Headline Roundup • December 23rd, 2025
Trump Announces New "Golden Fleet" Naval Battleships
Summary from the AllSides News Team
On Monday, President Donald Trump unveiled a plan for the US Navy to build new battleships.
The Details: The ships, which are being called the "Golden Fleet," will be built with "all steel" as opposed to aluminum. They will be equipped with missiles, guns, hypersonic weapons, and high-powered lasers. The ships are expected to be faster and bigger than the Navy's Arleigh-Burke-class destroyers and will weigh more than 30,000 tons. It will take about two and a half years for the ships to be completed.
Key Quote: "Each one of these will be the largest battleship in the history of our country, the largest battleship in the history of the world ever built," Trump stated at Mar-a-Lago. "They'll help maintain American military supremacy, revive the American shipbuilding industry, and inspire fear in America's enemies all over the world. We want respect. We're going to have it."
For Context: During this second term, Trump has focused on sea power as a sign of a country's strength, and he has complained about the rusty appearance of US ships. Meanwhile, Trump continues to mass destroyers and Marines in the Caribbean to block Venezuelan oil tankers.
How the Media Covered It: The Washington Times (Lean Right bias) reported that while Trump did not specifically mention it in his remarks, the new line of battleships will be known as "Trump-class," according to signage displayed by the White House at the announcement. CNN (Lean Left bias) reported that the new class of battleships will bear Trump's name, though the first ship will actually be named the USS Defiant. Some sources on the right and left noted that the Navy had recently abandoned a plan to construct a new fleet of smaller, more mobile submarines, citing production costs and delays.
Written by the AllSides staff (of humans). Learn more. Suggest an improvement to this summary.
Featured Coverage of this Story
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
President Donald Trump announced plans for the construction of a new line of battleships for the United States Navy on Monday, which the president claims will be "one hundred times more powerful" than any warship ever built.
The president, who is spending the Christmas holidays at his private club in South Florida, made the announcement alongside Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of the Navy John Phelan.
"Each one of these will be the largest battleship in the history of our country, the largest...
President Donald Trump's announcement of a new class of battleships bearing his name puts a fresh spotlight on a US naval shipbuilding program that has fallen short on delivering the new warships on time and on budget in recent years, something Trump himself pointed out in his speech from Mar-a-Lago on Monday.
"We make the greatest equipment in the world, by far, nobody's even close. But we don't produce them fast enough," Trump said, as he announced he would meet soon with top US military contractors to ramp up production...
The president said that he approved a plan for the Navy to start construction of the two battleships, which will be equipped with guns, missiles, hypersonic weapons and high-powered lasers.
Trump trumpeted the ships as being built with "all steel" as opposed to aluminum.
Trump said the timeline of building the ships would be about two and a half years.
When asked if the new class of ships is developed to counter China, Trump said they are intended to counter "everybody."
