Earlier in the week, many noted that President Donald Trump flew to the NATO summit in Turkey not in his new plane donated by the Qatari government, but rather in the previous Air Force One that was recently retired. On Wednesday, he offered an explanation that a leading security expert called “ridiculous fluff,” and that other commentators have noted was fully predictable.
Posting to Truth Social, Trump claimed, “To honor our brave men and women of the Military, we are sending the brand new, and truly spectacular, Air Force One to Mildenhall Air Force Base, in the United Kingdom, to give them a chance to tour the Aircraft — Everybody is so excited, and we thought that they should be the first. For old time’s sake, we’ll be taking the former Air Force One, from Turkey to Mildenhall, a short trip that is totally worth doing in order to give our Great Military Heroes a chance to appreciate our beautiful new addition to the Air Force Fleet!”
But MSNOW national security contributor Marc Polymeropoulos wasn’t buying the president’s excuse, posting, “So reason finally took hold, Qatar Force One not equipped with appropriate comms/force pro/security package” for international duty. In Polymeropoulos’s estimation, Secret Service and Air Force “pleas must have won out over Trump’s vanity project.”
As Polymeropoulos elaborated, Turkey is considered a high counterintelligence “threat environment,” meaning world leaders visiting the region must apply top security to their communications — a capability the plane from Qatar doesn’t possess. What’s more, noted Polymeropoulos, the war with Iran has flared again, further increasing the need for top security measures. With all this in mind, Polymeropoulos asserted that Trump’s post was “of course ridiculous fluff,” and the plane from Qatar is “just not ready for prime time overseas.”
Andrew Feinberg, White House correspondent for the Independent, seconded this assessment, posting, “The most likely reason for this is that the ‘new’ ex-Qatari jet doesn’t have the self-defense capabilities needed when flying from Turkey while in a shooting war with Iran. The actual VC-25 aircraft does have those capabilities.”
And George Conway — formerly married to first-term Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway, now a Democratic candidate for Congress — floated his own theory about the Qatari plane’s lack of security features, posting, “Spitballing here, but perhaps one reason it doesn't have those capabilities is because Trump wants to keep it if he leaves office.”
In May last year, Trump’s decision to accept the plane “donated” by Qatar was blasted as an “unprecedented” act of bribery, as it was not only a gift from a foreign government that many warned raised rampant security red flags, but because Trump had suggested that he would retain possession of it after his presidency. Many experts noted the suspicious timing of the Qatari “gift,” pointing out that the country gave Trump the jet just as the Trump Organization announced its intentions to build a $5.5 billion golf course in Qatar.