Yes, this really happened. Donald Trump proudly stood up and bragged that he had delivered, to Norway, a made-up military jet from a video game.
Was [the F-52] a secret advanced jet capable of beating its Russian counterparts? A ruse to fool intelligence analysts?
Neither, it turns out. The “F-52” is a fictional jet only available to fly if you’re a gamer at the controls of “Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.”
Since we are not military strategists around these parts, we cannot tell you what the impact would be from delivering imaginary jets from a video game to Norway. Is it fifty-twoth dimensional chess? Does Trump mean to say he is dispatching an elite squadron of “Call of Duty” players to Norway? He is very popular with the gamergate crowd, after all.
Is Donald Trump himself a “Call of Duty” gamer? No, really, is he one of those shrieking, swearing twelve year olds the multiplayer online game is so widely known for? He does seem to have an awful lot of free time on his hands.
Alas, the real answer appears to be that he's simply an idiot. Again.
“In November we started delivering the first F-52s and F-35 fighter jets,” Trump said. “We have a total of 52 and they’ve delivered a number of them already a little ahead of schedule.”
Trump was reading from a statement, and it appears he combined the figure of 52 planes with the “F” designation assigned to fighter jets in the U.S. inventory, such as the F-35 Lightning II.
Yes, the problem is that he can't read. The man who spent quality time bashing the last president for teleprompter-reading cannot read numbers off a page. He meant to say the Norway government was receiving the first F-35 jets, the controversial aircraft designed to do All The Things that has received harsh criticism for its ballooning and enormous price tag, but there were two damn numbers in the same paragraph and it caused Donald to lose the plot.
Mind you, by this evening the White House will be insisting that the F-52 is a real plane, you’ve just never heard of it. Kellyanne Conway may be calling military leaders as we speak to demand the nation re-designate some current jet just to make Donald Trump look good.
And the official White House schedule noted that Trump was meeting that day with the Prime Minister of “Normay”, not “Norway”, so for all we know he’s not even talking about the same country we are.