TOKYO — President Trump was reciting the sort of rote praise that leaders of allied nations heap on one another when he suddenly cut himself off during a joint news conference Monday with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“The Japanese people are thriving, your cities are vibrant, and you’ve built one of the world’s most powerful economies,” Trump said, before looking up from his prepared remarks. Turning his head to face Abe next to him, Trump ad-libbed: “I don’t know if it’s as good as ours. I think not, okay?” He emphasized the “okay” by drawing it out leadingly as a parent might with a child.

“And we’re going to try to keep it that way,” Trump added, for good measure. “But you’ll be second.”

Abe, listening to an interpreter through an earpiece, smiled and remained silent. But his face betrayed a touch of uncertainty as the U.S. leader returned to his script. After the Japanese government had rolled out the red carpet for Trump and his family for two days, the patron was being patronized. It is becoming a familiar theme for Abe.

Their relationship can seem like an oddball mismatch of global leaders who are thrust together over their shared dislike of the nuclear-armed tyrant next door in North Korea, but who somehow hit it off amid golf course hijinks. Since Trump took office, Abe has been his most consistent suitor, courting him with luxurious gifts (a $3,800 gold-plated driver) and constant attention (numerous phone calls and a personal visit to the White House and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida).

UPresident Trump toasts after delivering a speech at the opening of a welcome dinner hosted by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Akasaka Palace in Tokyo, Nov. 6, 2017. REUTERS/Shizuo Kambayashi/Pool

But as Abe has lavished attention on Trump, their relationship has retained a subtext in which the U.S. president insists on asserting his dominance in a passive-aggressive manner. It started with Trump’s emasculating 19-second handshake with Abe in their Oval Office meeting in February, after which Abe appeared to grimace as though his fingers had been crushed.

[In Japan, Trump comes off as tough yet “friendly” on trade]

Trump has let up on the power grip since then but in more subtle ways he has continued to show who is the alpha — a price Abe appears willing to pay in his strategic servitude to keep Trump supporting the post-war security alliance that the president had openly questioned in his election campaign.

As Abe praised their relationship as the best of any two leaders in the history of U.S.-Japan relations — something George W. Bush and Junichiro Koizumi, who visited Graceland together in 2006, might dispute — Trump had obvious difficulty playing along. The two had played nine holes the day before, and Abe jokingly said the match had been “neck-and-neck.”

“What was the reality? I hope Mr. Trump can give his evaluation,” Abe said through an interpreter. Trump just smirked and cast him a skeptical sidelong glance.

Before their round of golf on Sunday, when Trump and Abe signed white hats emblazoned with the slogan, “Donald Shinzo, Make Alliance Even Greater” in gold lettering, Trump wrote his name in the center of the brim, in large lines, which meant that Abe had to curve his signature off to the side.

The prime minister was the first foreign leader to visit Trump after his election victory, showing up at Trump Tower after calling the president-elect and offering to stop by on his way to a regional economic conference in Peru. At that meeting — attended by Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, now a senior White House adviser — Abe presented Trump with the golf club and suggested they play a round together.

President Trump talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a state banquet at Akasaka Palace in Tokyo, Monday, Nov. 6, 2017. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, Pool)

He even went out of his way to inform the president-elect about the Japanese singer Pikotaro, whose goofy song “Pineapple Pen” was a global viral hit last year that caught the attention of Ivanka’s daughter, Arabella. Ivanka Trump visited Tokyo last week to speak at a conference on women in the workforce, prompting Abe to tell the president Monday that the Japanese have a “fever” for Ivanka — even though the conference hall was half-empty for her speech.

“Japan consistently supports the position of President Trump when he says that all options are on the table,” Abe said of the U.S. strategy on North Korea. “I once again strongly reaffirmed that Japan and the U.S. are 100 percent together.”

[Trump, in Tokyo, warns of the “menace” of North Korea]

The charm offensive has worked — to a degree. Although he made good on his campaign promise to pull the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal that included Japan, Trump has backed off some of his harshest rhetoric on trade, and this week he called Japan a “treasured partner” and a “crucial ally.” Abe was the first foreign leader Trump invited to Mar-a-Lago; the president personally drove him around on a golf cart, weaving around the course to show off the best views.

At the same time, Trump’s embrace has forced Abe into the role of a sidekick. Photos taken by Mar-a-Lago guests of Trump and Abe — in the middle of the restaurant, coordinating their response to a North Korean missile test moments after the news broke — made it seem as though the Japanese prime minister was being dragged into an uncomfortable new reality.

At the news conference Monday, a reporter asked Abe about his message to Trump regarding largely pacifist Japan’s role in its self-defense, amid reports that Trump was disappointed that the Japanese Self-Defense Forces did not shoot down a North Korean test missile. Before Abe could answer, Trump pulled rank and cut in.

“If I could just take a piece of the prime minister’s answer, he will shoot them out of the sky when he completes the purchase of lots of additional military equipment from the United States,” Trump declared.

[Despite “hire American” pitch, Trump secures foreign workers for Mar-a-Lago]

Abe has found himself in an undeniably better position than South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has not bonded with Trump. There is great unease in Seoul as Trump prepares to arrive there on Tuesday. Yet some Japanese analysts have questioned whether Abe has tied himself too tightly to a mercurial president who tends to cycle through close aides, abruptly banishing those once thought to be in favor.

As one former Asia policy aide in the Obama administration put it last week, Abe could wake up one day and find himself “excommunicated by a tweet.”

On Monday evening, Trump and Abe, along with their wives, entered a gilded ballroom at the Akasaka Palace in the middle of Tokyo for a lavish state dinner. Abe had invited Pikotaro, the “Pineapple Pen” performer. Also in attendance was Japanese golf legend Isao Aoki, 75, whom Trump praised as one of the greatest golfers he has ever watched.

But as he turned his attention to Abe, Trump could not help but turn the toast into a roast.

He regaled the audience of high-level diplomats and senior advisers with a story about how Abe was so desperate to visit him at Trump Tower after the election that the Japanese leader would not take no for an answer — though Trump’s aides worried that such a visit would be “inappropriate,” given that Barack Obama was still president.

Finally, Trump said, he called Abe to tell him no, but the prime minister was already flying to see him.

“I said, ‘You know what? There’s no way he’s going to land and I’m not seeing him,’” Trump said. “So I saw him, and it worked out just fine.”

SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Tex. — The massacre here that killed more than two dozen people — the youngest of them just 18 months old — occurred amid an ongoing “domestic situation” involving the gunman and his relatives, at least one of whom had attended the church, law enforcement officials said Monday.

While authorities have not publicly identified a motive for the attack, they emphasized that the shooting did not appear to be fueled by racial or religious issues, as has been the case during other rampages at houses of worship. Instead, they pointed to the gunman’s issues with his relatives, saying he had sent “threatening texts” to his mother-in-law, who was not there Sunday.

“This was not racially motivated, it wasn’t over religious beliefs,” Freeman Martin, a regional director with the Texas Department of Public Safety, said at a news briefing. “There was a domestic situation going on within the family and the in-laws.”

This revelation came as investigators continued to pore over the background of the gunman who opened fire inside the First Baptist Church outside San Antonio, killing 26 and injuring 20 others in the latest mass attack to cut down Americans in seemingly safe public spaces.

[ Death sweeps across 3 generations of a single family gathered at church ]

In what has become a familiar ritual, Americans woke up to painful stories about the lives lost in another tragedy. Among the dead in Texas were eight relatives spanning three generations in a single family. While authorities had initially said the victims ranged in age from 5 to 72, they said Monday that those people were the wounded, and that the death toll encompassed even younger and older people.

“Inside the church, the deceased actually ranged from 18 months to 77 years of age,” Martin said. The family that lost eight relatives said one of them was a 1-year-old girl killed in the attack.

Among the 20 wounded Sunday at the church, 10 remained hospitalized in critical condition Monday, Martin said.

[ The persistent crime that connects mass shooters and terrorism suspects: Domestic violence ]

Texas officials identified the attacker as 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley of New Braunfels, about 35 miles north of Sutherland Springs.

They said the former Air Force member shot at the churchgoers with a Ruger assault-style rifle before coming under fire from a local man. Martin praised the efforts of “two Good Samaritans” who responded to the shooting, saying that a resident who lives near the church heard what was happening and began firing his own rifle at the attacker, hitting him at least once.

Kelley dropped his rifle, jumped in his Ford Expedition and fled, Martin said. “Our Texas hero” flagged down another young Texan, hopped into his vehicle and they chased Kelley, Martin said.

It was “act now, ask questions later,” said the truck’s driver, Johnnie Langendorff.

[ An unlikely hero describes gun battle and 95-mph chase with Texas shooting suspect ]

During the chase, Kelley called his father on his cellphone to say “he had been shot and didn’t think he was going to make it,” Martin said. Kelley shot himself, though the exact cause of his death will be determined after an autopsy, Martin said.

Three guns were recovered Sunday, according to authorities: A Ruger rifle and two handguns, one a Glock and another a Ruger, inside Kelley’s vehicle. He had purchased a total of four guns during each of the last four years, officials said.

Precisely how Kelley obtained his guns remained a key question for investigators. Kelley had been court-martialed in 2012 and sentenced to a year in military prison for assaulting his spouse and child, making him part of a long line of mass attackers or suspects with domestic violence in their pasts. He was reduced in rank and released with a bad-conduct discharge in 2014.

Kelley had sought and failed to obtain a permit allowing him to carry a concealed weapon, officials said. He had an “unarmed private security license” akin to what a security guard at a concert would have, Martin said.

In televised interviews, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said it appeared the church was intentionally targeted, rather than chosen at random, but said there were “more unknowns than there are knowns” a day after the attack.

“By all of the facts that we seem to know, he was not supposed to have access to a gun, so how did this happen?” Abbott said in an interview Monday morning on CNN. “We are in search of answers to these questions.”

Joe D. Tackitt Jr., the Wilson County sheriff, said Monday that though Kelley’s in-laws had attended the church, they were not there during services Sunday, and instead came to the scene after the shooting.

People who open fire in public places can have “rage welling up,” and then they lash out, said Peter Blair, a criminal justice professor at Texas State University and executive director of the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center.

“What you typically see in active shooter attackers is an avenger-type mentality,” said Blair, who co-authored an FBI study in 2013 that examined 160 active shooter incidents. “They’re people who believe they’ve been wronged in some way. They get angrier and angrier and they plan the attack as a way to get people to recognize their issue.”

The FBI study found that one in 10 of the shootings examined involved attackers targeting women with whom they had current or former romantic relationships.

The location of such attacks can exacerbate the toll, Blair said. The mass shootings that had the highest injury or death tolls tended to occur in places where people cannot easily escape or try and defend themselves, he said.

Kelley worked briefly over the summer as an unarmed night security guard at a Schlitterbahn water park in New Braunfels, the company said. He passed a Texas Department of Public Safety criminal background check before beginning work there, a spokeswoman said, though she added that Kelley was fired in July — as the season was reaching its peak — because he was “not a good fit.”

He was also able to pass a background check that allowed him to work for HEB, a Texas grocery chain, in New Braunfels. Company spokeswoman Dya Campos said he worked there for two months in 2013 and quit; she was unsure of his position there.

The attack on Sunday left a staggering hole in a Texas town of fewer than 700 people located about 30 miles southeast of San Antonio.

“Nearly everyone [inside] had some type of injury,” Tackitt said. “I knew several people in there. It hasn’t really hit yet, but it will.”

Tackitt said the aftermath was “a horrific sight,” adding: “You don’t expect to walk into church and find mauled bodies.” Between 12 and 14 of the people killed or injured in the attack were children, he said.

[ The other deadly church shooting in America on Sunday ]

The massacre outside San Antonio added Sutherland Springs to the growing roster of places synonymous with a mass tragedy, and it came just a month after 58 people in Las Vegas were gunned down in the country’s deadliest modern mass shooting.

In recent years, gunfire has cut down people at movie theaters, concerts, churches, nightclubs, schools and offices. After the church massacre Sunday, officials in some of the places that have endured their own tragedies — including Aurora, Colo.; San Bernardino, Calif.; Orlando; and Las Vegas — issued public statements of mourning for Sutherland Springs, the newest member of this grim fraternity.

[ Trump suggests “mental health” issues, not “gun situation,” at root of Texas attack ]

President Trump appeared to try to steer the debate away from gun control after the slayings. At a news conference in Tokyo, Trump said he thought “mental health” was a possible motive, adding that it appeared the shooter was “a very deranged individual, a lot of problems for a long period of time.” He did not provide further explanation.

With Trump in the midst of an overseas trip, Vice President Pence said Monday he would travel to Sutherland Springs later this week to visit with victims, their relatives and law enforcement officials.

Trump’s reaction to the shooting contrasted with his unrestrained calls for a death sentence for the Uzbek immigrant accused of killing eight people in an apparently Islamic State-inspired attack in Lower Manhattan last week.

Trump said the Texas incident “isn’t a guns situation,” and added: “Fortunately someone else had a gun that was shooting in the opposite direction” or the rampage “would have been much worse.”

No one inside the church was armed at the time of the attack, the sheriff said Monday, saying he was not surprised by that fact.

“People from this community would never think this could happen,” he said.

Witnesses and officials said the gunman in Texas, dressed in all black and wearing a tactical vest, began firing an assault rifle as he approached the church. Texas state officials said Monday he was also wearing a black mask with a white skull face on it.

The attack tore apart families in this small community. Joe and Claryce Holcombe lost children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren all at once, a total of eight extended family members, the couple said in a phone interview with The Post.

Their son, Bryan Holcombe, 60, and his wife, Karla Holcombe, 58, were killed. Bryan was associate pastor for the church and walking to preach at the pulpit when he was shot, Joe Holcombe said.

Among the dead was also their granddaughter-in-law, Crystal Holcombe, who was pregnant. She died along with her unborn child and three of her children — Emily, Megan and Greg — according to Joe Holcombe. She was at church with her husband, John Holcombe, who survived along with two of her other children.

Their grandson, Marc Daniel Holcombe, and his infant daughter, who was about a year old, also died, Joe and Claryce Holcombe said.

[ ‘Evil has invaded sanctuary’: Texas massacre likely the worst church shooting in U.S. history ]

Frank Pomeroy, the pastor of First Baptist, and his wife, Sherri, spoke to reporters through tears.

Their 14-year-old daughter Annabelle — known as Belle — was among those killed in her father’s church, although both parents were out of town at the time. But the couple lost much more than their daughter, they said.

“We ate together, we laughed together, we cried together and we worshiped together. Now most of church family is gone,” Sherri Pomeroy said. “Our building is probably beyond repair, and the few of us that are left behind lost tragically yesterday. As senseless as this tragedy was, our sweet Belle would not have been able to deal with all the family she lost yesterday.”

She added: “Please don’t forget Sutherland Springs.”

Berman reported from Washington. Mary Lee Grant in San Antonio; Peter Holley in Sutherland Springs; and Wesley Lowery, Brian Murphy, Kristine Phillips, Alex Horton, Samantha Schmidt and Devlin Barrett in Washington contributed to this report, which will be updated throughout the day.

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