Former President Donald Trump's 2019 visit to Japanincludedan incident involving his ego and an American warship. On Thursday, Bloomberg Business Investigative Reporter Jason Leopold published the White House Military Office's records of the debacle that he obtained after a long-awaited fulfillment of a Freedom of Information Act Request.
Leopold summarizes the partially-redacted emails between officials in the United States Pacific Command and the Navy in a Twitter thread.
NEW: Remember when Trump took a trip to Japan back in 2019 and reports surfaced that the WH requested they move the USS John McCain out of view so it wouldn't upset Trump? Well, I #FOIA'd the military for docs about this & 3 yrs later they just arrived.
'This just makes me sad'
The White House Military Office passed along a request to keep the USS John McCain out of sight when Trump visited Japan.
How the sequence of events unfolded:
An email describing how the directives to keep the USS John McCain out of sight during Trump's 2019 visit to Japan were passed to US Indo-Pacific Command and the Navy.
Navy officials wanted names of the individuals responsible for requesting the USS John McCain be kept out of view during Trump's visit to Japan. They seem stunned.
All of the White House Military Office emails about the discussions to keep the USS John McCain out of sight during Trump's visit to Japan are classified and redacted except for one.