A House Democrat on Tuesday mocked the Trump administration for saying incorrectly that a U.S. aircraft carrier was approaching North Korea, when it was still thousands of miles away from its destination.
Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., an Iraq war veteran, laid blame for the confusion at the feet of President Donald Trump, who had said he was sending a very powerful armada to North Korea over its testing of nuclear missiles.
“If the president can lose track of a 100,000 ton aircraft carrier, how well is he managing the rest of the U.S. government?” Gallego tweeted Tuesday afternoon.
The Navy announced April 8 it was sending the USS Carl Vinson strike group to the western Pacific instead of a port call in Australia due to the threat from North Korea. The announcement came just days after the North had test fired a missile ahead of a meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“We are sending an armada, very powerful,” Trump told Fox News on April 11. “We have submarines, very powerful, far more powerful than the aircraft carrier, that I can tell you.”
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis then told reporters on Thursday that the strike group was on its way toward the Korean peninsula.
But the Pentagon admitted Tuesday the Vinson and its accompanying guided-missile destroyers and cruiser are nowhere near North Korea. They are about 5,000 miles away wrapping up an exercise with the Australian navy.
The Navy had cancelled the scheduled port visit but not the scheduled Australian exercise.
