The Secretary of the Navy was fired because the president wants to bring his fuckin’ toys with him and doesn’t want to hear that he can’t have them RIGHT NOW: 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. Mr.
Phelan is the first service secretary to be forced from the Defense Department during this administration, though he is far from the only senior Pentagon official to be dismissed. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired or sidelined more than two dozen generals and admirals over the past year, including the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, earlier this month.
Mr. Hegseth has also butted heads with the secretary of the Army, Daniel P. Driscoll, over promotions and a host of other issues. Fundamentally, Trump just wants to be back on The Apprentice with a little real estate development, only insists on this sideline where he feels compelled to blow people up and take away people’s health insurance.