Trump uses Thanksgiving call to Navy officer to voice a weird grudge about aircraft carriers

Alex Lockie 56m

• President Donald Trump returned to one of his more bizarre concerns about the US military on a call with US service members overseas on Thanksgiving Day.
• Trump quizzed a US Navy officer on the phone about whether he thought the new plane-launching mechanism the Navy was set to include on aircraft carriers was any good.
• Trump said the officer's answer satisfied him, but Trump has a long and weird history of hating on this one type of launching mechanism.

President Donald Trump returned to one of his more bizarre concerns about the US military on a call with US service members overseas on Thanksgiving Day.

Talking to a US Navy officer on the phone from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump asked about a pet peeve of his: the catapults aircraft carriers use to launch aircraft.

US aircraft carriers have only a short distance to launch heavy bomb- and fuel-laden planes, so they hook the planes up to a system called a catapult that accelerates them to more than 150 mph to get them airborne from the ship's deck.

The US is working on a new aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, and, like with any new ship, has been struggling to field all the new systems. A chief problem for the Ford has been getting the electromagnetic catapults to work.

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