Donald Trump will have his first meeting with a foreign leader on Thursday, when he will sit down with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in New York.
“I am very honored to see the President-elect ahead of other world leaders,” Abe told reporters before he left Japan, according to CNN. “The Japan-US alliance is the axis of Japan’s diplomacy and security. The alliance becomes alive only when there is trust between us. I would like to build such a trust with Mr. Trump.”
On the campaign trail, Trump once suggested that Japan should obtain nuclear weapons to defend itself from North Korea before later claiming that he never said Japan should get nuclear weapons.
An aide to Abe, Katsuyuki Kawai, told Japanese broadcaster NHK that Trump’s transition team told him not to take Trump’s comments on the campaign trail literally, according to CNN.
“All the people shared the same opinion — that we don’t need to be nervous about every single word and phrase said during Mr. Trump’s campaign,” Katsuyuki Kawai said.
Reuters reported on Wednesday that details of the meeting were still unclear and that Japanese officials had not obtained details on where and when the meeting will take place from Trump’s team.
“There has been a lot of confusion,” a Japanese official told Reuters.
Hey, it’ll go great. Trump can explain that the interment camps are for Muslims this time, and that he’s great friends with the Asians.
PM Shinzo Abe will be disappointed to find out that although TrumpCo does sell nukes, you have to bring your own shopping bags.
Japan has too many Asian CEOs.
Is Trump meeting with Abe before meeting with our State Department and our military leaders?
Yes.
He has already made a number of phone calls to world leaders, including Abe, without any sort of briefing at all.
He will be walking into this briefing the same way. Indeed, his transition team isn’t planning on even showing up for the first meeting with State until Friday.