“It should help stimulate Pattaya’s economy in the short term."
Page A4From§Eachthe midnight edition — 2 September 2026
Trump nominates a Navy secretary as Thai resort scrambles to shut down prostitution before the fleet's visit.
As it ran on the front
Let's be clear about what's happening here, because the framing in certain outlets has gotten completely out of hand. The President nominated Hung Cao as permanent Secretary of the Navy. That's a personnel decision. A qualified, vetted, permanent Secretary of the Navy, appointed through the normal process, and there is nothing — nothing — unusual about that happening the same week a resort town in Thailand is running a prostitution crackdown ahead of a U.S. warship's visit. These are two completely separate stories that happen to be near each other on a wire feed. That's not a pattern. That's a Tuesday.
And look, port calls happen. They've happened for eighty years. Sailors get liberty, local businesses adjust, host governments do what host governments do to manage the visit, and none of that is Navy policy, none of that is Pentagon guidance, none of that is anything anybody in Washington is even aware of, let alone — okay, I should say, the Navy is obviously aware port calls happen. I'm not saying leadership doesn't know sailors get liberty. That would be insane. I just mean nobody's issuing a directive that says go create demand for a crackdown. Did I say demand? I meant — there's no directive. Let's move on.…
…(cont) The point is, a Secretary of the Navy nomination is about strategy. Fleet readiness. Indo-Pacific posture. It is not about, and should never be conflated with, whatever a resort chamber of commerce three time zones away decides to do with its local vice enforcement the week a ship happens to be inbound. If anything, you should be reassured that the host country takes this seriously enough to crack down at all. That's diplomacy working. That's — actually, maybe I wouldn't lead with 'reassured.' Strike that.
Here's what I'll say on the record: military leadership transitions are serious, deliberate, apolitical events, and pairing one with a story about a prostitution crackdown timed to a ship's arrival is exactly the kind of cheap juxtaposition that gives readers the wrong impression. The wrong impression being that there's a connection. Which — there isn't. There's a connection in the sense that both involve the same fleet. But not a connection connection. I'm going to stop talking now.
“Every time the fleet rolls into port, the host country cracks down on the sex trade for the weekend so the cameras don't catch what everybody already knows happens on liberty. Meanwhile back home we're swearing in a new Navy secretary like it's all polish and ceremony. Same institution, same week, two very different kinds of cleanup.”
“This is a routine port call, standard host-nation courtesy, nothing that reflects on Navy leadership whatsoever. The secretary nomination and the — hold on, why are these in the same story? These are two completely unrelated readiness postures, let's just call them unrelated.”
The receipts
President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated Hung Cao to permanently take on the role of Navy secretary after holding the position in an acting capacity since April. “We need Patriots like Hung leading our Navy and Marine Corps, and I can think of no one better than him to make sure our Great Navy and […]
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.