The conditions on board the USS Abraham Lincoln have given Democrats a new attack line to criticize Republicans as the six-month war appears to have no end in sight with the midterm elections looming.
Reports from last week indicated that sailors aboard the Lincoln, which was deployed to the Middle East before the war began, are suffering mental health crises in the face of nine months at sea, dwindling rations, and subpar living conditions. Multiple sailors have reportedly sought to abandon ship in the middle of the Arabian Sea.
President Donald Trump’s supporters maintain that wartime demands increase for service members, especially while fighting an existential threat, such as the possibility of Iran, the world’s largest state-sponsor of terrorism, obtaining a nuclear weapon.
The Trump administration last week mobilized the USS George Washington to relieve the USS Lincoln last week, but it will take an estimated three weeks for the entire naval force to reach the Middle East from the Pacific Ocean.
The development has given Democrats another avenue to use the war as a political cudgel, as it’s already contributed to rising prices and has claimed the lives of 18 service members.
Democrats are claiming the Lincoln is representative of failures from the president, War Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Republican lawmakers they say are complicit in Trump’s war.
Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD), a U.S. Army veteran, took issue with both the Lincoln’s conditions and the president’s response during a Sunday interview with CNN.
“It should piss off all of us,” he said. “I would have hoped that since he’s never been forward deployed, since he’s never put on the uniform and sacrificed for this country, that he would have more compassion for the people who are willing to.”
Richard Ojeda, an Army veteran and the Democratic nominee challenging National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, used the Lincoln situation to attack Republicans during a Monday interview with the Washington Examiner.
He claimed that Trump’s comments are “a slap in the face to anybody who’s ever served in this military.”
“It’s a shame that now instead of doing the right thing and saying, ‘Well, you know, we really need to figure out how we can get these soldiers relief.’ Instead of saying that, now they’re going out there and they’re trying to vilify the soldiers,” Ojeda said.
Republicans have not suggested that the Lincoln could dampen their chances ahead of November, but some top GOP voices are publicly suggesting concerns about the political ramifications of the war.
Campaigning for Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-VA) on Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson conceded that the “Iran conflict has been the cause, of course, of gas prices going up,” but said that he is “grateful” for the work the Trump administration is doing to combat rising prices at the pump.
“This situation in Iran is causing repercussions like you can’t imagine,” Sen. Jim Justice (R-WV) said. “And I’m a real believer that once we decided to go, we gotta win.”
The White House has sought to downplay reporting on the Lincoln.
“After four years of weakness and failure under Joe Biden, President Trump rightfully restored a focus on readiness, lethality, and supporting our warfighters at the Pentagon – including by rebuilding America’s long-neglected shipbuilding industry,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told the Washington Examiner. “The president cares about our troops more than anyone, and he is ensuring our brave servicemembers have all the resources they need to be successful as the United States Military continues to economically strangle the Iranian regime.”
Trump told reporters last week that family members of the sailors on board are mistaken about the conditions and that the deployment has gone on “not nearly long enough.”
On Monday, during an Oval Office spray, he called CNN’s original report on the Lincoln’s conditions “fake.”
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“I was at a group meeting and an admiral came up to see me over the weekend, and it was at a big group, and he happened to be an admiral, retired,” the president said. “He said, ‘I’ve been on ships that are out there much longer than that, sir. And I know people on the Lincoln. They say it’s beautifully maintained and beautifully taken care of.’ And other people went out, and they found out to be true. It was fake news reporting from CNN.”