The wife of Japan’s prime minister Akie Abe pretended not to understand English in order to avoid any conversation with President Donald Trump at a G20 Summit dinner where Trump left his seat to speak privately with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Donald Trump said to the New York Times in an interview published Wednesday, “So, I was seated next to the wife of Prime Minister Abe, who I think is a terrific guy, and she’s a terrific woman, but doesn’t speak English.”
“So I’m sitting there. There was one interpreter for Japanese, ’cause otherwise it would have been even tougher. But I enjoyed the evening with her, and she’s really a lovely woman, and I enjoyed — the whole thing was good,” Trump told the Times.
Apparently, as journalist Sam Thielman , Japan’s First Lady Akie Abe speaks excellent English.
In the video that went viral on social media, the First Lady of Japan giving the keynote address at a R3ADY Asia-Pacific symposium on coastal resilience in New York in 2014. In the video bellow, Akie Abe reads a roughly 15-minute speech before finishing with a smile and a “Thank you very much.”