Trump’s Navy Rave: Fighter Jets, Stair Jokes, and Lots of Unpaid Seamen

Nothing says “Commander in Chief” like showing up late to a military party you can’t afford. Patrick Gutfield dives into Trump’s wild Norfolk Navy spectacle — complete with unpaid sailors, a fighter jet branded “Trump 45–47,” and a 45-minute speech about stairs. Oh, and the First Lady napped through it. America’s back, baby.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Callaroga Shark media from Washington, d C. Where you can
sail the seven Seas. This is vallot. Come out and
join your fellow man. Let's hit this. I'm Patrick Gutfield
and Trump spent Sunday surrounded by seamen as he gave
a speech to ten thousand Navy sailors on Sunday, sailors who,

(00:25):
by the way, aren't getting paid right now because of
the government shutdown. And he showed up forty five minutes late.
So these service members are standing in the sun, unpaid,
waiting for the President to arrive so he can tell
them about stairs. During his rambling remarks, the seventy nine
year old president made a truly wild prediction. He admitted

(00:45):
he will probably fall downstairs one day, which is not
typically something you announced to the troops as a morale booster.
He was talking about Joe Biden, because of course, he
was saying Biden had no clue what the hell was happening,
and that the chance of him walking down those stairs
successfully were not good. Then he just casually threw in

(01:05):
and I have to be careful because one day I'm
gonna probably fall. He then revealed his personal stairwalking mantra,
He says, he tells himself, walk down the steps nice
and slowly. You ever notice I don't have to bop
down the stairs, walk nice and slowly. And look, there's
context here. Trump was filmed in July stumbling on the

(01:27):
stairs to Air Force one. He's been diagnosed with chronic
venus insufficiency, a condition where blood pools in the legs
due to poor circulation. His cankles have been photographed. He's
got a recurring bruise on his right hand. But earlier,
in that same speech, Trump claimed that his former White
House physician, Ronnie Jackson, said he was the best physical

(01:48):
specimen of three presidents, better than Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
He told the crowd that Jackson was asked who's in
the best shape, who's the healthiest, who's the strongest, And
Jackson's pro posedly said that's easy. President Donald Trump. Couple
problems with that story. Jackson never publicly said that. Newsweek checked. Also,

(02:10):
Jackson is the same guy who got demoted in twenty
twenty two. Anyway, the Navy just threw Donald Trump the
world's most expensive make good party in Norfolk, Virginia. This
is after the Army's parade back in June, which was
supposed to celebrate both America's two hundred and fiftieth birthday
and Trump's seventy ninth, turned into what I can only
describe as a thirty million dollar disaster on wheels. The

(02:32):
June event was supposed to be this grand celebration, but
instead it got overshadowed by massive no King's protests across
the country. Millions of people showed up to those. Meanwhile,
footage of soldiers marching completely out of step went viral,
which when your military parade gets roasted on TikTok, that's
not great. And Milania was caught on camera literally napping

(02:52):
during the procession. The first lady fell asleep at a
military parade honoring her husband. That's like falling asleep at
your own wedding. So Trump was reportedly furious about the
whole thing. The Wall Street Journal said he wanted a
do over, specifically asking the Navy to give him a
shimmering spectacle with seacraft, which sounds less like a military

(03:14):
order and more like something you'd request for a gender
reveal party, and the Navy delivered on Sunday, despite the
government being shut down by the way. They gave Trump
his own private air show. They had a fighter jet
with President Donald J. Trump forty five forty seven printed
on the side. They put his name on a fighter jet.

(03:36):
That's not standard military protocol. That's a sweet sixteen party.
Trump and Milania stood on the deck while Navy destroyers
fired missiles into the Atlantic Ocean and seals dropped from
helicopters the whole nine yards. Trump told the crowd of
ten thousand sailors, I was just given a display with
the wonderful First Lady, the likes of which I think
few people have ever seen before. Then he launched into

(03:58):
a forty five minute speech. Again, government shutdown happening. But sure,
let's do a forty five minute victory lap. And here's
my favorite part. During the speech, Trump forgot the name
of his own book, the one where he claims he
predicted Osama bin Laden would be a problem. He actually
said in the book, I wrote, whatever the hell the title?
I can't tell you. Trump walked off the stage to

(04:21):
the Village People's YMCA. It's a shame the Village people
don't have a song that would have worked for people
in the Navy. The Federal Aviation Administration has a staffing crisis,
and the culprit is something you'd never guess, government shutdowns.
That's right. The reason your flight sat on the tarmac

(04:41):
for two hours at Newark isn't because the pilot forgot
where New Jersey was. It's because Congress keeps shutting down
the government like a teenager rage quitting a video game.
The FAA doesn't have enough air traffic controllers to control
the nation's air traffic, which seems like a pretty fundamental problem.
Airlines have been forced to delay, reschedule, or cancel thousands

(05:02):
of flights. If you've been stuck in an airport recently
wondering what went wrong, here's your answer. Repeated budget fights
and shutdowns over the last fifteen years have prevented the
agency from hiring and training enough controllers. Here's the thing
about training air traffic controllers. It takes years. You can't
just pull someone off the street and say here's a

(05:23):
radar screen, try not to crash any planes. There are
limits on how many can be trained at one time.
When funding gets disrupted, the pipeline doesn't get fed, and
the agency falls behind, then you end up stuck in
Cleveland when you were supposed to be in Miami. Even
with fewer flights, the FAA is stretched to its limits.

(05:46):
The agency increasingly relies on mandatory overtime shifts and six
day work weeks to cover staffing shortages. The overtime budget
has increased by three hundred percent since twenty thirteen. So
not only do we not have enough air traffic controllers,
the ones we do have are exhausted and overworked, which
seems like exactly the situation you want when people are

(06:09):
guiding metal tubes full of passengers through the sky at
six hundred miles per hour. And here's the fun part.
The FAA relies on outdated technology that it struggled to
upgrade or replace. Other countries use more modern systems to
guide larger numbers of airplanes safely through crowded airspace, but
in America, we're doing it the old fashioned way, with

(06:31):
too few people working too many hours using technology from
the Bush administration the first Bush administration. Government shutdowns are
brief because Americans quickly remember that the government does important things.
But the end of a shutdown doesn't mean everything springs
back to normal. Some damage endures, and in the case

(06:53):
of the FAA. That damage means your flight is delayed, canceled,
or circling above Newark for two hours while an overworked
air traffic controller running on six hours of sleep tries
to find you a place to land. So the next
time Congress threatens another shutdown, remember they're not just shutting
down the government for a few days. They're shutting down
training programs, research projects, and critical hiring pipelines that take

(07:17):
years to recover. Portions of today's program were made with
the help of the village people and AI