Jacinda Ardern Debuted On The World Stage With A Savage Trump Roast
New Kiwi Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has made her mark on the world stage by delivering an incredible burn to US President Donald Trump.
Just to set the context; on one side we have Ardern, the 37-year-old, newly-minted, proudly socialist, proudly feminist Prime Minister of a tiny nation at the bottom of the world. On the other side we have Donald Trump, aged 71, and literally the most powerful person on Earth. He’s also a noted misogynist who has been caught on tape bragging about assaulting women.
Ardern was elected just before the beginning of “summit season”, where world leaders gather to chat about stuff and, theoretically, try to solve some of the world’s problems. So what happened when these two world leaders met for the first time?
Ardern spoke to Newsroom about the whole summit experience, which she described as “uncomfortable” and said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had offered her condolences on the death of cat, Paddles.
Then the discussion turned to Trump, and the New Zealand PM told this incredible anecdote:
“I was waiting to walk out to be introduced at the East Asia Summit gala dinner, where we all paraded and while we were waiting, Trump in jest patted the person next to him on the shoulder, pointed at me and said, ‘This lady caused a lot of upset in her country’, talking about the election.
“I said, ‘Well, you know, only maybe 40 per cent’, then he said it again and I said, ‘You know’, laughing, ‘no-one marched when I was elected’.
Ardern was of course referring to the Women’s March that took place in cities around the world on the weekend Trump was inaugurated in January. It’s estimated that five million people around the world marched against Trump over the course of two days.
According to Ardern, Trump took the roasting with good humour.
“He laughed and it was only afterwards that I reflect that it could have been taken in a very particular way – he did not seem offended,” she said.
You can read the whole interview here.