Trump takes his new Air Force One out of service, giving away the game
About a month ago, Donald Trump held an odd event at Joint Base Andrews to celebrate the unveiling of the latest Air Force One, a luxury jet he received from Qatar. “A normal president wouldn’t do this,” the president said at the gathering.
It was an easy observation to agree with: A normal president most certainly would not have accepted a luxury jet from Qatar — a Middle Eastern country that Trump used to accuse of supporting terrorism — that he apparently intends to “donate” to his presidential library after leaving the White House. (Since receiving the plane, the president and his administration have cozied up to Qatar to a remarkable degree, even unilaterally extending a NATO-like security guarantee to the nation.)
A normal president also wouldn’t feel the need to take his new Air Force One out of service, at least temporarily, because it lacks necessary features. The New York Times reported:
President Trump said on Sunday that the Boeing luxury jet donated by Qatar that he recently took overseas would soon be “maxed out,” suggesting it could get additional defensive capabilities to match the standards of the older jets used for presidential travel.
During a brief Q&A with reporters, the Republican was asked why he was flying on Air Force One if it lacks antimissile defense systems. He replied, “Well, it has — it has a lot, and you know it has a lot of capability, but as I understand it, in about a month or so, they’re going to send it to have it be maxed out. So they’re going to be sending it, and they’ll have it be maxed out. It’ll take about a month.”
It remains unclear precisely what mnight be involved in “maxing out” the jet, or how much this will cost, or whether it will take more than a month to complete the work.
“Nonetheless,” the Times report added, “it appeared to be an admission from the president that the plane’s security measures are not as extensive as the models that have been designed to be built from the ground up to serve as Air Force One.”
It’s not the only embarrassment to emerge in connection with the Qatari gift in recent weeks. Roughly two weeks ago, Trump took the new plane to Turkey for a NATO summit, but chose not to fly home on it. The president claimed by way of social media that he was taking the older Air Force One “for old times’ sake” and denied that the switch was made due to security concerns.
It quickly became apparent that he was not telling the truth. MS NOW reported that Trump swapped out the Qatari-gifted Air Force One for his flight from the NATO summit to the United Kingdom “over concerns that the gifted aircraft lacks the secure communications systems and military defenses needed to safely manage a rapidly escalating conflict with Iran.”
The Times published a related report, which sparked a furious White House leak investigation, despite the newspaper highlighting the fact that the plane’s deficiencies were visible to the naked eye.
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Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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