Two leaders many people consider to be abject failures are preparing to meet:  Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet the orange clown Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago in Florida on Tuesday. 

Abe is expected to implore Trump to exempt Japan from Trump's new tariffs on steel imports, a decision that left Abe "blindsided" after months of trying to butter-up Trump and members of his family.  Despite being the first international leader to rush to meet Trump before the US inauguration, the White House occupant "pulled the rug out" from under Abe by agreeing to meet with North Korea's Kim Jong-un, seeming to sideline long-time ally Japan.  That, and the tariffs severely dented Abe's last strong point with voters.  He'll also urge Trump to rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the regional trade deal that Trump pulled out of during his first week in office.

The embattled Japanese PM is hoping to burnish his foreign policy credentials with scheduled meetings with Trump, China's President Xi Jinping, and possibly even North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.  All he has to to is weather the storm, but even his incredibly popular predecessor Junichiro Koizumi is hinting Abe should stand down when Parliament's current session ends on 20 June.  One poll put the Abe Cabinet's approval rating at a dismal 37 percent, another had him at an absolutely pathetic 27 percent.

All of this comes days after thousands of Japanese rallied outside parliament calling for Abe to step down, weekly protests that are growing in size and intensity.  Opponents are denouncing him as a "liar" over a series of domestic scandals: The sale of prime Osaka land at fire sale prices to an ultra-nationalist school with ties to Abe and his wife; the finance ministry's clumsy attempt to cover it up, although it has not been proven that Abe ordered it; a growing sex harassment scandal in the same ministry in which a drunken top civil servant allegedly tried to fondle a reporter's breasts. 

And then, the Asahi Shimbum newspaper reported the existence of a memo that outlines an Abe secretary offering to help a friend set up a veterinary school in a special low-tax zone - shortly after Abe and the friend went out to dinner.  A third poll says two-thirds of Japanese no longer believe Abe's explanations.