Cost of Trump’s ‘golden fleet’ of battleships set to soar to $275 billion
A few days before Christmas 2025, Donald Trump hosted an event that appeared to make him quite happy. At a presentation held at Mar-a-Lago, the president was joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to announce the creation of the next generation of U.S. battleships.
It was notable in its own right, but the details made the news even more striking: The president who fixates on applying gold to as many things as possible announced that the battleships would be part of a “Golden Fleet.” In case that weren’t quite enough, he’d also agreed to name the new class of warships after himself. The military, he declared, was going to build “Trump-class” battleships.
The focus on gilded self-aggrandizement was only part of the problem. Mark Montgomery, a former rear admiral who is senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Wall Street Journal that the “Golden Fleet” plan is “exactly what we don’t need.”
Montgomery said the new frigate has “zero tactical use” and that officials appear to be “focused on the president’s visual that a battleship is a cool-looking ship.”
Historian Mike Lofgren soon after wrote a piece for The Washington Monthly that described the Trump-class battleships as a “ruinously expensive” idea that would weaken the U.S. Navy.
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Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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