{"id":21971,"date":"2026-03-19T18:04:52","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T18:04:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/03\/19\/trump-zings-japan-with-jab-about-pearl-harbor\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T18:04:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T18:04:52","slug":"trump-zings-japan-with-jab-about-pearl-harbor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/03\/19\/trump-zings-japan-with-jab-about-pearl-harbor\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Zings Japan With Jab About Pearl Harbor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div style=\"position:relative\" data-narration-container=\"true\">\n<p>While taking questions from reporters on Thursday, President Donald Trump blindsided Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi with a jab referencing the 1941 surprise attack initiated by the Empire of Japan on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.<\/p>\n<p>The question, from one of the reporters in the Oval Office, was about the current joint operation in Iran undertaken by the United States and Israel \u2014 specifically, why President Trump had not spoken with allies in Europe or Japan prior to initiating an attack against the Iranian regime.<\/p>\n<p><strong>WATCH:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Q: \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you tell U.S. allies\u2026about the war before attacking Iran?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>President Trump: \u201cWe wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn\u2019t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/esV9iyvMiV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pic.twitter.com\/esV9iyvMiV<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 CSPAN (@cspan) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/cspan\/status\/2034667305318187239?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">March 19, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cJapan and U.S. are very good friends,\u201d the reporter began. \u201cBut one question: why didn\u2019t you tell U.S. Allies in Europe and Asia, like Japan, about the war before attacking Iran? So we are very confused about \u2014 we, Japanese citizens \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, one thing, you don\u2019t want to signal too much,\u201d Trump replied, arguing that it was unwise to give away too much of the planning before taking military action. \u201cYou know, when we go in, we went in very hard, and we didn\u2019t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn\u2019t you tell me about Pearl Harbor? Okay? Right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Prime Minister Takaichi appeared to be slightly uncomfortable as several around the room began to laugh.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s asking me \u2014 no, you believe in surprise I think much more so than us,\u201d Trump continued, pivoting back to Iran. \u201cBut we had to surprise them and we did. And because of that surprise, we knocked out \u2014 the first two days, we probably knocked out 50% of what we \u2014 and much more than we anticipated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo if I go and tell everybody about it, it\u2019s no longer a surprise, right?\u201d the president concluded.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/trump-zings-japanese-prime-minister-with-jab-about-pearl-harbor\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While taking questions from reporters on Thursday, President Donald Trump blindsided Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi with a jab referencing the 1941 surprise attack initiated by the Empire of Japan on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The question, from one of the reporters in the Oval Office, was about the current joint [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-current-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}