President Trump’s senior moments have seen him confuse several land-based locations, but now his possible 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 U.S., Europe and Russia.
Trump said that European leaders like Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are “consumed far more with [Ukraine] because they’re right there.”
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“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 possibly appeared to be referring to the Atlantic, which separates the U.S. from Europe and the west of Russia.
The U.S. is, however, also separated from Russia to the west by the Bering Sea. The coast of the mainland of Alaska, where Trump and Putin met last Friday, is separated by 55 miles of sea from the eastern coast of Russia. At the closest point of any land, Alaska’s Little Diomede Island is separated from Russia’s Big Diomede Island by 2.4 miles of open water—which turns to ice capable of bearing human weight in winter.
Infamously, 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 White House declined to answer “stupid questions about oceans.”
