,
7 tweets,
3 min read
Read on Twitter
THREAD: Over in China, Elaine Chao's family has contracts to build half a dozen giant ships at a Chinese government owned shipyard in Shanghai. Here is one of those ship. So how about in USA, where Elaine Chao is head of United States Depart of Transportation? Let's take a look 
Well, during the Obama administration, the DOT started a process of figuring out how to replace five EXTREMELY old ships used to train men and women who will serve on US flagged ships that service ports nationwide. They came up with a bold plan.
This new fleet of state of the art ships--dubbed the National Security Multi-Mission Vessel--were going to help train generations of new graduates from the US maritime academies.
So what happens at Depart of Transportation after Elaine Chao takes over to the plan to build this new fleet of ships for generations of new maritime graduates? Trump administration moves to kill the plan. And buy used ships for the maritime academies nationwide. This from 2018
Folks over at Capitol Hill were not happy. Why would "Make America Great Again" administration buy "RUSTY BUCKETS" for its federally funded maritime academies?
DOT officials tell us that Sec. Elaine Chao has not been supportive of plans in 2018 to cut back spending on new ships for the maritime academies. Nor was she supportive, we were told, of the plan to cut costs and shrink the ships, which again drew bipartisan criticism.
But this all seemed relevant to us, as reporters, as we examined the fact that this one family--the Chao family--plays a central role in two of the biggest maritime programs in the world, in China and the US. DOT runs MARAD.
