President Donald Trump was on clean-up duty Thursday after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick mistakenly suggested no American troops had been killed during the Iran war.
In fact, 18 U.S. service members have died since Trump started the conflict in the Middle East just over six months ago.
In an interview about the U.S. bond markets crisis on CNBC on Wednesday, Lutnick talked specifically about the Iran war.
“The way the president is playing Iran … there haven’t been American deaths; it’s really just an economic choke-out,” he said.
A day later, Trump took to Truth Social to acknowledge Lutnick’s error.
“Sec. Lutnick had Venezuela on his mind when he said nobody was killed. 18 people were killed in Iran!” the president wrote.
The Pentagon has said seven U.S. service members were injured in January’s military operation to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, per The Associated Press.
In a post on X moments after Trump’s clarification, Lutnick said he “misspoke.”
“Eighteen members of our military have died, and to those families my heart breaks and I am so very sorry for their loss,” he wrote. “I was thinking about the Venezuelan military operation where no service members died.”