Trump’s dreams for a battleship led to his Navy secretary’s ouster
John Phelan was asked to deliver the first ships by 2028, a nearly impossible timeline.
From The Times
April 25, 2026

More than anything else, President Trump wanted one thing from his secretary of the Navy: a new class of battleships. Trump boasted that the battleships would be the fastest, the biggest and the most powerful ever built — and that they would be delivered by 2028.

John Phelan, the secretary of the Navy, wearing a blue suit and tie and standing next to a poster with an image of a battleship that reads “Trump Class U.S.S. Defiant.”

Eric Lee for The New York Times

The timeline was nearly impossible. →

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