President Donald Trump has been slammed online after he seemed to make an error when revealing where he is meeting Vladimir Putin.
Trump sparked confusion when he mistakenly said he would be meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia on Friday.
The actual location for the much-anticipated summit is slated to be in Alaska, not Russia.
“I’m going to see Putin, I'm going to Russia on Friday. I don’t like being up here, talking about how unsafe and how dirty and disgusting this once beautiful capital was,” Trump said during the press briefing on his crackdown on crime in Washington, D.C.
The unexpected comment immediately made waves online, with users quickly reacting.
One X (formerly Twitter) user quipped: “Wait, did he give Alaska back to Putin already?” while another responded: “He already handed Alaska over to Russia.”
Others were quick to wonder if the summit location had been changed or if the U.S. had officially ceded Alaska to Russia.
The upcoming meeting between the two leaders is poised to be the first direct engagement between a U.S. president and a Russian president since the Geneva summit between President Joe Biden and Putin in 2021.
The meeting would also come on the heels of a visit to Moscow by U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, who discussed the possibility of a trilateral meeting that would involve Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as well.
While the location mix-up may have caused embarrassment for the former president, it did not overshadow his stern remarks about the state of crime in Washington, D.C., which he has been fiercely criticizing in recent days, per the Mirror.
In a series of recent posts on his Truth Social platform, Trump painted a grim picture of crime in the nation's capital, which he claims has spiraled out of control.
He blamed "local youths and gang members, some only 14, 15, and 16-years-old," for the escalating violence, including random attacks and shootings of innocent citizens.
Trump also criticized the legal system, alleging that these young offenders are rarely held accountable.
"They are not afraid of Law Enforcement because they know nothing ever happens to them, but it’s going to happen now!" Trump declared, adding that the law in D.C. must be reformed to treat minors as adults in criminal cases.
In his posts, Trump also expressed his determination to restore Washington, D.C. to its former glory, describing it as "unsafe, dirty, and disgusting" and vowing to make the city "safe, clean, and beautiful for all Americans and, importantly, for the World to see."
He even suggested that if the city does not take immediate action, he would consider federalizing it to bring about the necessary changes. "If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City," Trump warned.