Trump’s Vanity Fleet

Tom Nichols: “Imagine the CEO of a car company telling his engineers and designers that he wants them to make a new line of automobiles. He knows nothing about cars and has no interest in how they’re produced, but he knows one thing for certain: The line will be named after himself. Everyone claps—because of course they do—but no one really knows what comes next, except that the line needs to look sexy and sporty.”

“That’s pretty much what the president did today when he announced that a new class of ship named after one Donald J. Trump would be added to the ‘Golden Fleet,’ his name for a renewed U.S. Navy.”