At the NRCC dinner Tuesday, Trump lamented problems with the USS Gerald R. Ford's electromagnetic launch system.
"The great aircraft carrier, the Gerald Ford," the president said, "It's getting close. The largest ship ever built, they say. It's a massive ship."
"But they're having trouble with the catapult system. It used to be steam. They've decided to go magnetic. Never been done before. And electronic. So it's very complex."
"You have to go to MIT to figure out how this damn thing works," Trump added, saying he learned of the problems with the catapult-launch system during a visit to the Ford.
"We have an aircraft carrier you can't send planes off the damn thing. Historically, that has not proven to be a good thing for aircraft carriers," he said, "It's $900 million over budget to throw the planes off, and we could have had steam, and it would have been done, and we would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars."