Sean Spicer on Wednesday defended the White House’s inaccurate claims that a U.S. aircraft carrier was headed toward North Korea last week, noting that the ship was heading there now.
“The statement that was put out was that the Carl Vinson group was headed towards the Korean Peninsula. It is headed to the Korean Peninsula. That’s not what we ever said. It was heading there, it is heading there,” he said during a press briefing.
Although President Trump bragged on April 12 that he had sent an “armada” to North Korea as a warning, the aircraft carrier strike group he was referring to was actually headed toward Australia to complete a previously scheduled training.
A photo from the U.S. Navy published April 17 showed the ship traveling through the Sunda Strait and then into the Indian Ocean, thousands of miles away from the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. military’s Pacific Command said on Tuesday that the strike group was now “proceeding to the Western Pacific as ordered.”
Watch the video above to see where the aircraft carrier actually went.
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Write to Mahita Gajanan at mahita.gajanan@time.com