Donald J. Trump

Mr. President, your directive is clear, peace through strength, and we are executing it.

With your one big, beautiful bill and your executive order on restoring America's maritime dominance, you've armed us with the authorities, resources, and urgency to modernize the fleet, expand our shipyards, rebuild the skilled workforce, deepen our magazines, and harden the infrastructure that wins wars at sea.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, the Continental Congress made a bold bet.

Who controls the seas controls the future.

This was the birth of our Navy, a testament to our historic significance.

The Constitution states Congress shall have the power to provide and maintain a Navy.

The word maintain means the Navy is intended to be a permanent, continuous institution of national defense and warfare.

The founders understood the importance of having a Navy.

George Washington, in a letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, wrote, as certain as night succeeds the day, without a decisive naval force, we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious.

Today, 250 years later, history has proven that to be a superpower, one must be a sea power.

Mr. President, your mandate ensures that when the world looks to the seas, it sees an American flag.

And behind that flag stands a team that is disciplined, lethal, and dominant.

Today we showed the world what American sea power means.

Deadly precision, meticulous execution, raw power, and the will to use it.

Secretary Hegseth, we are restoring the warrior ethos to this Department of the Navy, not by slogan, but by performance.

The Truman right here beside me sustained more than 50 days of Tomahawk launches and precision airstrikes to degrade Iran-backed Houthi capabilities and protect commercial shipping during Operation Rough Rider.

There are many, many missions that we are operating and executing on very well, including choking off cartel cash flows.

Between Operation Atlantic and Pacific Watch, we've seized over 450 metric tons of cocaine worth more than $11 billion.

These seizures represent lives saved.

All these operations show us our fleet is ready to answer the nation's call 24-7, 365.