The Independent
Trump says US shot missiles at ‘Islamic Republic of Japan’ in latest baffling fumble
17 hours ago
President Donald Trump on Wednesday confused a current American adversary for a long-ago foe when he told reporters that U.S. aircraft carriers had come under fire from Japanese forces during a bilateral meeting with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.
The 80-year-old American president was in the midst of a freewheeling impromptu press conference alongside the Ukrainian leader when he began extolling the virtues of American defensive weaponry after what he said was an attack on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.
“We had 111 missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of Japan. They were shot at the aircraft carrier over a period of about one hour. 111 missiles going to a very expensive ship, and every one of those missiles was knocked down, pretty much most by Patriots, but by other means also,” he said.
The president appeared to be referring to an attack against the American carrier by Iranian forces earlier this year, but instead attributed the attack to Japan — a country that has not fired a shot in anger against the United States in nearly a century. While the Japanese armed forces once menaced American aircraft carriers and other naval assets during the Second World War, the two countries became close allies after Japan’s defeat in that war and remain so today.
Moments later, Trump also mixed up Zelensky — who was sitting beside him — and Russia’s strongman leader Vladimir Putin when he asked reporters if they had “a question for President Putin,” prompting the room to erupt in laughter, at which point Trump attempted to recover by repeating the prompt and suggesting he’d take the reporter’s question to the Russian leader.
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