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.
The Putin-Zelensky mix-up by Trump came almost two years to the day that Trump’s predecessor, President Joe Biden, infamously introduced Zelensky as “President Putin” during an appearance at the 2024 NATO summit in Washington, D.C.
The president’s confused comments about Japan and the identity of the leader with whom he was sitting came just hours after he declared that the shaky ceasefire his negotiators had struck with the actual Islamic Republic of Iran in exchange for sanctions relief was over after Tehran attacked shipping in the Strait of Hormuz earlier in the week.
Speaking at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Ankara, Trump called Iranian leaders “scum” and vowed that the U.S. would “probably hit Iran hard again tonight” after American forces struck targets in Iran and Iranian forces retaliated against American bases in Kuwait and Bahrain on Tuesday.
Speaking alongside NATO chief Mark Rutte, Trump said that Iran was led by “sick people”, adding: “I don’t want to deal with them anymore.”
US Central Command claimed to have struck more than 60 small boats of the IRGC as punishment for Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Washington also revoked a license allowing Iran to sell oil.
Iranian media earlier reported explosions in Iran’s main oil hub of Kharg Island, on Qeshm Island and in the southern port cities of Sirik and Bandar Abbas.
For his part, Trump told reporters on Wednesday that the U.S. could yet try to seize Kharg Island and reinstate a blockade on Tehran’s ports.
