What’s with Trump’s war against the US Navy?

August is traditionally silly season for news stories, and President Trump does not disappoint. So far, he has insisted that the Navy go back to using steam , decreed that the Strait of Hormuz will be a U.S. territory , and demanded that new aircraft carriers be redesigned to make them look “better.”

The Hormuz thing is just weird. For one thing, for a country to own a territory, it must permanently physically occupy and control it. You can’t occupy a body of water, and certainly not permanently. Trump’s blockade — which doesn’t actually control the strait — is no help. Eventually, the Fifth Fleet, like the USS Abraham Lincoln , is going to have to sail away, whereas Iran is physically right there and not going anywhere.

More fundamentally, you cannot win a conflict by simply declaring victory. Trump started the Iran war without thinking through the consequences and has painted himself into a corner. That he is “claiming” the Strait of Hormuz rather than wrestling with the very serious problems we now face is a real concern. Perhaps he will next order the U.S. Navy to gather seashells , a la Caligula.

Trump’s fixation on steam catapults for aircraft carriers goes back to his first term. He has now decreed that the new electromagnetic catapults already in use are “ no good ” and that new carriers should go back to steam. It is not entirely clear where all this is coming from, but it is possible that Trump’s analysis is based on the opening scene of “Top Gun.”

It certainly isn’t based on any sort of expertise. In the words of Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), I’ve launched off the front of aircraft carriers hundreds of times, have a Master’s degree in aeronautical engineering, and am a test pilot and even I wouldn’t suggest to the Navy how to engineer specific systems on its ships.” Trump, in contrast, appears to think magnets stop working if they get wet.

If there were a prize for this sort of thing, it would probably go to Trump’s foray into naval architecture. New aircraft carriers have a tower in the back of the ship rather than in the middle like they did in World War 2. The new design allows more planes to take off and land in an hour, making the carrier that much more deadly and effective. But Trump thinks the new design doesn’t look nice, so he is ordering that the tower be moved so that the new carriers look more like they did 80 years ago.

As weird as all this is, none of it is the slightest bit amusing. It is simply further evidence that Trump may be struggling with dementia and that his ability to make rational decisions is decaying by the day .

Worse, these bad decisions are having real consequences, on real people. His efforts to unilaterally redesign American warships just to suit his aesthetic preferences will not only cause delays and cost billions of dollars , it will make those ships less effective when they finally are built. Truly, it’s unforgivable is that the men and women in the U.S. Navy are now suffering because of the foolishness of their commander in chief.

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln has been deployed for nine months and at sea for more than 200 days, the longest stretch at sea in modern history . The long and unplanned deployment — a direct result of Trump’s poorly conceived war with Iran — has left the ship in terrible condition. There were already food shortages back in April and conditions have only gotten worse . Trump’s response is to call these reports “fake news” and claim that the USS Abraham Lincoln had not really been at sea all that long.

Love him or hate him, you can just imagine what the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — a real-life war hero — would have had to say about all this. Sadly, backbone and defiance have long been bred out of the current crop of congressional Republicans, so their thunderous silence comes as no surprise. Not only are they not holding the Trump administration to account, some of them are actively defending it. Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas), for example, said he didn’t “make much” of the reports about conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Feeding sailors and designing aircraft carriers are not partisan issues. In fact, they are not issues at all — just things that must be properly done. Taking a stand on these things is not asking for much, but apparently it is too much to ask of Republicans. We may have come to expect this kind of cowardice, but we should not accept it.

Chris Truax is an appellate attorney who served as Southern California chair for John McCain’s primary campaign in 2008.