The White House ballroom. The Triumphal Arch. The relined Reflecting Pool. The new 747.

Together, they cost a small fraction of just one of the “Golden Fleet” of battleships that President Trump has ordered in a multibillion-dollar scandal that gets less notice than the gilded cherubs in the Oval Office. Their name: The Trump Class.

The first Trump-Class battleship is expected to cost $17.5 billion, with the next two coming in at $14.5 billion each, a total of $36.5 billion for three. A Naval warship expert describes them as hugely expensive, easily targeted behemoths that drain funding for small, more effective alternatives that the U.S. Navy actually needs.

But Trump likes them. And he wants more.

“So now we’re building 10 of them, initial order, 10,” he said when he announced his plans for the Golden Fleet at a media event at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Dec. 22 last year. That number would take the check to about $150 billion.

At 35,000 tons, the Trump-class battleships will be considerably lighter than such iconic World War II counterparts as the USS Iowa, which is decommissioned and now serves as a 60,000-ton floating museum. The crew is also smaller, with around 800 for the Trump class, compared to in excess of 1,800 for the Iowa.

But at 880 feet, the Trump-class will nearly match the Iowa’s 887 feet. The Golden Fleet, which Trump says he had a hand in designing, appears to grow less out of actual military necessity than from his fascination with big battleships dating back to a World War II docuseries he watched as a child.

“Has anyone seen Victory at Sea?” he asked the press.

The 26-episode docuseries chronicling America’s naval warfare with Nazi Germany and Japan first aired in 1952, when Trump was 8 years old.

“You ever hear of battleships, you know, World War II?” he said. “You saw those big ships, the Iowa, the Alabama, the Missouri…sailing through that water like........

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