Trump's bombastic claim on Greenland mission immediately undercut by expert

President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that the United States would be sending “a great hospital boat” to Greenland for an apparent humanitarian mission and suggested the ship to be the USNS Mercy – a claim that one maritime expert appeared to immediately undercut.

“Working with the fantastic Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, we are going to send a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there,” Trump wrote Saturday on his social media platform Truth Social. It’s on the way!!!”

The issue, noted Mike Schuler in gCaptain, a maritime news platform, was that the USNS Mercy is currently sitting in a dry dock in Alabama undergoing maintenance, maintenance that appears scheduled to continue through July.

“As of late January, the 1,000-bed hospital ship was firmly in drydock at Alabama Shipyard in Mobile, where it has been undergoing scheduled maintenance since July 2025,” Schuler wrote in a report published Friday in gCaptain.

“The USNS Mercy, commissioned in 1986, departed San Diego last July for a one-year scheduled maintenance period at Alabama Shipyard under an $18.7 million firm-fixed-price contract for a 153-calendar day mid-term availability, including drydocking. The timing and logistics of any potential deployment to Greenland remain unclear given the vessel’s current maintenance status in Alabama.”

Trump’s motivations for wanting to send a hospital ship to Greenland remain unclear, and come after the president’s failed campaign to have the United States acquire the arctic island, which is currently a territory of Denmark.

The USNS Comfort, the U.S. Navy’s only other hospital ship, is also docked at the same port as the USNS Mercy, and is secured in place away from its homeport in Virginia, suggesting the ship is also undergoing maintenance.