Trump’s Putin excuse doesn’t pan out

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that a lack of English conversational skills on the part of Akie Abe, the wife of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, prompted him to leave his spot next to her at dinner at an international summit and talk with Vladimir Putin instead.

Mrs. Abe “doesn’t speak English ... like, not ‘Hello,’” Trump told The New York Times in an interview. Not so. Akie Abe, the daughter of a wealthy Japanese family, attended a private Roman Catholic international school in Tokyo before going on to college. The elementary-through-high-school academy, the Sacred Heart School, includes rigorous English-language instruction as part of its curriculum.

And 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 earlier this month at the Group of 20 meeting in Hamburg has come under close scrutiny because the White House did not disclose it for more than a week and because no other American, even an interpreter, was privy to the conversation.

Putin used his own interpreter, and there is no record of what was said other than the president’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 over human rights abuses.

Some veteran diplomats and foreign policy experts have expressed alarm over the potential repercussions of such a conversation. Trump has said he had hidden nothing because the dinner was part of his public schedule.