In a face-saving declaration, the White House on Wednesday claimed the president’s comments about the carrier strike group he’d deployed to the Korean Peninsula had been misinterpreted.
President Donald Trump told Fox Business Network that ‘we are sending an armada’ in Kim Jong-un’s direction. He did not say it was already on its way.
‘The president said that we have an armada. That’s a fact. It happened. Or it’s happening, rather,’ White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said today.
If the press misunderstood Trump’s comments – that’s on them, Spicer argued.
The U. S. aircraft carrier the Navy had said was heading toward the Korean Peninsula amid rising tensions has not yet started sailing to the region, a U.S. defense official acknowledged Tuesday.
Other Pentagon officials told CNN that the USS Carl Vinson supercarrier and its strike group won’t arrive near Korean until the end of the month.
The Navy on April 8 said it was directing a naval strike group headed by the USS Carl Vinson supercarrier to ‘sail north’ as a ‘prudent measure’ to deter North Korea.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis on April 11 said the Vinson was ‘on her way up’ to the peninsula.
But a Defense Department official on Tuesday said the ships remained off the northwest coast of Australia.
A Navy photograph showed the Vinson off Java over the weekend, traveling through the Sunda Strait.
‘They are going to start heading north towards the Sea of Japan within next 24 hours,’ the official said on condition of anonymity.
The official added that the strike group wouldn’t be in the region before next week at the earliest.
President Donald Trump said a week ago that he was sending ‘an armada’ in Kim’s direction – something that turned out to be an empty bluffBut a Defense Department official on Tuesday said the ships remained off the northwest coast of Australia. A Navy photograph showed the Vinson off Java over the weekend, traveling through the Sunda Strait. ‘They are going to start heading north towards the Sea of Japan within next 24 hours,’ the official said on condition of anonymity. The official added that the strike group wouldn’t be in the region before next week at the earliest.
It is thousands of nautical miles from the Java Sea to the Sea of Japan.
At the time of the strike group’s deployment, many media outlets said the ships were steaming toward North Korea, when in fact they had temporarily headed in the opposite direction.
And White House press secretary Sean Spicer played along – either in the dark or as part of a ruse.
Asked about the decision to send the carrier group to North Korea, Spicer said it would be a strategic deterrent.
‘A carrier group is several things. The forward deployment is deterrence, presence. It’s prudent. But it does a lot of things. It ensures our – we have the strategic capabilities, and it gives the president options in the region,’ he said.
‘But I think when you see a carrier group steaming into an area like that, the forward presence of that is clearly, through almost every instance, a huge deterrence. So I think it serves multiple capabilities.’
News that the U. S. hadn’t followed through on its threat to North Korea was greeted in Chinese media with raucous laughter on Tuesday, according to The Washington Post.
‘Tricked badly!’ the Global Times chirped on its social media account.
‘None of the U. S. aircraft carriers that South Korea is desperately waiting for has come!’
The United States ratcheted up its rhetoric ahead of North Korea’s military parade and failed missile launch over the weekend, and Vice President Mike Pence on Monday declared that the era of US ‘strategic patience’ in dealing with Pyongyang was over.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un responded with his own fiery warnings and threatened to conduct weekly missile tests.
The strike group has been conducting drills with the Australian navy in recent days, the official said.
It has scrapped a planned port visit in Australia as a result of sailing north.
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