Trump has often complained about ‘ugly’ US Navy ships, says former defense chief Mark Esper

Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly complained about the “ugliness” he found of US Navy ships, his Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has revealed in his forthcoming book, according to The Hill.

In his book “A Sacred Oath,” Esper writes that Trump preferred the “clean” lines of Russian and Italian ships. The book is due out on Tuesday.

Esper had to remind the then commander-in-chief that the ships weren’t in a beauty contest (something Trump has experience with), but were made to engage powerfully and effectively in battle. .

“Repeatedly, the president complained that US Navy ships ‘looked ugly’, while Russian and Italian ships, for example, ‘looked nicer, more elegant, like a real ship,’” Esper wrote.

“Maybe so, but as I said to the Chairman for Defense of the Navy, ‘Our ships are built to fight and win, not to win beauty contests; we value function over form,” he said. “That didn’t satisfy him.

While an odd concern for a president, Trump’s rebukes about US ships were among the more benign Oval Office issues that Esper reveals in his book.