Donald Trump confused the name of a wildlife refuge in Alaska with a military air base in Afghanistan during a town hall in Flint, Michigan on Tuesday.
While bragging to the audience about his energy policies, Trump mixed up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska, which he opened up to oil drilling his presidency, with the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.
“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,” he said.
“We just have the best. We have Bagram in Alaska,” he continued. “They say it might be as big, 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.”
Trump seemed to realize his mistake but his attempt to clean up his remarks left viewers more confused.
“Check that one out, Bagram. Check that one out. It’s, it’s—no, think about this: Between Bagram, between—you go to ANWR, you take a look at the kind of things that we’ve given up,” he said. “We should be—we should have that air base. We should have that oil.”
The Biden administration canceled the remaining ANWR oil and gas leases granted during the Trump administration in 2023. The Bagram Air Base fell to the Taliban in 2021 following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The latest gaffe has renewed concerns about Trump’s age and his ability to govern if he wins in November. If elected, Trump will be the oldest person to occupy the Oval Office.
“Bagram was the airbase he 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, a former Democratic political candidate in Kentucky and former Marine fighter pilot, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “He is CLUELESS folks.”
“Looking forward to the dozen NYT stories about Trump’s age and mental acuity. Oh wait. That’s just reserved for Democrats,” Zac Petkanas, a former senior adviser for Hillary Clinton wrote.
“This is elder abuse. Sleepy Don doesn’t even know where he is anymore. He doesn’t even know if he is alive,” Bradley P. Moss, a lawyer who specializes in national security wrote.
Columnist and reporter Justin Baragona added: “The thing is, you can’t even really give him the benefit of the doubt that he just confused two things that sound a bit alike. ANWR and Bagram aren’t similar phonetically at all.”
