President Trump’s senior moments have seen him confuse several land-based locations, but now his cognitive slide seems to have extended offshore.
During a Tuesday morning interview on Fox and Friends, Trump discussed his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and seemed to forget the name of the ocean that separates the US and Russia.
Trump said that European leaders like Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are “consumed far more with [Ukraine] because they’re right there.”
“You know we have an ocean that’s separating us, right? A thing called… an ocean,” he said. “A big, beautiful ocean. And, uh, they don’t, they’re right there. So it’s a different kind of a thing for them.”
Trump appeared to be referring to the Pacific Ocean, the largest body of water on Earth.
The coast of Alaska, where Trump and Putin met last Friday, is separated by 55 miles of ocean from the eastern coast of Russia.
The White House did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
Famously, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said that “you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska” in 2008, providing fodder for a viral SNL spoof starring Tina Fey.
Trump considered offering Palin a cabinet position in his first administration, but his knowledge of her home state seems to have grown fuzzier since 2016.
At a press conference last week, Trump said twice that he was going to Russia, leaving Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt to explain why the president didn’t seem to remember that his meeting with Putin was being held on American soil.
On Tuesday, the Fox hosts allowed Trump to bulldoze through his lapse, as he continued to ramble about negotiations with Ukraine and how the war is Joe Biden’s fault.
“It was always thought that Ukraine was sort of a buffer between Russia and the rest of Europe. And it was, it was a big wide buffer. Everything worked out well until Biden got involved,” he said.
“Biden gave them $100 billion right up front, I don’t give them anything… since I’ve been there, we don’t pay.”
In fact, the Trump administration has largely kept the Biden administration’s military aid to Ukraine intact, delivering $6.2 billion in weapons to the country in the first half of this year.
After promising dozens of times during the 2024 campaign that he would end the war “within 24 hours,” Trump has found it more difficult than expected to broker peace.
“I have ended six wars. I thought maybe this would be the easiest one, and it’s not the easiest one,” he said on Monday. “It’s a tough one.”
It could remain tough sledding for Trump if his geographic recall doesn’t improve.
The post Trump, 79, Forgets the Name of the Pacific Ocean appeared first on The Daily Beast.
