Former Navy Seal Ryan Zinke is getting blasted for using a photo of an Indonesian Navy ship to celebrate the U.S. Navy’s birthday.
In the original photo, Indonesian flags are prominently displayed but were conveniently covered by Zinke’s graphic. Zinke has seemingly ignored multiple attempts at outreach since getting called out.
Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT), whose political identity is closely associated with his background as a Navy SEAL, recently extended birthday wishes to the U.S. Navy on social media – using what appears to be an image of an Indonesian warship.
In a birthday message on X, formerly known as Twitter, a transparent silhouette of the word “NAVY” was overlaid on the ship.
A Raw Story analysis indicates that the image is a stock photo from the graphic design website Canva.
In the graphic, the numbers “3” and “5” are visible on the ship as is an anti-aircraft radar tower. These and other elements of the photo seem to match a Canva image of a ship with the number “358,” an anti- aircraft radar tower and an Indonesian flag.
Zinke posted the graphic on Oct. 13 without comment. It remained online as of Tuesday morning.
Lyle Goldstein, who spent 20 years on the faculty of the U.S. Naval War College and currently serves as a visiting professor of international and public affairs at Brown University, concurred with Raw Story’s assessment of the image.
“I think you are correct,” he said. “I’m not aware of any (U.S. Navy) ship class of that type. It looks to be a light frigate or corvette. In that category, we’ve developed the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), which looks very different.”
Multiple messages left with Zinke’s office were not returned.
