Trump's Navy secretary nominee said the President texts him in the middle of the night about rusty warships.Phelan said Trump sends him pictures of worn ships asking him what he's going to do about it.During his first term, the President was said to be very focused on the look of warships.President Donald Trump's pick for US Navy secretary said multiple times on Thursday that he receives late-night texts from the President about rusty warships."I jokingly say that President Trump has texted me numerous times very late at night sometimes after one in the morning," John Phelan, a businessman tapped to lead the Navy, told lawmakers during his Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing.He said that the president's late-night messages are about "rusty ships or ships in a yard, asking me, what am I doing about it?" Phelan added that he's told him, "I'm not confirmed yet and have not been able to do anything about it, but I will be very focused on it."Later in the hearing, Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, showed Phelan a recent picture of the destroyer USS Dewey covered in rust and asked him how he felt about it.He responded: "Please don't give it to President Trump because I'll get a text at like, one in the morning." He added he thought the rusty warship looked terrible and suggested that the Navy "should be ashamed."And that wasn't the last mention of it. Toward the end of the hearing, he noted Trump's urgency in addressing problems in the Navy. He said that "the president did text me, I think it was 1:18 in the morning, of like three Rusty ships in a yard and said what are you doing about this." USS Dewey earlier this month. SONNY TUMBELAKA / AFP The brown streaks of rust sometimes seen on Navy vessels are a sign of corrosion. It is a constant battle for Navy warships and their crews, and that fight is sometimes lost amid high operational tempos or maintenance delays, among other challenges.The questions to Phelan were part of the committee's concerns about how the nominee plans to address the US Navy's shipbuilding and maintenance issues, which include critical industrial base problems and severely delayed projects, such as the Pentagon's priority submarines.Phelan said one of his top priorities is to fix this shipbuilding issue, which is aligned with Trump's focus as well.The White House did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment on the texts Phelan mentioned. The texts would be on brand for the president, who took a keen interest in the look of Navy warships in his first term.In particular, he zeroed in on the new frigates and Ford-class carriers, calling some of the ship designs "terrible-looking" and "horrible."The president's former defense secretary, Mark Esper, wrote previously that Trump would gripe about the first-in-class aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, saying that the island "looks really bad." He also said Trump said US warships were "ugly" compared to Russian vessels.In June 2020 near the end of his first term, Trump jokingly took credit for the look of the first of the Navy's guided missile frigate vessels."The ships that they were building, they look terrible," the president said, adding that when he looked at the design, he said, "That's a terrible-looking ship, let's make it beautiful." He said he eventually received a "beautiful model" of the frigate that he called "like a yacht with missiles on it."Beyond the appearance of warships, Trump has also complained about ship engineering, most recently criticizing advanced systems on the Ford.