New Zealand’s third female prime minister Jacinda Ardern has a fun story about how real live adult world leaders handle our white supremacist in chief. Being interviewed by SkyNews New Zealand, Prime Minister Ardern replayed this story:
Ms Ardern said that while in a conversation with other world leaders, President Trump made a joke about her becoming prime minister – having been chosen by New Zealand First to lead the country after securing fewer votes than the National Party
‘He made a side comment that I had upset a lot of people,’ she said.
‘I think it was in jest over the fact that it was perhaps a surprise win, I can’t be sure.’
With Donald Trump, there is no nuance. He was probably told that the prime minister was the head of a party called “Labor,” and that they were socialists. This and the fact that the Lord of the Rings films were shot in New Zealand may be all that Trump got in his two sentence briefing. But Prime Minister Ardern, like most world leaders regardless of what you think of them, has both a sense of humor and a level of intelligence above that of a toadstool.
‘I pointed out that no-one had marched over my election to office,’ she told Sky News, while laughing about the exchange.
Ardern knows a thing about those marches as she was one of the more visible marchers after Trump’s inauguration this past January. The world is alternately laughing at us and terrified we won’t get our act together before really screwing everything up.
This is a Creative Commons article. The original version of this article appeared here.
