US election: why Japanese Trump super fan Yoko Ishii is banking on four more years
- Ishii posts pro-Trump videos on YouTube, often focusing on threats posed by China and North Korea, as well as Japan’s need for nuclear weapons
- ‘Trump is going to win, and he’s going to win by a lot,’ she says. ‘I believe in the common sense of the silent majority of people in the US’
“I didn’t know much about him but people who were older than me knew him because he was rich and had written books,” Ishii says. “So I got to know him through the election race and I really started listening when he talked about national security issues and how Japan should have nuclear weapons. I want Japan to have nuclear weapons and for the nation to be militarily independent but the US has never permitted that to happen.
“Trump wants us to take care of our own business and eventually be militarily independent. Japan should be able to stand up without US support but we cannot do that all of a sudden because that would make us vulnerable to China.”
When it comes to Trump’s economic policies, Ishii says the president is waging “a battle between the free world and communism”.