A few days before Christmas 2025, Donald Trump hosted an event that appeared to make him quite happy. At a presentation held at Mar-a-Lago, the president was joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to announce the creation of the next generation of U.S. battleships.

It was notable in its own right, but the details made the news even more striking: The president who fixates on applying gold to as many things as possible announced that the battleships would be part of a “Golden Fleet.” In case that weren’t quite enough, he also agreed to name the new class of warships after himself. The military, he declared, was going to build “Trump-class” battleships.

The focus on gilded self-aggrandizement was only part of the problem. Mark Montgomery, a former rear admiral who is senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Wall Street Journal that the “Golden Fleet” plan is “exactly what we don’t need.”

Montgomery said the new frigate has “zero tactical use” and that officials appear to be “focused on the president’s visual that a battleship is a cool-looking ship.”

Historian Mike Lofgren soon after wrote a piece for The Washington Monthly that described the Trump-class battleships as a “ruinously expensive” idea that would weaken the U.S. Navy.

This week, an analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office made matters quite a bit worse. The New York Times reported:

A new class of warships that President Trump says will anchor a “golden fleet” for the Navy is expected to cost at least 50 percent more than estimated earlier, according to a government report released on Wednesday.

The first planned Trump-class battleship, the U.S.S. Defiant, is likely to cost $23.4 billion, $8 billion more than the Navy initially indicated. The cost of each of the 14 additional vessels is expected to jump to slightly more than $18 billion from $10.2 billion, for a total cost of $275 billion for 15 ships.

The CBO report was initiated by Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, who noted that the administration ultimately aims to build 25 Trump-class battleships — which would push the cost to nearly a half-trillion dollars.

“At a time when families are struggling to afford groceries, gas, health care, and child care, Congress cannot throw hundreds of billions of dollars at Trump’s ‘Golden Fleet,’ including plastering his name across a new battleship,” the senator said in a statement.

The Oregon Democrat added, “While we continue to see too many Pentagon programs burdened by cost overruns, delays, and unrealistic promises that fail to meet reality, Congress cannot afford to commit to another massive military boondoggle that will only succeed in filling the coffers of the military-industrial complex. I will work with my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee to reject moving forward with this wasteful project, and instead invest in programs that help families thrive.”

The administration hasn’t yet commented on the CBO’s findings, though the controversy and the questions from Capitol Hill are unlikely to go away anytime soon.

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