Hide-the-Ship

The White House’s directive to hide a Navy destroyer named John S. McCain during President Trump’s recent visit to a naval base in Japan was driven, administration officials said on Thursday, by a fear of bad visuals — the name of the president’s nemesis clearly visible in photographs of him.

In truth, it would have been a bad visual for only one person: Mr. Trump.

Yet an effort to "hide" an American warship by covering its name with a giant tarp and then hiding it with a barge demonstrates how anxious the Trump administration has become about the grudges of the president. It also shows the extraordinary lengths officials in the bureaucracy are willing to go to avoid provoking Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump insisted he knew nothing about the hide-the-ship scheme, but called it a “well meaning” gesture.

The email instructing the Navy to obscure the ship, the John S. McCain, came from the White House military operations office, after consultation with a White House advance team working in Japan, according to an administration official. The Navy initially complied with the order by hanging a tarp over the ship’s name. But higher-level officers got wind of the plan and ordered the tarp removed and the barge moved before Mr. Trump arrived.

The ship is named after the late Senator McCain's grandfather, John S. McCain Sr., a Navy admiral during World War II, and his father, John S. McCain Jr., an admiral in the Vietnam War era.

Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, and now a declared Democratic presidential candidate, said: “This is not a show. Our military is not a prop. Ships and sailors are not to be toyed with for the benefit of a fragile president’s ego.”