President Donald Trump met with Japanese former first lady Abe Akie, the widow of assassinated Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, on Tuesday during his state visit to Japan.
Abe Akie created and gifted Trump, who has helped solve or de-escalate eight conflicts around the world since returning to office in January, a piece of art with the word “PEACE” in gold text.
Abe Akie took to X after the meeting to convey that Trump shared “warm words” with her.
“He still holds my husband in high regard and offered me warm words as well,” she wrote. “Thank you for taking the time despite your busy schedule.”
Abe Shinzo was assassinated on July 8, 2022, while delivering a campaign speech in Nara. His assassin, Yamagami Tetsuya, pleaded guilty on Tuesday.
Trump and Abe Shinzo were very close and, after learning of his murder, Trump declared, “There will never be another like him.” Trump regularly calls Abe Akie to check in following her husband’s assassination, and the two met last year for dinner after Trump won the presidential election.
“Mrs. Abe was very close with our first lady, with Melania, and she loved Melania’s book … I was very close to the prime minister, Shinzo Abe. He was great, he was a great man,” Trump said after the dinner.
He added that the meeting was “out of respect to Shinzo.”
Abe Akie was one of Japan’s most prominent first ladies in history, often respectfully breaking with her husband on political issues, according to Japan Today’s 2014 profile on her. It became a running joke in Japan that she was the true “opposition party,” per the outlet:
Her husband, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, wants Japan’s idled nuclear power plants restarted. Akie does not. Abe’s government pushed through a consumption tax hike – over Akie’s vocal opposition. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party plans a giant sea wall to protect the Tohoku coast from tsunami like the one that devastated it in March 2011. Bad idea, declared Akie after meeting with local citizens critical of the structure.
She has also been a proponent of social issues, having ridden atop a float during a gay pride parade in Tokyo in 2014.
Trump’s relationship with Abe Shinzo was further underscored on Tuesday when newly minted Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae, an ally of Abe’s, gifted Trump the late prime minister’s golf putter.
“Such a wonderful man,” Trump said.
