WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump says he went over to chat with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a dinner in Germany this month because his seat mate, the wife of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, didn't speak any English.
Akie Abe "doesn't speak English ... like, not 'Hello,'" Trump told The New York Times in an interview Wednesday.
Not so.
Mrs. Abe, the daughter of a wealthy Japanese family, attended a private Roman Catholic international school in Tokyo before she attended college.
The elementary-through-high-school academy, the Sacred Heart School, includes rigorous English-language instruction as part of its curriculum.
Social media swiftly found clips of the 55-year-old Abe making speeches in somewhat accented but perfectly serviceable English.
Trump's dinnertime encounter with Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg has come under scrutiny because the White House did not disclose it for 10 days and because no other U.S. official, not even an interpreter, was privy to the conversation.
Putin used his own interpreter and there is no U.S. record of what was said other than Trump's assertion in the interview that the two leaders discussed "adoption."
Putin cut off adoptions of Russian children by Americans several years ago in retaliation for U.S. sanctions against Russian figures accused of human rights abuses.
Some veteran diplomats and foreign policy experts have expressed alarm over the U.S. and Russian presidents having an extended discussion without any official record or aides present.
Trump said in the interview that he and Putin spoke for about 15 minutes. Other accounts have said the two talked for closer to an hour.
A deliberate snub of Trump by Akie Abe is unlikely on several counts, however.
Even if Mrs. Abe had decided she could express herself better in her native language, there was an interpreter tasked with assisting her as needed.
Moreover, it would be almost unheard of for a Japanese figure in public life and in a formal social setting, to behave with deliberate rudeness.
Abe also once worked as a radio disc jockey, pointing to a likely ability to engage in patter when necessary. (Her on-air name was "Akky.")
The flap over her conversation with Trump, however, generated a fresh social-media backlash over Abe's involvement in right-wing causes. She and her husband have become figures in a scandal in Japan over an ultra-nationalist kindergarten, with some alleging that the two made a secret donation to the school.
