Does a viral video on social media prove that Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi publicly said she no longer wants to "set foot in the United States again" after Trump's Pearl Harbor comment, made in her presence? No, that's not true: The viral clip appeared to use AI-generated audio to create the illusion that she said what she never did. Lead Stories found no credible source confirming that Takaichi made the statement in question.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here, here and here) uploaded to TikTok on March 21, 2026, under the caption:
Sanae Takaichi said she no longer wants to go to the United States. Trump did three things that were disrespectful to her.
#usa #fyp #trump #sanaetakaichi
A first-person female narrator said in the video:
I will never set foot in the United States again. This trip to the White House was the most humiliating meeting of my political career. As the Prime Minister of Japan, I traveled to the United States with full sincerity to meet with our ally, only to be met with a series of disrespectful and dismissive treatment.
Upon my arrival at the White House, they did not even prepare an official welcome ceremony. I was made to enter discreetly through a side entrance, as if we were nothing more than insignificant visitors.
What infuriated me even more was that Trump openly joked about the Pearl Harbor attack right in front of me, showing complete disregard for how embarrassed I would be. During subsequent talks, Trump firmly demanded that we must cooperate with the United States in its military operations against Iran. He even used Japan's crude oil supply as leverage to coerce Japan into getting involved in an 'irrelevant war.'
In this so-called ally meeting, I saw no negotiation or respect whatsoever, only one-sided humiliation and demands: I will never set foot in the United States again.
This is what the video looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @anecdotescelebrity/ on TikTok.)
The video track in this post featured b-roll of Takaichi, but she was not seen actually saying the full quote. The post implied that the voice-over was her authentic statement, but that wasn't the case.
Takaichi flew to the U.S. on March 18, 2026 (archived here). Hours before the visit, Takaichi told (archived here) reporters that she intended "to confirm that our countries will reinforce their relations across a wide spectrum of fields, such as security and the economy, including economic security."
The next day, as she had a joint press conference (archived here) with Trump ahead of the meetings, he made the Pearl Harbor comment. Talking about the Feb. 28, 2026, U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, he said:
We went in very hard. We wanted surprise. Who knows better about that? Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor? You believe in surprise much more that I. Because of that surprise, in the first two days we probably knocked out 50% of what we anticipated.
News reports (archived here) described Takaichi's reaction as feeling uneasy, but Lead Stories found no evidence that she publicly stated she would not return to the U.S. after that comment.
The following day, March 20, 2026, Japan's prime minister attended (archived here) Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. When she talked to Japanese media, she didn't say (archived here) what the video from social media attributed to her.
The visit summary (archived here) on the prime minister's official site contained no such quote, and neither did the "Latest news" section of the same official website (archived here).
A search for the precise language of the purported quote on Google News (archived here) showed no matches:
(Image source: Google.)
A search for the same keywords on Yahoo News (archived here) showed one result predating the most recent visit of Japan's prime minister to the U.S. by four months:
(Image source: Yahoo News.)
Lead Stories separated the audio from the video in the post and ran it through the DeepFake-o-meter audio detector. Five out of seven models available via this AI detection tool, hosted by The University of Buffalo's Media Forensic Lab, found the audio most likely AI-generated:
(Image source: Deepfake-o-meter.)
