White House wanted to keep McCain away from POTUS...the ship that is

update Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said on the Sunday TV talk shows that a junior staffer made the request to the military to hide the destroyer McCain from President Donald Trump's view "That's not an unreasonable thing to ask" that the president be spared having to see a warship with late Sen. John McCain's name on it, given the enmity between them, both personally and politically, Mulvaney said on NBC-TV's "Meet The Press" program. read more here

BTW OMG!

Navy acknowledges request was made to hide USS John S. McCain during Trump visit

NBC News
By Max Burman and Courtney Kube
June 1, 2019

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that it had reviewed an email to Navy and Air Force officials dated May 15 that included the direction "USS John McCain needs to be out of sight" for Trump's Japan visit. CNBC has also obtained the email. NBC News has not reviewed the email.

The USS John S. McCain, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, operates off the Korean Peninsula during exercises on March 2013.Declan Barnes / U.S. Navy via AFP - Getty Images file

The U.S. Navy has acknowledged that a request was made to hide the USS John S. McCain during President Donald Trump's recent state visit to Japan.

"A request was made to the U.S. Navy to minimize the visibility of USS John S. McCain, however, all ships remained in their normal configuration during the President's visit," Rear Admiral Charlie Brown, chief of information, said in a statement to NBC News.

"There were also no intentional efforts to explicitly exclude Sailors assigned to USS John S. McCain," the statement said.

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said Friday he’d asked his chief of staff to “look into” the reported request from the White House to move the ship "out of sight" during Trump's visit.

“Our business is to run military operations and not become politicized,” Shanahan told reporters during a news conference in Singapore. “I would not have moved the ship," he added.
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