Big Boy President's Big Boy Bribe Plane Goes VROOOM VROOOM For First Time
Deplane! Deplane!
Bestest boy Donald Trump’s $400 million Qatari bribe jet made its overseas debut this week, hauling the president and a rogue’s gallery of the rogue’s gallery that is his entire administration over to the annual NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. (Seriously, look at that flight manifest — a mischievous Air Force One steward could have had a lot of fun with some cans of soda and several boxes of Ex-Lax. Just sayin’.)
Whose hearts, even those that beat in the chests of the haters, could fail to fill with patriotic pride at the sight of this magnificent jet with its new red, navy blue, and gold livery soaring across the Atlantic, arriving at the summit in all its American majesty, announcing that the United States is still the classiest and most glorious of all nations?
And who could fail to snicker when Trump had to meekly leave the summit in one of the old Air Force One jumbo jets that he has decried as barely functional relics, because the new one doesn’t have all the necessary security features yet?
To answer the first question: Us, because Air Force One is a flying bribe scheme that was carrying our braying ass of a president, who embarrasses this nation every time he opens his mouth. We dread his overseas trips to meet with our allies like we used to dread eating vegetables when we were four.
And to answer the second question: Not us, because rolling out a new project before it is ready is such a common Trump move that backfires on him every time. Think of all the fuckups that fell flat and generated huge backlash due to rushed, shoddy workmanship and poor planning. All because President Baby was too impatient to do the job right: the Reflecting Pool, the Great American State Fair, the war with Iran, the ballroom, the parenting of his children ... the list is endless.
But Trump has been drooling over this jet ever since the Qataris offered it up in early 2025. Being Trump, he was impressed by the plane’s luxuriousness. Also being Trump, who is so personally cheap that he probably still has the first dollar he ever made screwed to the floor somewhere, he was impressed that it was free. Also also being Trump, his ego was doing somersaults over his belief that a bunch of grotesquely wealthy Middle Eastern sheikhs were gifting him a 747 because they just love and respect the United States so darn much now that he’s president again.
What might have impressed Trump the most was that as part of the deal to take the plane, he gets to take it with him when he leaves office, allegedly to be part of his presidential library. Which would seem to contradict his assertions that the plane was a gift to the people of the United States, not just him personally.
In the reality in which the rest of the world dwells, the Qataris had been trying to offload the plane for five years and had found no takers. The possibility that that might have been because it was the luxury jet version of a 1973 Ford Pinto, and that they might just be happy to have found a sucker who would take it off their hands, would not occur to Trump.
The obvious fact that the plane would need so much retrofitting to be as secure as the jets he uses now that it wouldn’t be available until almost the end of his presidency also would not have occurred to him. Or if it did, he wouldn’t care because his need to be ferried around in such a plane would outweigh any concerns for safety: DURRRRR LOOK AT MY COOL NEW JET EVERYONE BOW BEFORE THE CLASSIEST PLANE EVER NO ONE CAN BELIEVE HOW CLASSY IT IS DURRRRRRRRR.
Thus, he decided to roll out the jet by flying it to Turkey. Which shares a border with Iran. You know, the country with which we are currently at war. A country that he broke a very fragile ceasefire to bomb just this week while he was in the country next to it.
So for all the fanfare surrounding the maiden international flight of the new Air Force One, it is no surprise the Secret Service wouldn’t let Trump return on it. The plane has not yet been retrofitted with required security measures like missile defense systems and hardened wiring that protects its electrical systems against electromagnetic pulses caused by nuclear weapons detonating. The little things upon which the lives of a couple of hundred people rely every time Air Force One flies anywhere.
Being the Trump White House, they couldn’t admit that the big wet boy had complicated everyone’s lives again with his childishness. So they pretended the flight out was all a grand security plan, as Oddjob impersonator Steve Cheung claimed in a statement:
“As the president has said recently, there are many enemies of America who have their sights on him, and we use every tool at our disposal — including distraction and misdirection — to address those threats.”
It ... doesn’t seem like a great security precaution if you tell everyone exactly what you’re doing, but what do we know.
After the summit, both planes left Ankara on Wednesday and flew to an American airbase in England. Hilariously, Trump claimed he was taking the new Air Force One to the airbase because all the Air Force people stationed there are clamoring to get a look at it:
“We just landed and met up with our new Air Force One, which was sent earlier to RAF Mildenhall, so we could show the wonderful Servicemembers, as per the entire Base’s request,” the Republican president said on social media. “They were very excited.”
Oh sure, we bet this was the biggest thing to hit Mildenhall since Zsa Zsa Gabor’s last USO tour.
Once everyone in England got a good luck at the big new jet that they will never fly in, Trump boarded it for the flight home. Which means he took two separate Air Force Ones, which cost who knows how many taxpayer dollars per hour to operate, on a round trip to Turkey because he had to show one of them off like he’s ten and the plane is the latest offering from Hot Wheels.
On the other hand, we had all those taxpayer dollars just sitting around unused after massive cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. What else were we going to do with them?
Yes, yes, feed people and give them healthcare. It was a rhetorical question.
If we promise to not use the money to buy a luxury 747, would you donate to keep Wonkette alive forever?
"Also being Trump, who is so personally cheap that he probably still has the first dollar he ever made screwed to the floor somewhere..."
Objection. Nothing has been entered in evidence that Mr. Trump actually earned any money in his entire life. Inherited? Yes. Stolen? Certainly. Obtained as part of a fraud scheme? Nearly always. But never earned.
There's no way in hell they were able to completely retrofit to AF1 standards in less than a year. My bet is the refit so far is just a paint job - superficial, as is everything else he does.
And he probably broke it already.