Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) on Tuesday taunted President Trump over reports a U.S. aircraft carrier and warships were moving away from North Korea when the White House declared they were moving to the area to send a message.
The Navy announced on April 9 that its Carl Vinson Strike Group was heading towards the Sea of Japan, a move the White House later cast as a deterrent against North Korea’s aggression.
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The New York Times reported Tuesday that the Navy had posted an April 15 picture showing the strike force in the Sunda Strait instead, an area thousands of miles away from the Korean Peninsula.
Administration officials described to the Times what the newspaper called a “glitch-ridden sequence of events” surrounding the strike group.
“[It] perpetuated the false narrative that an American armada was racing towards the waters off North Korea,” the Times said.
The Defense Department told the Times that the Carl Vinson is now headed for the Korean Peninsula and will reach the region later this month.
Tuesday’s news add another wrinkle to an increasingly tense standoff between North Korea and the U.S. over the former’s missile testing.
North Korea said Monday that it is prepared to conduct frequent missile tests despite warnings from the U.S. not to do so.
“We’ll be conducting more missile tests on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis,” Vice Foreign Minister Han Song Ryol told the BBC.
“If the U.S. is planning a military attack against us, we will react with a nuclear pre-emptive strike by our own style and method.”
North Korea attempted but failed to launch a ballistic missile on its east coast Sunday, the latest sign of rising tensions in Asia.