Trump said he was seated next to the Japanese first lady, who "doesn't speak English"—"like, not 'hello'"—so their conversation was lacking.
"There was one interpreter for Japanese, 'cause otherwise it would have been even tougher," he told the
Times. "But I enjoyed the evening with her, and she's really a lovely woman, and I enjoyed—the whole thing was good."
Journalists on Twitter
instantly seized upon the excerpt from the
Times interview and pointed out that Trump's claim was likely incorrect. The
Times’s Tokyo bureau chief, Motoko Rich,
called it "a false note," while
Guardian columnist Jessica Valenti
hypothesized that Akie Abe had "pretended not to speak English for nearly two hours to avoid talking to Trump."