'It's stupid': Trump kept demanding US Navy redesign aircraft carrier
On Tuesday, New York Magazine's Intelligencer highlighted one bizarre new claim from former Defense Secretary Mark Esper's tell-all book on former President Donald Trump's administration — that Trump apparently hated the way a certain aircraft carrier looked and repeatedly demanded Esper approve major design changes to it.
Specifically, he had tons of gripes with the appearance and design of the U.S.S. Gerald Ford.
"In his new book, A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times, Mark Esper writes that when Trump wasn’t plotting to secretly bomb Mexico, he was complaining about the $13 billion warship, denouncing it as 'overpriced,' insisting that its elevators would be disabled by 'one glass of seawater,' and arguing that its new digital catapult system should be powered by 'goddamned steam' instead.
The carrier, which will finally be deployed this year, did suffer years-long delays caused by problems with various new technologies. But according to Esper, Trump was the only person focused on its physical problem areas."
One of the biggest complaints Trump had, according to the report, is with the "island," the portion of the ship that houses the command center.
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"The island 'looks really bad — it’s stupid,' Trump said, according to Esper, who added that the former president proposed moving the structure closer to the middle of the ship, which would have been a costly and largely pointless endeavor," said the report. "Esper says he tried to explain the functional reasons for the island’s positioning, but Trump wouldn’t have it, stressing that 'it just doesn’t look right' and noting that he has 'an eye for aesthetics.'"
Esper's book has also said, among other things, that Trump liked to brag that he was the real person running the military, not Esper.
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