Press Secretary Sean Spicer denied Wednesday that the White House misled the public about sending a carrier strike group toward North Korea last week amid a growing crisis over missile tests, and told reporters to direct their questions to the Pentagon about the precise location of the aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson.
Spicer deferred to the Defense Department and U.S. Pacific Command four times during Wednesday’s press briefing about the carrier, after the government acknowledged Tuesday that it is still near Australia, and still thousands of miles away from Korea.
“PACOM put out a release talking about the group ultimately ending up in the Korean peninsula. That’s what it will do,” Spicer said. “I think we [the White House] were asked very clearly about the use of a carrier group in terms of deterrence and forward presence and what that meant.”
Spicer also said the Defense Department or the Hawaii-based command should be the ones to explain why it was widely understood that the ships were headed to North Korea when they still involved in an exercise with Australia.
The admiral in charge of the Pacific Command issued a press release last week after a North Korean missile test, which said the strike group would cancel a scheduled port visit and steam to the western Pacific. President Trump said at the time that the U.S. was sending a powerful “armada” toward North Korea, and Spicer said that was still happening.
“The president said that we have an armada going towards the peninsula. That’s a fact, it happened — it is happening, rather,” Spicer said Wednesday.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Wednesday in Saudia Arabia that he “didn’t want to play a game” by not disclosing the change in the strike group’s schedule last week.
“The Vinson, as I said on the record, was operating up and down the western Pacific, and we were doing exactly what we said and that is we were shifting her,” Mattis said. “Instead of continuing in one direction as she pulled out of Singapore, she is going to continue part of her cruise down in that region, but she was on her way up to Korea.”
