'People Are Concerned' About Donald Trump, Caroline Kennedy Says
— -- World leaders are “concerned” about how a Donald Trump presidency would affect relationships between their countries and the United States, Ambassador Caroline Kennedy said today in Japan.
“I think people are concerned,” Kennedy, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, told ABC News. “What they’re concerned about is the future, and so what does this mean for the American alliance.”
Kennedy, who said she hasn’t followed the presidential campaign closely, pointed to the case of Japan, saying the alliance between the two countries has grown to its strongest point in the past seven decades.
“We’ve seen this alliance go from 70 years, and it’s stronger than it’s ever been and it’s grown that way through Republican and Democratic administrations,” she said.
“Obviously, they are concerned when somebody doesn’t seem to understand or value the efforts put into this and really what’s been built over time with the economic relationships, the scientific collaborations, the educational exchanges, cultural ties.”
Asked what her father, former President John F. Kennedy, and uncles -- Robert F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy -- would think about the state of U.S. politics today, the ambassador said her family would have encouraged working in a “constructive way to do what’s best for the American people.”
“They always believed in working across the aisle and understanding people of different countries, different parties, different points of view,” Kennedy, 58, said. “I think that that’s what they would try to be focused on.”
Kennedy, who has served as U.S. ambassador to Japan since 2013, reflected on the president’s upcoming trip to Hiroshima Friday.
“I think what the Japanese people and really the American people are interested in is making sure it never happens again and looking forward,” she said. “We should all take a great deal of pride in the fact our two nations have built this incredible alliance.”
