The "armada" that President Trump said he was sending to deter North Korea still hasn't arrived — and it has thousands more miles to cover if it actually does sail to the Korean Peninsula.
The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and its strike group actually sailed south after U.S. Pacific Command announced April 8 that it was cancelling the ships' planned visit to Australia and instead ordering them to "sail north and report on station to the Western Pacific Ocean."
The Navy posted an official photograph dated April 15 that showed the Carl Vinson in an Indonesian strait thousands of miles south of North Korea. The carrier and its companions could still make their way back to the Korean Peninsula, which they last visited in March, but U.S. defense officials generally decline to describe the deployments of American military units before the fact.
News organizations around the world, including NPR, covered the statements by Trump and other officials in Washington about the Carl Vinson's deployment as though the ships were bearing down on North Korea. The narrative last week was that the U.S. and its allies in the Western Pacific were gearing up for a showdown with strongman Kim Jong Un ahead of the anniversary of the birth of his grandfather, the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.
"We are sending an armada, very powerful," Trump told Fox Business News, warning that Kim Jong Un "is doing the wrong thing."
