Military allies fly side by side as Trump fires verbal salvos at Norway

The US president called Norway a “shit house country” and said Norwegian immigrants were not welcome in the US “because I didn’t get the Nobel Prize”. His remarks came during a Republican rally in Michigan late on Sunday.

“Norway sucks,” Trump said.

While the US president rages at Norway, the two countries’ militaries continue to maintain close ties, without the insults and diplomatic hostility coming from the White House.

Norwegian F-35A fighters joined jets from the British aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales to escort a United States Air Force B-52 over the Norwegian Sea. The formation flight was part of Exercise Global Thunder, according to the UK’s Permanent Joint Headquarters, which is part of the Ministry of Defence’s Specialist and Cyber Operations Command.

On Monday, HMS Prince of Wales was sailing off Namsos, on Norway’s central coast, heading north.

Norway did not participate in NATO’s nuclear exercise Steadfast Noon, held earlier in October.

Global Thunder 27 is not a NATO exercise, but an annual drill conducted by the United States Strategic Command.

The British carrier group currently operating off the coast of northern Norway includes the destroyer HMS Dauntless and the Norwegian frigate KNM Fridtjof Nansen. The warships take part in the Exercise Neptune Strike in the Norwegian Sea. 

Commodore Richard Hewitt said in a statement: “I am delighted to return to the Arctic and North Atlantic." 

The UK Carrier Strike Group will once again operate under NATO command and contribute to enhanced vigilant activity including the latest of the alliance’s Neptune Strike series of exercises which is played out on a vast scale across swathes of Europe and the North Atlantic, in a major test of Allied land, sea and air forces.