The American Left and their media lapdogs aren’t going to like this Middle East development one bit – although it’s going to make a lot of military families happy.
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U.S. Sailors work on the flight deck of USS George Washington (CVN 73), Aug. 20, as the aircraft carrier transits the Arabian Sea. The George Washington Carrier Strike Group is operating in Middle East during a scheduled deployment after arriving in the CENTCOM theater yesterday. pic.twitter.com/DEkHHukHeI
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) August 20, 2026
That’s right. The USS George Washington has arrived in the Middle East, and that means that the USS Abraham Lincoln – whose supposedly “miserable” crew has been the subject of so much breathless media coverage – is finally being relieved and beginning its journey home.
This, of course, should be fantastic news for the journalists, activists, and various, assorted Trump critics who have spent much of the last few weeks sobbing about life aboard the Lincoln, portraying it as some sort of floating humanitarian crisis.
Oh, the humanity, they wailed, telling us repeatedly that the Sailors and Marines aboard the Lincoln were miserable, exhausted, deprived of basic necessities, and trapped aboard a ship whose deployment had dragged on for far too long.
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Families were quoted. Complaints from the disgruntled were amplified. Every hardship was treated as evidence that something had gone terribly wrong – and it was all the fault of President Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
READ MORE: CENTCOM Chief Visits ‘Miserable’ USS Abraham Lincoln — Delivers Reality Check on Navy Life
Well, help has arrived.
According to Stars and Stripes, the George Washington entered U.S. Central Command’s (CENTCOM) area of responsibility on Wednesday and is now operating in the Arabian Sea.
The Lincoln has been deployed for more than eight months and has spent more than 200 consecutive days without a port call – no doubt a brutal slog for the roughly 5,000 sailors aboard the floating city.
Hilariously, the crew of the George Washington seems to have gotten wind of the non-troversy around the Lincoln and decided to get ahead of the story by putting out a video showing how they keep their crew fed and happy.
How we take care of 5,000 Sailors. 🇺🇸@USNavy Culinary Specialist 2nd Class Victoria Marc explains how the supply department provides food services to the crew out at sea aboard Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN 73). pic.twitter.com/GJsdmChNdB
— USS George Washington (CVN 73) (@GW_CVN73) August 16, 2026
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What now for the media? They no longer have their “USS Abraham Lincoln misery” story to beat to death. The political value was in portraying its sailors as victims of Trump and Hegseth, not in celebrating their successful completion of an exceptionally difficult mission.
It’s still unclear when exactly the Lincoln will be arriving in its home port of San Diego, but Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao and other naval leaders might want to proactively have a media plan in place. You just know they’ll be there when it pulls into dock, sticking their microphones into people’s faces, and looking for that one disgruntled Sailor willing to tell them the deployment was a living hell.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s leadership, the warrior ethos is coming back to America’s military.
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