July 4, 2021 - President Trump will add two new Gerald Ford Class nuclear aircraft carriers to the Chesapeake Bay Fleet, the premier eastern Navy group which replaced the Atlantic Fleet. CINCLantFleet, the Atlantic Fleet, was mothballed after the demise of NATO in 2019. The Chesapeake Bay fleet, in Navy parlance, CINCPeakeFleet, has 5 nuclear carriers and 165 other warships which patrol the Chesapeake Bay between Virginia and Maryland. Occasional operations in the Atlantic seaboard are carried out in conjunction, and with the approval, of the Russian Navy.  President Putin asked for that gesture, and said he considers use of the CINCPeakeFleet resources beyond 10 miles from the US shore to be a serious and unnecessary provocation. An annual Fleet regatta within that 10 miles occurs off the coast of Florida at the President's resort at Mar-a-Lago every year on June 14, the President's birthday.

Since President Trump exited NATO over disputes with budgets of EU nations, American warships have lost port facilities in France, Germany and Italy, support throughout the coasts of the EU nations has ended, and US ships have no port of call in the Mediterranean that can any longer service them.The President has called the Mediterranean Sea a "moochers lake",  and said only a strong presence within view of American soil and taxpayers is "worth it" and a win for the American people and the Navy.

President Trump, SOU speech this January:  "Every American now can see our magnificent fleet in action and in defense of our great nation from American soil in American, not foreign, waters."

President Trump hailed the new ships, CVN 81 Donald J. Trump I, and CVN 82 Donald J. Trump II, and said their operation within American waters will also save fuel expenses as the ships often operate with minimal speed in the congested waters of Chesapeake Bay.

(The sarcastic rationale... )

 Josh at TPM on the illogic of Donald Trump's military budget increases, and threats to NATO:

... We’re actually at the beginning of a new military buildup (coming after another in the first years of the century.) As military policy analysts point out, those numbers only make sense if you’re planning on continuing, permanent deployments of big navies and armies East Asia and Europe basically forever. President Trump is apparently griping that the 30k+ US deployment in Germany costs too much. He wants to considering withdrawing them. But the US doesn’t actually have bases for them in the US and, again, the spending numbers Trump’s demanding assume those troop deployment numbers and that spending – along with the US’s other big permanent deployments in South Korea and Japan.... The more obvious conclusion is that, for whatever reasons, President Trump is hostile to the very concept of our primary alliances in Europe and Northeast Asia, in which we do pay substantial sums to be the guarantor of security in those regions. He simply hasn’t reconciled that with his braggadocious clamoring for higher military spending which, whether he knows it or not, assume those continuing commitments.