President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday denied being misleading about a U.S. carrier strike group’s push toward the Korean peninsula, saying it never gave an arrival date and that the ships were still on their way.
WASHINGTON President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday denied being misleading about a U.S. carrier strike group’s push toward the Korean peninsula, saying it never gave an arrival date and that the ships were still on their way.
When Trump boasted early last week that he had sent an “armada” as a warning to North Korea, the USS Carl Vinson strike group was still far from the Korean peninsula, and headed in the opposite direction.
The U.S. military’s Pacific Command explained on Tuesday that the strike group first had to complete a shorter-than-initially planned period of training with Australia but was now heading toward the Western Pacific.
“The president said that we have an armada going towards the peninsula. That’s a fact. It happened. It is happening, rather,” said White House spokesman Sean Spicer.
He referred further queries about the deployment timetable to the Pentagon.
The U.S. military initially said in a statement dated April 10 that Admiral Harry Harris, the commander of Pacific Command, directed the Vinson strike group “to sail north and report on station in the Western Pacific.”
But the strike group first headed elsewhere, On April 15, the U.S. Navy even published a photo showing the Vinson transiting the Sunda Strait on its way to drills with Australia.
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