Pentagon Cites Ice Cream to Push Back on USS Abraham Lincoln Concerns

Elizabeth Frantz / REUTERS The Defense Department says ice cream served to sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln a month ago proves the ship is not in crisis, despite pleas for help from sailors’ families.

The official X account for what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has dubbed the “Department of War” seized on a CNN segment from last month in which reporter Pamela Brown visited the Lincoln .

The account pointed to a brief moment in which sailors were shown eating ice cream as evidence that conditions aboard the ship are better than multiple accounts from sailors and their families suggest.

“Wonder about the USS Abraham Lincoln?” the DOW Rapid Response account wrote on X Friday , adding: “Reporter & CNN anchor Pamela Brown was there last month.

Take her word for it…(with a scoop of ice cream).” The same segment was recycled on Saturday in response to Washington Post journalist Dan Lamothe, who had hit back against the Pentagon’s claims that the media wasn’t accurately reporting on conditions aboard the ship.

The account responded by reposting the segment, writing : “Pamela Brown from CNN was actually embedded aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln just a month ago—and they even ate ice cream while visiting the ship!” The sailors on board the Lincoln went out to sea thinking their deployment would last for seven months before they were sent to fight in the Iran war , which President Donald Trump, 80, initially said would last four to six weeks.

Conditions aboard the aircraft carrier have reportedly deteriorated as the 5,000 sailors and Marines on board enter the ninth month of their deployment, with no end in sight to the president’s war.

Sailors aboard the carrier and their families have described deteriorating conditions, with MS NOW reporting moldy showers, food shortages, sailors running out of toothpaste, deodorant and soap, and worsening mental health issues.

Family members have raised the alarm that several sailors went or attempted to go overboard in apparent suicide attempts .

The Defense Department’s “ice cream” defense comes as Trump himself has dismissed family members’ concerns about conditions aboard the ship.

Asked whether families were concerned, the president flatly replied, “No, they’re not.” As for whether the deployment had gone on too long given the potential mental health risks to sailors, Trump again brushed off the concern, saying, “No, no, no.

Not nearly long enough.” The wife of a sailor aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln called out the president shortly after he made the comments, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper that Trump should show more “sympathy” and “accountability” for the service members stuck at sea.

“I don’t think the man thinks before he talks,” she said in a phone interview Friday.