For the last few days the media has been running with pearl clutching stories about the poor starving sailors aboard the USS Lincoln. According to the various media outlets, sailors are jumping overboard, they haven’t enough food, and life is hell.
The media and some politicians even ginned up commentary from helicopter Moms who just cannot believe their baby is having to endure such harsh conditions with no port calls, no mid-tour leave, and such crappy food like … hot dogs.
I spoke to a grandmother today worried about her 21-year-old grandson who's aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. He’s lost 20-25 pounds and is struggling with depression. And so-called leaders like Pete Hegseth aren’t doing a thing about it. pic.twitter.com/sueDJajmPV
— Captain Mark Kelly (@CaptMarkKelly) August 14, 2026
As you can read here, Kelly is getting dragged for this. No one ever stops to think that deployments do mean people lose weight. Why? Oh gee, I don’t know. Perhaps because those on board don’t have time for a beer nor do they have fat-inducing snacks available..
200+ days at sea is just horrible and President Trump is using our sailors as “toys” according to AZ Senator Ruben Gallego.
“His… lackadaisical attitude about men and women and their deployments… just kind of reflects what he actually thinks about them,” added Gallego, who served in the Marines. “He thinks about them more as toys and as ways to basically show off or show his strength, but not the fact that they truly, at the end of the day, are humans.
“They’re Americans. And they have families, and these things, these deployments, these wars have consequences.”
Ruben, who is a longtime pal of Eric Swalwell, has absolutely ZERO room to talk. He wouldn’t even make it through basic training, he’d quit because he couldn’t handle getting yelled at or being expected to WORK. He knows it. We all know it.
The media and Democrats are framing this as that the USS Lincoln sailors and the rest of that carrier group have been left floundering in the ocean without support. And they’ve managed to find liberal veterans to amplify this.
Jonathan Simkins may be a Marine vet, but he’s an absolute disgrace for peddling the ‘200 days is just too long and just too tough for our troops’ line. He needs to be leveled just as hard as SharrellAnne did with Jim Acosta.
I’m not sure who these families think they are at this point, but declaring that “military families have spoken,” demanding resignations, and issuing ultimatums makes it painfully obvious they don’t understand how any of this works.
— SharrellAnne (@SharrellAnne2) August 15, 2026
We do not command warships. We don’t determine… https://t.co/BuFf9RasXW
Yes. THIS.
The military moms and grandmas clutching pearls need to put a very large SOCK in it. They have NO say in deployments, the length of such, what kind of food their babies receive or don’t, their living quarters, or anything else regarding the military. They have NO say and absolutely ZERO command authority.
As for the sailors themselves, many veterans lobbed some serious reality checks. None more so than Johnny Joey Jones. He took the sailors to the figurative woodshed.
I cannot imagine what a living World War 2 veteran reading the trash about this deployment thinks. If we’ve gotten this soft, we truly are Rome waiting to burn.
— Joey Jones (@Johnny_Joey) August 15, 2026
Good job SECNAV. https://t.co/3hMtLvibzU
Oh, but he was just getting started here. Especially after some anonymous troop from the carrier bitched to CNN about hot dogs.
“I would say morale’s pretty low, and not just in the division, like in the ship entirely,” the troop told CNN. “We’re running pretty low on rations, I mean at some points in the day it would just be about noodles and tuna mixed in together, and that was it… sometimes you get a corndog, sometimes you get a hot dog.”
Johnny had had ENOUGH.
Jones could be heard letting out an irritated sigh as the clip wrapped up. He then went off.
“That little… you know what I ate in Afghanistan for six months using a little burner? I ate Ramen noodles… that’s what I ate, and I was happy to have it, because the alternative was an MRE or something cooked by the Afghan guy who was too stupid to be given a gun and they let him be the cook,” Jones started off by saying.
He then turned it up a notch or three.
“How weak are you?! On TV, complaining about tuna and noodles?” Jones continued. “I’m sorry, you volunteered to serve your country. You can come back, get out of the military, and do like all these Democrat veterans and complain about it and make commercials and be a sellout if you want to.”
Jones is a Marine Corps veteran who served eight years in the military and was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. He was severely wounded in 2010 when an IED exploded while he was serving in Afghanistan, with Jones suffering major injuries to his arms and wrists and having both of his legs amputated above the knee.
Tuna and noodles, along with hot dogs are basic food groups. Just saying.
Here’s the deal. The sailors whining and crying about the food choices on board need to man up. Yes, they are on a long deployment. Yes, they don’t have a mid-tour leave right now. And yes, sometimes you can look at the meal choices that the culinary crew is putting out and not be a fan.
What EVERY member of today’s military needs to fully understand is that our soldiers who served in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, during WWI and WWII or during the American Revolution actually dealt with HARSHER conditions and little to no food on numerous occasions.
During the American Revolution, WWI and WWII, our soldiers were away from home for YEARS. 2-3, even four years at a stretch.
Did they bitch and moan among themselves? I’m sure they did. We even saw some of it in Band of Brothers.
Did they write whining crying letters to mom or grandma with the expectation that the Mom Brigade will swoop in and fix things for their baby? Not a chance.
Kudos to Johnny for leveling the whiners and complainers with a brutal reality check.
To the few whiners and complainers on board the USS Lincoln, I say MAN THE ‘EFF UP!
To the rest of those with the USS Lincoln Carrier Group, I say thank you sincerely for all you are doing.
Feature Photo Credit: USS Lincoln via Navy.mil, cropped and modified
rbj1 says: Growing up we had tuna & potato chip casseroles.
Tuna and Raman noodles remind me of college years. And first couple of post college years.
Lloyd says: One would think that the US Navy could resupply an aircraft carrier on a more regular basis to prevent the complaints leveled here. Shorter deployments would also help to keep crews in tip-top fighting condition. I cannot overly criticize the complainers as they suffer through this “war of words”…cease fires…endless talks with no end in sight. I salute all those who serve…even the complainers!
Wfjag says: Shorter deployments he suggests. How is that possible?
After the “Peace Dividend” and the “I’m the Smartest Guy In The Room” (whether I know anything or not about the subject) Obama (so let’s cut maintenance) followed by even worse policies under Biden (whose SecDEF could be hospitalized for weeks at a time without anyone in the White House knowing anything about it), military forces and logistics requiring substantial investments in capital and maintenance, and long lead times, aren’t available. Federal law requires the U.S. to have 11 aircraft carriers. However, only 9 are available for operations. Two are undergoing (or awaiting drydock and other facilities) refitting. One of the deployed carriers, the Nimitz is operating on reduced capacity because it was supposed to be retired a year or so ago and replaced by a new Ford class carrier, the John F. Kennedy. The Ford was commissioned in 2017, and the 10 Nimitz carriers are scheduled for retirement as the Fords are commissioned. However, the new Fix Or Repair Daily class carriers are experiencing teething problems and the earliest the Kennedy is (it is hoped) to be operational is 2027. The others will be modified or re-designed based on lessons learned from the Ford and Kennedy.
Thus, when you need a navy – for things like destroying the Ballistic Missile and Nuclear Weapons programs of a regime lead by 7th Century religious zealots who chant “Death to America” and believe that their 12th Prophet will be revealed when the apocalypse is started – the U.S. is a little short on the ships, aircraft, missiles, etc., to sustain the operation. People who are serious about having adequate seapower have been warning for decades, we have vastly under funded the Navy. This is the result.
Darleen Click says: Guess what? I’m a 72 y/o grandmother with one 23 y/o grandson out on an LSD-47 in the area and I was a hell of a lot more worried about him and his twin (also Navy) under Creepy Joe and MIA Weirdo Lloyd Austin.
It’s also a carrier GROUP of around 7,500 people that has to be supplied. With about ten tons of just food per day. Not to mention munitions resupply, POL (petrol, oil, lubricant) supply, and much, much more. At the end of a VERY long supply line.
Also remember that those two treasonous shits not only didn’t do naval construction for warships – but also screwed the number and readiness of the logistics fleet. They also didn’t take care of the “forward” supply stockpiles in Australia and Japan, letting those get drawn down below adequate levels for long deployments (of all military arms, not just the Navy).
Lewis says: I am an 80 year old widow of a Navy gunner who sat in the Gulf of Tonkin month after month never complaining about the food he once in a while had time to eat!
These complaints are a direct hit on the education of our children! And by “children” I mean all these grandparents and parents complaining on behalf of children they should have educated at the dining room table! To say I am appalled at these “complaints” is not nearly as sick as I actually am while reading it!
Wfjag says: The re-enlistment rate on the Lincoln is just under 85%. Reports of low morale appear greatly exaggerated. There are a lot of reasons service members don’t re-up (going to college on the G.I. Bill; don’t want to be separated from family for 6 to 9 months at a time; learned a trade/skill and got a good job offer, and many others). And, on a ship with a crew of about 5,000, you’ll have some malcontents, and a few with bona fide DSM V diagnoses. I suspect that the young men and women who can make the grade to enlist today would favorably impress your late husband, and share many of the character traits and values he had. However, since few in the modern “press” have served or have any idea what Selfless Service means, don’t depend on such people to accurately report facts about the military.
NTSOG says: The US Marines on Guadalcanal were fed Japanese rice and canned Australian sheep’s tongue after the Navy took off after the sea battle around Savo Island [later called Iron Bottom Sound] in which four allied cruisers including HMAS Canberra were sunk by the Japanese. The Marines were left short of supplies when the Navy left for fear of another night raid down the slot by the Japanese. The Japanese rice was riddled with insects and sheep’s tongue is not to everyone’s taste. I suspect the sailors on modern US warships are fed better and more rations that the Marines in the Solomons in 1942.
Wfjag says: You sound like someone who has experienced the gourmet delights of “C” and “K” rations.
NTSOG says: No, I’ve just experienced my own simple cooking and survived, but I do study the history of WW II in Europe and the Pacific in part because so many of my relations went to war. I have the impression from my reading that US military personnel were better cared for and fed in WW II than the personnel of any other Nation.
Wfjag says: You probably would appreciate John McManus’s trilogy on the Southwest Pacific theater, Fire and Fortitude; Island Infernos; and To The End of the Earth.
Carol Marks says: I lost 27 pounds in 8 weeks during boot camp in 1985. Do I need to sue the Navy? oh wait, I lost 27 pounds. Nevermind.
ex-exec says: I was in the US coast guard during Vietnam nam our deployment wasa full year away from home port. Complaints, yeh I had one big one I had just got married 4 months before, but I went and served because thats what I signed up for. These “sailors” are just a bunch of passes! Oh and how about having to sail on Eagle into a hurricane the week I was supposed to pass papers on a house. No Complaints.
ex-exec says: I was in the US coast guard during Vietnam nam our deployment was a full year away from home port. Complaints, yeh I had one big one I had just got married 4 months before, but I went and served because thats what I signed up for. These “sailors” are just a bunch of pussys! Oh and how about having to sail on Eagle into a hurricane the week I was supposed to pass papers on a house. No Complaints.
Helene says: These complaining mothers and grandmothers are the new helicopter parents.
Wfjag says: The only time you should start worrying about a Soldier is when they stop bitchin’.
Tim says: It would be a real shocker if the media couldn’t find anyone who complained. Don’t matter if it’s an infantry squad or the crew of an aircraft carrier, there’s always going to be an irreducible percentage of malcontents. We just ignored them and did our job.
John Shepherd says: My uncle was a plank holder on USS Oakland (CLAA-95). He left San Francisco in the Summer of 1943, stopped at Pearl Harbor on the way out to the combat zone and did not return to the US until after the signing of the surrender ceremony.
A reader says: And I’m sure he had shore leave periodically during that time. The Lincoln crewmen/women have not. But please, do go on…
Ted Moore says: I was a draftee. My first deployment was 400 days with no midterm leave. Like any outfit we had outstanding people and people who were less so.
We can find “sob stories” in any large group. It was easy to notice that the ones who had trouble doing their own share were the ones most likely to have moms moaning about how tough they had it. There were people who pulled more than their share of the work too. Less complaints from those who did the work and less moaning from their families. Takes all kinds to make a nation but wish we had less of the ones who refuse to pull their share of the work and the politicians who make it so easy to not pull your own weight.
A reader says: Ah yes, here we go, we found our talking point on this story at last! The navy moms and any complainers are just “suckers and losers.” Apparently we only support our troops so long as they say what we want them to say and make leadership look good. The minute they don’t, they’re screwed.
Here’s the thing: being on a ship in the Navy or in combat, you aren’t going to get even 3 star meals the majority of the time, if at all. The issue with the Lincoln is that the crew is on call 24/7. They’ve had no breaks FOR MONTHS. All of you supporting this try that! Most deployments get leave time and according to reporting, that hasn’t happened. They’re also apparently not getting resupplied. Even in an active war situation, the military has tried to swap out troops to keep them fresh. During the Iraq War, most Navy deployments were for about 6 months, and the Army was anywhere from 12-15, depending on what was happening. And during Vietnam, deployments were typically a year. There was an end date. There was no definitive end date here. That can wreck havoc on morale. Anyone saying “Well I did this and I was ok!” is clearly being disingenuous, purposefully forgetful or maybe outright lying. I dare you to be at work 24/7 with no end date for nearly a year, no shore leave, dwindling supplies— including toiletries, laundry supplies and personal care items— subpar food rations and not knowing when it would be over and being “ok.” The armchair fair weather military fans would likely be in even worse shape than the seamen/women!
But do go on. Republicans loving and supporting our troops my ass…
Scott says: Boo fucking hoo loser.. yes, over time, deployments habe tended to get shorter than during WWII / Korea, where they were for the duration.. being a slug that never served, you obviously have no clue what you’re talking about, as with most things but when you sign up, one of the conditions is ” according to the needs of the service”. So while yes, not getting a leave sucks, that is part of the life they signed up for.. just like the idiots crying during the beginning of rhe gulf war when they got deployed that ” i didnt sign up for this, I signed up for college”.. if you failed to read the fine print, or just ignored that, its on you. Servi g in the military is a sacrifice, and, just like you, this is nothing but some.whiny assed spoiled brats and their enabling parents whining about things not being the way they want them.
Face it, you are put of your depth here, you dont have a clue what youre talking g about, and as usual, you are completely wrong.. being as youve never served, how about uou STFU amd pay attention to the commentary from.those who have
Nina Bookout says: They’ve had two ports of call during their tour.
Here’s the thing that you are willing to ignore.
THIS IS WHAT THEY SIGNED UP FOR.
The military isn’t a walk in the park. It is HARD. It is supposed to be HARD. And if you end up, as others ships have been, deployed for over 200 days at sea… Guess what? THAT IS THE MISSION.
They signed up for that.
And let me tell you something A Reader, we here at Victory Girls KNOW what it means to sacrifice. We know what it means to have loved ones on deployments for over a year. Or on so many deployments that your sleeve runs out of room for those stripes.
I know far too many who’ve had deployments that ran up to 18 months during Iraq and Afghanistan. I also knew two soldiers from WWII who didn’t see home for THREE YEARS.
So A Reader, we know damned well what we are talking about and I for one am totally fine calling out the whiners and the helicopter moms/families of the whiners on board the Lincoln. This is what they signed up for. Suck it up, grow a pair, and deal with it.
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