The President's Daily Brief - PDB Afternoon Bulletin | November 26th, 2025: Saudi Pushback Stunned Trump In White House Meeting & U.S. Scraps Key Warship Plan

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

In this episode of The President's Daily Brief: New reporting reveals President Trump’s meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was far more heated behind closed doors than either side admitted publicly. We’ll break down what happened and why it matters. Plus, the U.S. Navy has scrapped its Constellation-class frigate program, a major setback in America’s effort to keep up with China’s rapidly expanding naval fleet. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting https://PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Masa Chips: Ready to give MASA or Vandy a try? Get 25% off your first order by going to http://masachips.com/PDBand using code PDB. Lean: Visit https://BrickhouseSale.com for 30% off Birch Gold: Text PDB to 989898 and get your free info kit on gold Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Navy just scrapped its Constellation-class frigate program, dealing a blow to America's efforts to keep pace with China's fast-growing fleet. But first, today's afternoon spotlight. We're starting today with new reporting that cuts sharply against the public picture painted just days ago by the White House and Saudi leadership. On the surface, the visit by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman looked like it went well. There were wide smiles and warm handshakes and official redouts insisting that the meeting went, quote, very well. But behind closed doors, things apparently took a very different turn.

According to U.S. officials who spoke with Axios, the private conversation between President Trump and MBS grew tense, heated even, over one issue, the push for formal Saudi normalization with Israel. And the intensity of that exchange reveals just how difficult the path forward may actually be, despite the White House's optimistic framing. According to reports, President Trump entered that meeting determined to secure movement on normalization. He believes the ceasefire, fragile as it may be, in Gaza creates a window to reshape the region. and revive what he considers unfinished business from his previous term. From the Trump administration's perspective, this is the moment.

Iran's influence appears diminished. Hamas has lost significant capability, and Washington thinks regional diplomacy could deliver a historic breakthrough. But the Saudis, well, they apparently see the moment very differently. Multiple U.S. officials say that when Trump rest MBS to commit quickly to establishing diplomatic ties with Israel, the Crown Prince pushed back. hard. Not politely, not diplomatically, but directly in a way that reportedly surprised and irritated the president. MBS told Trump that Saudi Arabia cannot move toward normalization right now.

The war in Gaza, he argued, left the Saudi public deeply opposed to the idea of embracing Israel at this moment, and he wasn't speaking abstractly. Public sentiment in the kingdom has shifted sharply over the course of the conflict, and the Crown Prince is keenly aware of that political reality. But it wasn't just public opinion driving his resistance. MBS made something else clear. Saudi Arabia will not sign any agreement with Israel unless there is a, quote, credible, irreversible, and time-bound path toward a Palestinian state. And that point, well, that point is the real fault line here. Because a demand for a Palestinian state, on a defined timeline, is something the current Israeli government has rejected outright. In fact, Israeli leaders have spent the past several

months saying the opposite, that statehood is off the table permanently. That puts Trump in a, well, let's call it a difficult spot. He wants the deal, and while MBS might be willing to consider the deal, the key condition directly conflicts with Israel's red lines. Inside the room, when Saudi Arabia laid out those requirements, U.S. officials say the tone shifted. The meeting grew tense. One source called it a, quote, showdown. Another said Trump left, quote, disappointed and irritated. And yet none of that friction appeared in the public messaging, where both sides insisted the visit was cordial and productive. This matters for a few reasons, and they all point in the same direction. The first takeaway is that the idea of a near-term Saudi-Israeli breakthrough no longer matches

reality. If anything, the meeting showed the opposite. Riyadh is signaling caution, not momentum, and the political ground inside the kingdom isn't ready for a public embrace of Israel. Another takeaway is the disconnect between how Washington sees the moment and how Saudi Arabia sees it. The U.S. believes that the Gaza ceasefire created an opening that should be exploited now, but from the Saudi perspective, the war hardened public opinion and narrowed the political space for bold diplomatic moves. What looks like a strategic opportunity to one side looks like a risk to the other. And there's a deeper tension sitting beneath all of this. Saudi Arabia's insistence on a credible, irreversible time-bound path to Palestinian statehood

puts Riyadh and Jerusalem on opposite sides of an unmovable line. Israel's government has made it clear it won't accept that condition, and the Saudis are making equally clear they won't move without it. That collision creates a structural barrier, of course, that no amount of pressure or optimism can wish away. All of that adds up to a simple reality. The White House's vision of a fast-track normalization deal is running straight into the limits of regional politics, domestic pressure, and red lines. All right. Coming up next, the Navy has pulled the plug on its next generation frigates, leaving a major gap in Washington's plan to match China at sea.

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This week, Navy's secretary John Fieland, scrapped the Constellation Class frigate program, a ship once built as the quick, low-risk way. to bulk up America's fleet amid Beijing's rapid naval expansion. After months of overruns, redesign changes and slipping deadlines, Phelan reached the point where the math simply didn't justify the program anymore. Inside the Pentagon, officials watched the frigate drift further from its off-the-shelf origins and closer to a Frankenstein project, heavier, slower, and nowhere near battle-ready. By the time the latest cost estimates came in, the conclusion was obvious. This was not,

not the ship that was supposed to help close the gap with China. Phelan said so himself when he posted on X, warning that he wouldn't, quote, spend a dollar on anything that failed to strengthen America's ability to win. That set the tone for what came next. The Navy will let the two hulls already under construction move forward, but the final four of the ones that hadn't even been laid down while they're being wiped off the slate.

To Phelan, it was better to cut cleanly now than drag a failing program deeper into the decade, well, I can't see any fault with that. He framed the cancellation as part of a broader course correction, saying the Navy is, quote, reshaping how we build and field the fleet, beginning with a strategic shift away from the Constellation Class frigate program, end quote. It was a sharp pivot for a project that began as a 20-ship $1 billion per hull effort based on Italy's frame design to model that the U.S. Navy touted initially as low risk,

precisely because it was already sailing with European navies. But that pitch didn't survive contact with reality. A blistering government accountability office or GAO report released in March found that the Navy ordered so many modifications to meet American security standards that the ship no longer resembled the template that it was modeled on. Five years after the contract was awarded, the program was just 70% complete and already three years behind schedule, seriously, slipping from its original 26 delivery target to 2020.

weight growth was so severe that the Navy even considered downgrading the frigate's speed. The GAO's conclusion pulled no punches. The vessel, quote, now bears little resemblance to the parent design that the Navy once advertised as a built-in shortcut. Now, I'd like to point out that the U.S. hasn't had a frigate in service since the USS Simpson was retired back in 2015, leaving a gap between the Navy's heavyweight Arleigh Burke destroyers and its littoral combat ships. China, meanwhile, is surging ahead. Beijing is expected to field around 400 naval hulls by year's end, including roughly 50 frigates. That's a pace that has pushed the U.S. fleet at around 240 ships and submarines into a numerical disadvantage that Washington can no longer ignore. Feelein has been

candid about the scale of the Navy's shipbuilding problems. Testifying before Congress last summer, he said, quote, all of our programs are a mess. Well, that's not mincing work. noting that even the service's best-performing program was, quote, six months late and get this, 57% over budget. For now, Phelan's choice is to cut losses and move on. Washington has begun sending maintenance work to South Korea and Japan. Foreign shipbuilders even signaled that they could build American warships outright. I'll bet they'd be keen to do that, but Congress would have to rewrite the laws in order to allow that sort of outsourcing. We'll keep an eye on this important issue, And out of curiosity, I'll ask our ace team of PDB researchers to investigate when was the last time the U.S. had a major military program that came in on time and on budget.

I'll get back to you with that. And that, my friends, is the PDB afternoon bulletin for Wednesday, the 26th of November. Now, if you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at pdb at thefirsttv.com. And to listen to the show ad free, well, you can become a premium member of the president's daily brief. simple, just visit bdbpremium.com. I'm Mike Baker, and I'll be back tomorrow. Until then, stay informed. Stay safe. Stay cool. Hey, Mike Baker here. Well, it is that time of year again, and you say to yourself, huh, Mike, what time of year are you referring to? I'll tell you, it's the one time of year that Birch Gold Group gives away free gold with every qualifying purchase.

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