Trump Mentions Pearl Harbor When Asked Why He Didn’t Tell Japan About Iran
“Who knows better about surprises than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?”
One thing I like about President Donald Trump is that he has never changed his personality.
So it shouldn’t surprise anyone when he made a quip about Pearl Harbor with Prime Minister of Japan Sanae Takaichi sitting next to him when a reporter asked him why he didn’t tell Japan about the prepared Iran strikes
We went in very hard, and we didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise.
Who knows better about surprises than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor? Okay, right?
He’s asking me, “do you believe in surprise?” I think much more so than us. And we had a surprise, and we did, and because of that surprise, we knocked them out the first two days. We probably knocked out 50% of what we and much more than we anticipated doing. So if I go and tell everybody about it, there’s no longer a surprise, right?
🚨 LMFAO HOLY CRAP! President Trump just dropped an INSANE one-liner in front of the Japanese PM in the Oval
REPORTER: Why didn't you tell Japan before the Iran war?
TRUMP: "Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why did you not tell me about PEARL HARBOR!? Right?" 🤣🔥 pic.twitter.com/Dbuy9Xa8P6
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) March 19, 2026
Dyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyying.
I see the media clutching their pearls over the comment because, of course, they are.
I thought Takaichi took it in stride. She shifted a little bit, but I didn’t notice any hurt or anger from her. In fact, and I’m glad someone captured it, you can see her face slightly change.
I've watched this clip multiple times, and it doesn't stop being uncomfortable (or funny). But watch Prime Minister Takaichi's face change when Trump says "Who knows better about surprise than Japan?!"
She knows what's coming. pic.twitter.com/iKJTj9JH2L
— Steve Skojec (@SteveSkojec) March 19, 2026
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Comments
Which is more uncomfortable: Japan springing Pearl Harbor on the US, or FDR knowing in advance they were going to do it (or at least provoking Japan into such an action)?
I am more uncomfortable with the state of our nation today than what it was in 1941.
I love the smell of napalm in the morning
It’s not too bad in the evening. Just a couple of whiffs before bedtime.
Shhh…that’s the dirty little secret of the hero of the big government progressives.
Oh, please. It’s been proven beyond all doubt that FDR did not know about it.
And sure, he’d been taking hostile actions against Japan. So what? No one denied that. The whole point of the accusation is that he let the attack happen, and we know for a fact that he did not.
Don’t know what sources you’re drawing on, but it’s my understanding that the matter of FDR’s foreknowledge (or not) is far from settled and is still open to debate.
Unless you were a fly on the wall, you cannot definitively state as fact that he did not know.
Oh, really? Not only did Japan not tell us in advance about Pearl Harbor, they never warned us about Godzilla either so there.
There’s some talk out there that Churchill knew about Pearl Harbour but kept quiet because he needed America and its industrial light in the war on our side.
Worse was FDR sweeping Japan’s warnings under the carpet, in order to keep his promise to Churchill to get America involved, after he (in an act of war) cut off Japanese supply lines. All because he thought there would be one world gov’t after the war, and if he played his cards right, he could be the world leader.
While still a popular olde-timey conspiracy theory, the meme that FDR personally and absolutely KNEW about Pearl Harbor ahead of time – and did nothing to justify going to war against Japan – has no smoking gun as such AND is illogical on top of that.
FDR was definitely hostile to both Germany’s and Japan’s then on-going wars of conquest, as shown by lend-lease etc. and tolerance to citizens volunteering to fight both of those. But the premise that he allowed PH at Churchill’s bidding fails to take into account THE existential threat to Britain was Germany, not Japan. And that going to war v Japan wouldn’t auto bring us into war with Germany as well.
2ndly, the whole “provoking” bit is an exaggeration. Yes, we did cut off oil imports to the Japanese war economy, but the resources Japan needed to replace thst loss were all under European colonial control, Japan could have attacked to seize those colonies while ignoring the US entirely and the Isolationist Movement in the USA would still have kept the USA officially a neutral nation.
Not a smoking gun but there is the peculiar timing of aircraft carrier on exercises that just happened to clear them all from harm’s way.
You are crediting FDR with prescience there.
Not just in the app attack, but in that Carriers would be more important than Battleships in WW II and going forward. The common belief in most navies (including ours) at the time was that BBs were the way you measured Naval Power, that carriers were useful auxiliary ships in that they help you spot opposing Capital ships to bring them to battle.
Aw, geez, not this shit again.
Who shot JR? Did you know Elvis is alive and living in New Mexico? I heard Adolf Hitler was still directing Nazi’s in a secret ice cave in Antarctica. BUT…EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN
Not the best off the cuff joke by Trump. Funny sure… but dang dude. Some will refuse.to understand that most of his unscripted remarks aren’t mean spirited at all but are a reflection of his honest beliefs …and offering them up in public while not always diplomatic is refreshingly transparent.
I liked it.
so what
he is telling it like it needs to be told
“diplomacy” has gotten us this lefty mess
trump for the win
Trump got it from a 1970s book From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front-Line Dispatches from the Advertising War by Jerry Femina, a losing suggestion for a Japanese car company ad campaign. Everybody read it. Available on Kindle.
See, this is why we in the right are generally happier…because we have a sense of humour 🤣🤣
Hey.
At least he didn’t poop his pants during the speeches.
Or throw up on her.
See, He’s not “PRESIDENTIAL”!!
While it’s nice and all that Japan is willing to step up and play a part in keeping the Middle East oil flowing for nations (like itself) that depend on that, their military, the “Self Defense Force”, will at best mostly a symbolic act, and it’ll take them time to deploy several destroyers / minesweepers or whatever they do deploy. Unlike NATO they didn’t have any forces or fly-over permissions to enable the initial fighting, so they really had no Need To Know.
Been funnier if Trump and said Japan never warned us about Godzilla or Mothra.
Palestinians loudly complain that they are not given [sufficient] notice of IDF attacks. This joke is quite insightful.
I liked it, and if it were mean spirited even better. The world needs to be reminded they are not moral actors and in no place to pass judgment on the United States, which has done far more for the world thatln any country in all of human history.
The Japanese were total savages during ww2. They should never be forgiven.
Agreed; pretty savage remark but one that fits with what actually happened and actual Japanese behavior at the time. It’s easy to forget why we dropped two nuclear bombs on them; but the reality is that Japan was an insane country of zealots who sided with the Nazis.
I’ve seen horrors… horrors that you’ve seen.
But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me.
You have a right to do that… but you have no right to judge me.
It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means.
Horror.
Horror has a face…
and you must make a friend of horror.
Horror and moral terror are your friends.
If they are not then they are enemies to be feared.
They are truly enemies.
I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago.
We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying.
He couldn’t see.
We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm.
There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms.
And I remember… I… I… I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget.
And then I realized… like I was shot… like I was shot with a diamond… a diamond bullet right through my forehead.
And I thought: My God… the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that.
Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure.
And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters.
These were men… trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love… but they had the strength… the strength… to do that.
If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly.
You have to have men who are moral… and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling… without passion… without judgment… without judgment.
Because it’s judgment that defeats us.”
I love the smell of napalm in the morning
It was pretty much an alliance on paper as opposed to the allies. Doubt either Japan or Germany got anything tangible from it,
And they’re all grown up now. They can take it.
This is the way to become Iran.
(never forgiving and also never reflecting on their own mistakes led them to their path)
Excellent comment.
We defeated Imperial Japan, forcing an unconditional surrender. Then installed MacArthur as what was effectively the Viceroy of Japan. Occupied Japan for seven years and rewrote their Constitution and ‘made them like it’ This followed dropping nukes on two cities. We are 80 + years beyond the end of WWII and modern Japan is our Ally.
they dont forget
why should we
Settle down. That is the same sort logic the goofy leftists use about reparations.
Ignorant of the first American slave owner being black, and bringing a quaint African tradition to America.
stop being such a pro globalist
japan is getting served and if the dont like it
tfb
Don’t forget but let the hate go. It’s been 80 friggen years, folks and few are still alive that had anything to do with it. Japan is a solid ally and we need them to counter China.
What an idiotic comment.
We should hold contemporary Japanese citizens who never fought in WWII, responsible for war crimes committed by their Japanese forebears, who are dead?
As always, you prove yourself to be embittered, myopic and plain stupid. The kind of dim-witted guy who doesn’t believe in forgiveness, and who holds grudges way past their expiration date, beyond reason or fairness.
Japan would probably been safer than Congress….
If this site did gifs, this is where you’d get the one of Jennifer Lawrence spitting out her coffee.
Trump is simultaneously vying for greatest president since Lincoln and most American American since Yogi Berra.
Pearl Harbor… 😂
If we had prepped for Pearl Harbor, it would have been a clue that we had already compromised their Naval Code and they would have changed it. There is a big difference between losing a battle and losing the war. Like Enigma later, we often got the messages before the intended recipient.
?? You think an attack against an enemy with their pants on is proof they knew you were coming?
What most people don’t know is that on the same weeked, the Japanese also surprise-attacked several other British and American possessions: Philippines, Malaya, Hong Kong, Guam, Singapore, Wake Island, Midway, etc. Pearl Harbor was just one of many. They aimed to boot us out of their proposed Co-Prosperity Sphere altogether. Gotta watch those wars of attrition. (Iran?)
Not just the same weekend. The attacks on Pearl Harbor and Hong Kong were supposed to be simultaneous. They were slightly off, because at the time it was impossible to coordinate things that well, but they were as close as Japanese technology could make it. The reason so many people don’t realize this is that at the moment of the attack it was the 7th in Hawaii, but it was the 8th in Hong Kong. So people think the Hong Kong attack came a day later, but it didn’t.
Japan’s attack on Pearl was very specific. It was intended to remove the US Navy from a roll in the Pacific allowing Japan free reign to attack all those other places. Everything else was not a serious attack but a diversion from Pearl.
The reporter tried to ask a gotcha question and got got instead.
^^^^this^^^^
so while the others (obama fjb etc etc) talk the game to justify their “americanism”
trump is soooo pro american that the lefty rino globalist comforters are sulking
maga!!!
Okay, I cringed for about an eighth of a second and then laughed out loud. Some people read about history, some people live through it and apparently, few are taught it today. I had family members who fought in the pacific theater who did not have fond memories of the Japanese and were not afraid to say it out loud when I was growing up. I’m old enough to remember when Japanese products were considered junk. I have no animus towards modern day Japan but if the USA can be held accountable for everything we’ve done in 250 years, so can other countries.
good call
the globalists continue to frown upon djts maga agenda
yeah. I cringed and then laughed. Like “He really went there?!?!?” and I giggled for a good 5 minutes!