John Phelan, a businessman with no prior experience in the military or defense policy whom President Donald Trump tapped to be Navy secretary, said Thursday he will lean on his business experience to fulfill Trump's priority of "shipbuilding, shipbuilding, shipbuilding."
Speaking at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Phelan made clear that Trump has an outsized interest in the Navy, saying at least three separate times that the president has already contacted him late at night to complain about rusty ships even though he is not secretary yet.
"Please don't give that to President Trump because I'll get a text at like 1 a.m. in the morning," Phelan said after Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., displayed a poster of a rusty guided missile destroyer.
Read Next: Military Spouses Fired in Trump's Government Purge Seek Answers, Reinstatement
"It's terrible. I think they should be ashamed. Would you want to go on that ship?" Phelan added about his own reaction to the rust.
Unlike other hearings for Pentagon nominees in the Trump administration, Thursday's hearing was mostly fireworks-free and focused on core service issues, suggesting Phelan will sail to confirmation.
Still, a couple of Democrats pressed Phelan to account for controversial actions by the Trump administration, including the recent firing of Adm. Lisa Franchetti as chief of naval operations, a planned mass firing of 5,400 civilian Pentagon employees, and reported plans to slash the defense budget by 8% each year for the next five years.
Phelan largely demurred on those issues, arguing he is not privy to decision-making yet since he hasn't been confirmed. But he agreed with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., in general that the military should not be politicized.
"I don't believe politicization should be in the military, and I don't believe those actions were politicization, but I don't know," Phelan said. "Again, I wasn't part of them, and I have not had any discussions around them."
If confirmed, Phelan would be the top civilian in charge of both the Navy and Marine Corps, with responsibility for the health and well-being of more than 1 million sailors, Marines, reservists and civilian personnel and managing an annual budget of more than $250 billion.
Phelan's professional background is as an investment banker. He currently serves as chairman of Rugger Management LLC, an investment firm he founded, and he was previously the co-founder and managing partner of MSD Capital, the private investment firm for Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Technologies.
Phelan was a major donor to Trump and Republicans in the 2024 elections. Among other political donations, he contributed $834,600 to Trump's joint fundraising committee in April, and days after the election, on Nov. 10, chipped in another $93,300, Federal Election Commission records show.
His only nexus with military policy has been sitting on the board of a nonprofit organization called Spirit of America, which, according to its website, has "an agreement with the Department of Defense that allows U.S. troops to collaborate with us to build goodwill and deliver assistance at scale."
From the outset of the hearing Thursday, Phelan sought to reassure any senators who may be wary of his lack of experience.
"I understand why some may question why a businessman who did not wear the uniform should lead the Navy," he said in his opening statement. "I respect that concern. The Navy and the Marine Corps already possess extraordinary operational expertise within their ranks. My role is to utilize that expertise and strengthen it, to step outside the status quo and take decisive action with a results-oriented approach."
But, rather than see his inexperience as a liability, senators in both parties expressed optimism that bringing in an outsider could help turn around problems the Navy has faced for years, such as shipbuilding programs that run years over schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
"You're a nontraditional appointee for this position, and that can be OK if the tradition is not working," Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told Phelan after highlighting a government watchdog report released the same morning of the hearing that was highly critical of the Navy's shipbuilding and repair efforts. "I think the punch line in this report is the tradition isn't working."
