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2016 November 16 - 22 [POLITICS]

PM Abe flatters Trump in face-to-face talks

Akahata ‘current’ column

“I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.”

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump wrote this in his autobiography, “The Art of the Deal”, which was published in 1987 when he was on the rise as a young real-estate tycoon.

"Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score," he wrote. "The real excitement is playing the game." He also stressed that sometimes it is necessary to “be confrontational”, “greedy”, and even “blur reality” in order to win lucrative contracts.

This guy seems very difficult to deal with because he himself says that he has enjoyed defeating a number of businesspersons. In fact, the Republican intentionally made many enemies in the race for the presidential nomination. After winning the presidential election, however, he said, “I will be president for ‘all Americans’.” Shortly after this declaration, he began to appoint super-hawkish politicians to key posts in his coming administration.

Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo met with Trump on November 17 ahead of other nations’ leaders, praising him as a “trustworthy leader”. Worried about the remarks Trump made during the election campaign, PM Abe may have asked him to continue to deploy the U.S. military in Japan.

It is only half a year since a 20-year-old Japanese woman was brutally killed by a former U.S. marine in Okinawa. The victim’s father recently expressed his feelings in his memoir; “Why my daughter…Why did he have to kill my daughter?”

The father goes on to state that as an Okinawan, he hopes that the U.S. forces will leave Okinawa as early as possible so that no more people will have to suffer like him. A person who has no intent to represent the father’s sufferings is unfit to be Japan’s prime minister.

Past related article:
> Trump’s victory in US presidential election, high time to end Japan’s subservience to US [November 10, 2016]