Donald Trump Asked Why Japan’s ‘Samurai Warriors’ Did Not Shoot Down North Korean Missiles

After North Korea fired a ballistic missile that flew over Japan in August, Donald Trump said that he believed Japan should have destroyed the missile, asking leaders from Asian countries over the phone why a “nation of samurai warriors” was unable to shoot down North Korea’s missiles, according to a report by Japan’s Kyodo News wire service. The report of Trump’s bizarre question surfaced on Saturday as Trump prepared to land in Japan for his first official visit there.

Japan is the first stop on what is planned as a five-country, 13-day tour of Asia by Trump, a trip that, according to a CNN report, Trump hopes will distract attention from the firestorm surrounding the investigation into his 2016 presidential campaign’s links to Russia that resulted in the arrests of his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and a top adviser, Rick Gates, on October 30.

Also on October 30, it was revealed that former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos had pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his own Russia ties.

But even though the Asia trip is at least, in part, intended to divert from the Russia investigation, Trump made the surprise announcement aboard Air Force One on the way to Japan that he plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the visit.

In August, North Korea launched a ballistic missile that flew over Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, sailing more than 1,600 miles and crashing into the northern Pacfic Ocean.

Trump “questioned Japan’s decision not to shoot down the missiles,” diplomatic sources who spoke to Kyodo told the news service. A second ballistic missile that flew over Japan was launched by North Korea on September 15.

Japan’s military, known as the Japan Self Defense Force because under the country’s post-World War II constitution its military may be used only for defensive purposes, monitored the missiles closely and determined quickly that they would not strike Japanese territory. No attempt was made to intercept either missile. Shooting down a high-flying, speeding missile would be extremely difficult, and a failure would have proven an embarrassment to Japan and a green light to North Korea to fire more missiles, experts said.

But a successful shootdown of the test-fired missile could have provoked a further military response from North Korea, the reports said.

Even before reports surfaced of his bizarre “samurai warrior” remarks, Trump faced a difficult political landscape upon touching down in Japan, where he addressed U.S. troops at Yokota Air Base in the Western Tokyo region. A recent poll showed that under Trump, support for the United States among the Japanese people has crashed to its lowest level in nine years, since before President Barack Obama assumed office, according to a Japan Times report.

Only 24 percent of Japan’s citizens, less than one in every four, said they had confidence in Trump’s handling of world affairs, and just 57 percent of Japanese said that they held a favorable view of the United States — a steep, 15-point drop from 2016, Obama’s final year as U.S. president. In Obama’s last year, 78 percent of Japanese citizens in the Pew Research poll said that they had confidence in Obama’s handling of world affairs, more than three times the number who expressed confidence in Trump.

The 57 percent who say that they see the U.S. in a favorable light, however, is somewhat better than in 2008, the last year of George W. Bush’s two terms as president, when just 50 percent of Japanese said that they had a favorable view of the United States.

Trump’s popularity at home in the U.S. continues to suffer at record low levels, coming in at just 39 percent in a new Gallup poll released on Saturday.

[Featured Image by Eugene Hoshiko/AP Images]