While most people hope for a gold watch as a retirement gift from their employer, President Donald Trump could leave the White House after his second term with Air Force One. The Senate Appropriations Committee rejected a bill amendment on Thursday to block Trump from taking the Boeing 747-8 that was gifted to the Department of Defense from Qatar’s royal family. There’s no such thing as a free jet because it will cost nearly $1 billion in taxpayer money to retrofit for use as Air Force One. Unsurprisingly, every Republican legislator on the subcommittee voted against the amendment.
The amendment, offered by Sen. Chris Murphy, to the annual defense spending bill would have blocked the jet’s ownership transfer to President Trump if the necessary funding for the retrofit was approved. The retrofit’s exact cost is unclear, but the Pentagon transferred $934 million from its nuclear missile modernization budget to “an unnamed classified project.” The Democratic senator from Connecticut told The Hill:
“To most Americans, that’s a lot of their money to be spent on a plane that is not going to be in the service of the United States military, in the United States Air Force, for perhaps any longer than a few months, because the president has, in fact, stated his intention to take this plane with him when he leaves office.”
The plane’s future isn’t set in stone but Trump wants it
Senate Republicans want their colleague on the other side of the aisle to pump their brakes. Senator Mitch McConnell, the defense subcommittee chair, stated that discussion around the jumbo jet’s future should be shelved until later this year when the national defense authorization bill is debated. Considering that McConnell is retiring when his term ends next year, he may just be kicking the can down the road to make the fallout someone else’s problem. He said:
“We should be briefed on the long-term disposition plans before rushing to take action such as this, for which this simply [has] no urgency. The amendment is intended as a poison pill and political theater.”
There really isn’t any uncertainty about what Trump wants to do with the Boeing 747-8. The $400 million aircraft will only temporarily serve as Air Force One until Boeing completes long-awaited work on a pair of 747-8I planes. Boeing had signed the deal during Trump’s first term, but 2027 is the earliest potential delivery date for the first plane. Trump wants the Qatari-gifted jet to be transferred to his yet-to-be-designed presidential library after less than two years in service. The Boeing VC-137C at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library is the only former Air Force One aircraft to be on display in a similar manner. However, the modified Boeing 707 spent 28 years in service. What happens to the Qatari 747 between the end of Trump’s second term and the library’s construction? Is this relatively new plane just going to sit on the tarmac somewhere?
