Footage purporting to show the poor conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) aircraft carrier was published in a TikTok post by a US Navy sailor on Sunday.
The footage, allegedly recorded onboard the ship, shows one of the carrier's bathrooms, with the sailor describing the conditions as "atrocious."
"Y'all expect me to take a doo-doo in this, y'all? Nah," the alleged sailor can be heard saying in the footage while showing the toilets. "Come on now, right? Join the navy, all right? Join the navy," he said sarcastically.
"This is what we go through on the carrier," he said. "This ain't even the worst part."
In addition, text messages attributed to another sailor aboard the Lincoln describe the alleged food shortages onboard, saying that they "haven't had anything fresh but meat cause it's freezed."
"The supply ship that comes here can't bring fruits and stuff cause it can't stay fresh enough with the time it gets them to get here," the alleged sailor wrote. "Sometimes it gets here rotten."
"Even people that have been deployed a hundred times claim this one to be the worst," he continued. "The Navy does not care."
CENTCOM commander visits carrier, praises US military personnel
The footage comes following a visit by US Central Command (CENTCOM) Chief Adm. Brad Cooper, who met with US Navy sailors and Marines aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea on Saturday, CENTCOM said in an X/Twitter post on Sunday.
Cooper's visit concluded a 10-day trip across the region in which the CENTCOM chief met with senior civilian and military leaders in Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Cooper described the Lincoln Carrier Strike Group as "a strong team of high-achieving Americans standing tall with immense, justified pride in everything they accomplished."
“History will record this deployment as one of the most operationally intense and consequential of the modern era,” he added.
Cooper previously visited the ship in February alongside US Special Envoy for Peace Missions Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, CENTCOM noted.
CENTCOM refutes reports of sailors jumping off ship
The visit came following CENTCOM's refutation of reports of US Navy sailors attempting to jump off the carrier due to poor living conditions onboard.
"USS Abraham Lincoln has maintained among the highest crew reenlistment rates (84.4%) of all aircraft carriers in the US Navy," CENTCOM said in an X/Twitter post on Friday. "The Sailors and Marines of the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group remain resilient and resolved after more than 260 days at sea, 10,000 aircraft flights, and 1.5 million pounds of ordnance expended."
According to The New York Times, the alleged supply crisis facing the carrier stems from Iranian attacks on a naval base in Bahrain early in the US-Iran war.
The US Navy initially used the Bahrain base for supply operations in its offensive against Iran but was forced to change strategies following the drone and missile attacks, opting for the UK naval base on the island of Diego Garcia, over 3,500 kilometers from the two US carrier strike groups operating in the Gulf of Oman, the NYT reported on Friday, attributing the supply issues directly to the base change.
Miri Sela-Eitam and Esther Davis contributed to this report.