington Post reported.

The US president accused the PM of trying to export "the next Boston bombers" to the US and then ended the call early, according to varying reports from Washington.

CNN's Jim Acosta tweeted that the president "pulled phone away from ear and says he wants off the call, which ends abruptly", according to a source.