Trump's Dreams for a Battleship Led to His Navy Secretary's Ouster

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/23/us/politics/trump-navy-secretary.html

Trump’s Dreams for a Battleship Led to His Navy Secretary’s Ouster
The Navy secretary, John Phelan, was supposed to deliver the first of the president’s ships by 2028. The timeline was nearly impossible.
By Greg Jaffe and Helene Cooper
April 23, 2026, 4:51 p.m. ET

President Trump wanted one thing, more than anything else, from his secretary of the Navy, John Phelan: a new class of battleships.

“They’ll be the fastest, the biggest and by far — 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” Mr. Trump boasted at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate and resort in Florida a few days before Christmas. Mr. Phelan, a billionaire investor who has a home near the club, stood next to the president as he made the announcement.

Mr. Phelan’s job was to deliver the first of Mr. Trump’s battleships by 2028.

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump fired Mr. Phelan, who had struggled to come up with a plan to deliver the ships on the nearly impossible timeline that Mr. Trump has demanded, senior defense and administration officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.

The breaking point for Mr. Phelan, who often said that he and Mr. Trump texted and talked on the phone regularly, came in the last two weeks as the president’s frustration over Mr. Phelan’s management of his prized battleship program grew and Mr. Phelan’s enemies in the Pentagon, including Mr. Hegseth and Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen A. Feinberg, mounted a campaign to force him out.

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