Try to Make Sense of How Trump Confused These Two Places
Donald Trump may want to take one more geography lesson before he decides to shutter the Department of Education.
During a Fox News town hall in Flint, Michigan, on Tuesday, the Republican presidential nominee routinely mixed up two places that could not be more different: Alaska and Afghanistan.
While speaking about domestic oil reserves and the potential for U.S. energy independence, Trump incorrectly claimed that “we have Bagram” in Alaska—which is, actually, a military base in Afghanistan.
“We were energy independent, we were soon going to be energy dominant, and we would’ve been now having so much money coming out of the energy. We just have the best,” Trump said. “We have Bagram in Alaska. They say it might be as big, might be bigger than, all of Saudi Arabia. I got it approved. Ronald Reagan couldn’t do it. Nobody could do it. I got it done.”
But Trump appeared to realize that he had made a mistake, suddenly swapping Bagram for the name of an arctic national wildlife refuge in the Last Frontier known as ANWR.
“Check that one out, Bagram. Check that one out. It’s, it’s—no, think about this: Between Bagram, between—you go to ANWR, you take a look at the kind of things that we’ve given up. We should be—we should have that air base. We should have that oil,” Trump said.
Trump still confusing Bagram airbase and ANWR.. Tries to clean it up: Check that one out. Bagram. Check that one out. ANW— it’s— it’s— no no think of this. Between Bagram. Between— you go to uhh ANWR pic.twitter.com/L1V4UFGF6o
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 17, 2024
Politicos caught the weighty mistake, deriding Trump as “clueless” for mixing up the name of a foreign site that he had considerable influence over.
“Bagram was the airbase he had in Afghanistan—the same base where we kept hundreds of Taliban and ISIS prisoners that Trump released back out into Afghanistan in his final year in office,” wrote Marine veteran and former Kentucky Democratic political candidate Amy McGrath on X. “He is CLUELESS folks.”