The wife of a sailor aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln has blasted President Donald Trump over what she called “appalling” conditions on the aircraft carrier stationed in the Middle East.
The woman, who was not identified due to fear of retaliation against her husband, likened the USS Lincoln to a “floating metal prison” in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper Friday.
“This is not his first deployment. This is not his first time being out there, and he is saying that it is the worst deployment that he's ever been on. And he also says that his shipmates say the same,” the wife said.
The USS Lincoln, which had been deployed for months amid Trump’s war with Iran, has been at the center of controversy this week, following reports of poor maintenance, food supply issues and sailors struggling with their mental health on the aircraft carrier. One report by the Military Times on Tuesday said that several sailors on the USS Lincoln attempted to jump overboard.
The military wife told Tapper that the food on the USS Lincoln had been especially bad, just hours after Trump claimed no families were worried about the conditions on the ship.
“It's not just the quality; it's the quantity. It's the rationing. The portions are awful, so it's really not good,” she said.
The woman also noted that her husband, who she said typically isn’t affected by work stressors off the clock, “feels himself being angrier and more frustrated.”
“You're stuck in a floating metal prison, essentially, in the middle of the water, eating prison-like food with the same people in the same bunk beds in the same small quarters for 200 days, 250 days, you start to go a little insane working 12 hours, getting four or five hours of sleep,” the woman said as she struggled to imagine what her husband has truly gone through.
Trump had pushed back earlier on Friday, telling reporters that family members of USS Lincoln sailors are not concerned about its conditions and that the more than 200-day deployment has not gone on “nearly long enough.”
“I don't think the man thinks before he talks,” the sailor’s wife told Tapper in reaction to Trump’s comments. “Have some sympathy, some empathy. Take some accountability for what's going on with your military, your ships, in your war. It's infuriating.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called reports about poor conditions on the USS Lincoln “completely misrepresented.”
"We make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment. Some deployments are longer than others, and I have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than anybody," Hegseth told reporters.
The sailor’s wife told Tapper the Trump administration is “essentially saying that families are lying and service members are lying.”
“It is not fabricated. Nobody is lying,” she added.
Hung Cao, the acting secretary of the Navy, wrote in a statement Friday that the USS Lincoln “crushed their deployment and will return home soon as part of a planned rotation.”
Reports say that the USS George Washington aircraft carrier will replace the ship.
Cao said that sailors had to spend 266 days at sea “because the mission demanded it."
“Deployments are hard. Combat operations make them harder. War is hell and normal routines are disrupted,” he added.
Cao admitted that there were a “small number of mental health cases,” but that no one had died.
“Meal plans were adjusted when fresh resupply was unavailable, without a single meal being missed,” he said, adding that sailors' calls to their loved ones “were limited when the operational threat was too high.”
Cao accused the media of “trying to paint our warriors as victims,” adding, “There is no question our young men and women have been pushed to their limits—but they have never broken.”
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