Morning Glory: Trump and the Navy 2.0

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The greatest presidents of the last century were “navalists”: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Ronald Reagan. All three knew that the United States is a sea power, and that to cede supremacy of the seas is to cede leadership of the world.

When President-elect Trump joined me on Monday’s program, I asked him if he intended to follow the examples of TR, FDR and RR all three of whom kept a constant eye on our Navy. The exchanges:

HH: Do you intend to rebuild the Navy?
DJT: I do. We have a great gentleman, you know, as you know. Perhaps you should get him on your show.
HH: John Phelan. Yeah.
DJT: He’s fantastic. John is fantastic, very, very successful business person. Very successful. Top. And he’s in charge of it, and we’re going to do something with ships. We need ships. And we may have to go a different route than you would normally go. That’s, you know, starting to build. We haven’t, we don’t build ships anymore. We used to build a ship a day. We don’t build ships anymore. We want to get that started. And maybe we’ll use allies, also, in terms of building ships. We might have to. We need ships. China’s building, from what I’m hearing, every four days, they’re knocking out a ship. And we’re sitting back watching. And we’ve suffered tremendously. During the Biden administration, all he knew about was the Green New Deal building nonsense, giving money away, putting windmills all over the place…”

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I followed up:

HH: Up in Maine, at the Bath Iron Works during World War II, they turned out a destroyer every 17 days. Now, they do one-and-a-half a year. Can you change that? Can you bring the developer’s point of view to shipbuilding and get new docks, graving docks built, new ship lines open…
DJT: Yes.
HH: Production?
DJT: Well, that’s what you need. You know, in Wisconsin, I gave out a great contract for essentially destroyers. Beautiful, they were beautiful. I even had something to do [with the design of the frigates.] I’m a person that believes in the beauty of a ship. It doesn’t cost any more to have the right angles, and it was really beautiful. And they were going and really doing a good job, and the generals, you know, the Biden admirals and generals and all of the people that are involved, they started playing around and tinkering and changing the design, and this, you know, that costs. That costs a lot of money, because now they say ‘Oh, it’s going to cost more money’ for something that’s not as good. But they started playing around with the design. I heard about that a year later. They took what I had. It was perfect. And what it is, is you build it. No changes, no change orders, no extra money, no nothing. You build it. They were doing a great job. But the generals or the admirals went in and they said oh, why don’t we make it a little bit wider? Why don’t we do this? Why don’t we do that? And it was designed specifically for speed and other things. When you start making it wider, you start making it slower. And it was also designed on a ship that was unbelievably successful in that same class, you know, design-wise. 

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HH: Yeah, Fincantieri designed it, and you bought it.
DJT: And we had it down, and [the Biden Pentagon] made changes. They always have to make changes. You know, these guys get in there, and they think they’re smart, and in many cases, unfortunately, they’re not smart, and they take something and they make it worse for a lot more money. That’s what they do. I mean, they spend more money to make it worse. 
HH: To get a Navy up to even 330 ships, much less more, you would have to say every day: “What have we done for the Navy today?” Is that the kind of focus you’re bringing in, like [a] call [to] Phelan every day? “What have you done today, Mr. Secretary of the Navy?” Because that’s focus.
DJT: Well, I’ll be doing that. Yeah, I’ll be doing that. But we’re going to be announcing some things that are going to be very good having to do with the Navy. We need ships. We have to get ships. And you know, everybody said oh, we’ll build them. We may have to go to others, bid them out, and it’s okay to do that. We’ll bid them out until we get ourselves ready. We’re not prepared for ships. We don’t have docks. You know, Biden is closing everything. It’s almost like they have a death wish for this country. He wants to close docks. He doesn’t want anybody building anything. All they talk about is green new deal.”

The U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS O’Kane (DDG 77) and the Italian Navy Thaon di Revel-class Multipurpose Combat Ship ITS Raimondo Montecuccoli (P 432) sail alongside each other in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. (Official U.S. Navy photo) ((Official U.S. Navy photo))

That’s a “navalist” talking and contrasting his approach with the absurdity of the “Green New Deal” which couldn’t even deliver charging stations at scale. That is a president who understands that America’s standing in the world depends on its fleet, and not a fleet planned for 2050, but what is in the water today. Trump the developer knows what a “critical path” is and if he and Phelan are on the same page, the Navy’s modernization can restart rapidly.

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Trump’s first time left an enduring legacy on the federal courts, especially with his three Supreme Court appointees. He will continue to expand and deepen that particular impact over four years, just as extension and revision of the Trump tax cuts will leave an indelible mark of resumed robust economic growth.

But our nation’s freedom depends on the military power we possess and demonstrate, and the spine of that power is our fleet on and below the seas. If Secretary of the Navy-designate John Phelan brings the unrelenting focus to ship and submarine acquisition that the president-elect wants, in four years Trump’s rebuilding of the Navy and the dockyards we need to maintain and expand it will be a legacy that ensures as long as his impact on the Supreme Court does. 

Hugh Hewitt is host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990.  Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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