President Donald Trump bragged on Thursday about his impressive sale of F-52 fighter aircraft to one of America's closest allies, the Scandinavian country of Norway.
The only problem is that America doesn't make F-52 fighter aircraft... unless you're talking about the video game "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare."
"In November we started delivering the first F-52s and F-35 fighter jets. We have a total of 52 and they’ve delivered a number of them already a little ahead of schedule," Trump told reporters during a press conference with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, according to The Washington Post.
Twitter users were quick to point out the humorousness of the occasion.
The likeliest explanation for Trump's gaffe — apart from the possibility that he is a secret gamer — is that he conflated the fact that America was selling 52 planes to Norway with the name of the F-35 Lightning II aircraft, which is in fact being sold to that country. Lockheed Martin has already confirmed to the Post that 40 F-35s have been authorized to be sold to Norway, with 10 already having been delivered.
The "real" F-52s, so to speak, come from the 2014 video game "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare," which allows players to fire while engaged in a dogfight.
Trump's F-52 faux pas was the second occasion on Thursday alone when the president displayed a glaringly poor grasp of policy details. Earlier in the day he tweeted his disapproval of the FISA program on the grounds that it had been used "to so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign by the previous administration and others." On the previous day, however, Trump had expressed his unequivocal support for the FISA program, raising questions about whether he realized the same program he was criticizing was one he had supported 24 hours earlier.
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