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Donald Trump has been roasted after he bizarrely mixed up an Alaskan wildlife refuge and an Afghanistan airbase during a town hall in Michigan.
The former president appeared on stage in Flint on Tuesday for the event which was moderated by his former White House press secretary and current Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Along with declaring that “only consequential presidents get shot at”, and pledging to revive Michigan’s waning automotive industry, the former president boasted about his administration getting drilling approval in Alaska’s oil-rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
But the name of the vast swathe of mountains and forest in the Last Frontier escaped him and, instead, he mixed up the ANWR with the former largest US air base in Afghanistan located 5,000 miles east: Bagram Airfield – which is now in the hands of the Taliban.
“Check that one out. Bagram. Check that one that. ANW… it’s, it’s… no, think about this,” Trump said, tripping over his words. “Between Bagram, between… you go to ANWR…”
It’s not clear how Trump mixed up the two locations which are phonetically different and are in separate continents.
Trump also over-inflated the size of the Alaskan wildlife refuge before touting his controversial oil-drilling deal secured just days before the end of his presidency in 2021 – a deal that was swiftly culled by the Biden administration.
“We were energy independent, we were soon going to be energy dominant, and we would’ve been now having so much money coming out of the energy,” Trump began.
“We just have the best. We have Bagram in Alaska,” a confused Trump said.
ANWR, not Bagram, is described as America’s last great wilderness. Its 6,000 sq km stretch of coast holds the largest onshore reserves of oil in North America.
“They say it might be as big… it might be bigger than all of Saudi Arabia. I got it approved. Ronald Reagan couldn’t do it, nobody could do it. I got it done,” he bragged.
While Trump claims ANWR is “bigger” than Saudi Arabia, it spans across approximately 78,000 sq km, while the Middle Eastern country covers about 2,150,000 sq km.
After the geographical blunder and butchering of stats, Trump faced a slew of criticism from social media users and political pundits.
“They say it might be bigger than Saudi Arabia, they also say it’s in Afghanistan, not Alaska,” former professor at the US Naval War College-turned staff writer at The Atlantic Tom Nichols quipped, as he shared a clip of Trump speaking at the town hall on X.
“Bagram was the airbase he [Trump] had in Afghanistan – the same base where we kept hundreds of Taliban and ISIS prisoners that Trump released back out into Afghanistan in his final year in office,” Amy McGrath, the former Marine fighter pilot and founder of the Democratic Majority Action PAC, wrote on X.
“He is CLUELESS folks.”
The hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe also trolled the former president for the gaffe on Wednesday morning.
“Check it out, Willie. You got your Google machine?” anchor Joe Scarborough teased. “Bagram, Alaska. I hear there is some of the best moose hunting in all of the world in Bagram.”
“Not a slip of the tongue either,” co-host Willie Geist chimed in. “He said it five or six times and then closed it with check it, Google it, find it, look it up, take it to the bank.”
