BOMBS AWAY

Trump, 79, Mixes Up Bombers in Press Conference Gaffe

The president struggled to keep his bombing missions straight.

President Donald Trump had a major slip of the tongue during his Friday afternoon press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when he claimed the U.S. had “stealth, undetectable” B-52 bombers.

“There’s nothing like jets. We knocked out a lot of drones for Israel, and we were doing it with extremely fast and powerful jets,” Trump said when asked if the U.S. would accept Ukrainian drones in exchange for Tomahawk missiles.

“We know a lot about the drones, and we know a lot about the jets, the great ones. The B-52s, which were totally stealth. They were undetectable.”

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The president seemingly meant to reference the Northrop B-2 Spirit, a much smaller, much newer bomber that uses low-observable stealth technology. Instead, he referenced an entirely different aircraft: the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, a massive, definitively non-stealth bomber operated by the Air Force since the mid-1950s.

While the U.S. recently flew B-52 bombers off the coast of Venezuela, it used B-2 Spirit bombers to strike Iranian nuclear facilities earlier this year.

Trump later corrected his mix-up, referring to the aircraft as “B-2s” when discussing the Iran strikes a second time.

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Paulina RodriguezBreaking News Intern

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