May 12, 2017

‘You have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out’: Trump targets the Navy’s new aircraft catapult

Featuring Jerry Hendrix

Source: The Washington Post

Journalist Dan Lamothe

President Trump set his sights on the Navy in a new interview, calling the service’s new electromagnetic catapult to launch planes off aircraft carriers “no good” and saying that the Navy needs to go back to “goddamned steam,” the method used for decades.

The comments, published Thursday by Time magazine, came during an interview Monday evening at the White House. Trump recounted a conversation he had March 2 while visiting the yet-to-be-commissioned aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford in Newport News, Va., and said that he was told the catapult on it does not have enough power.

“It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out,” Trump said, according to Time.

Read the full article at The Washington Post.

Authors

  • Jerry Hendrix

    Former Senior Fellow and Director, Defense Program

    Jerry Hendrix was the Senior Fellow and the Director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security. A retired Captain in the United States Navy, his staff ...