Trump critics were very quick to give the US president a history lesson after he seemingly mistook the Vietnam War for the Gulf War during his Independence Day speech… except that he didn’t.
A short clip circulating on social media seemed to suggest that Donald Trump mistakenly said that Operation Desert Storm – an offensive against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the 1990 Gulf War – actually took place in “the dense fields and jungles of Vietnam” during his July 4 address.
Some Twitter warriors quickly jumped in to blast and mock the president for what looked like an embarrassing gaffe on Independence Day.
“Trump’s cognitive decline is incredibly concerning! Besides mumbling like he has dementia, he thinks Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm are somehow the same thing,” one critic wrote.
Another wrote that he “prefers” presidents who do not confuse Vietnam with the Middle East. Some even flaunted their “master’s degree in military history” to debunk Trump.
I prefer Presidents who know that Operation Desert Storm was in the Middle East, not Vietnam. pic.twitter.com/IZGLyV6sR0
However, the critics apparently did not bother to actually watch Trump’s speech in its entirety – or even read the transcript. A longer excerpt shows that the president was listing off US military campaigns, beginning with WWII and Korea. The transition from Vietnam to Desert Storm was not particularly smooth because Trump had trouble reading the words “swift and sweeping” when describing the actions by the US Air Force.
This video is grossly misleading.President Trump did not say Operation Desert Storm is in the jungles of Vietnam.All this person had to do was back-up the video some 15 seconds. https://t.co/UutDyocboxpic.twitter.com/axUaA91LK9
Even Daniel Dale, a fact-checker at CNN – not exactly a Trump-friendly outlet – pointed out that the president did not, in fact, mix up the wars in Vietnam and around the Persian Gulf. “People are sharing a short clip that makes it seem like Trump said Desert Storm happened in Vietnam. He did not, though he stumbled,” Dale wrote.
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