Tag Archives: Air Force One

Protecting The President Is A Priority

Posted on by
Reply

Every President serves with the risk of assassination. President Trump, however, seems to have weathered a few more attempts that usual. The Secret Service is doing their job, and recently in Turkey the Secret Service did something out of a James Bond movie.

On August 11, The New York Post reported:

New details are emerging about President Trump’s great escape from Ankara last month with the revelation that he was smuggled off Air Force One by a Turkish airport catering truck to board a different military jet.

Trump’s exit from the annual NATO conference — within reach of Iranian missiles — already stoked weeks of intrigue over his purported use of an older version of Air Force One instead of the luxurious Qatar-gifted aircraft on which he arrived.

Trump actually used a third plane in an elaborate ruse that fooled not only Iran, but also the traveling press pool and some members of the president’s own staff.

…It’s unclear which other officials joined Trump in the truck, though he’s typically accompanied by a doctor and staffers designated to maintain contact with the military and White House chief of staff’s office.

The fresh reporting raised new questions, including whether there was a specific threat to Trump’s life, rather than a vague concern involving the Iran conflict.

The White House has not denied the Washington Post’s account, which cited two sources, including at least one US official.

The article concludes:

Hours before his stealth relocation to the third plane, Trump spoke about Iranian leaders wanting to kill him. That week, funeral processions for the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei featured banners threatening to kill the US president.

When a New York Post reporter asked Trump at a news conference in Ankara whether he was ditching the new plane due to threats from Iran, the president responded that “I’m number one on the kill list” for the Islamic Republic, but declined to elaborate further.

When another journalist pressed Trump on his publicly stated plane swap, the president insisted he sent the Qatari jet out of Turkey “so the soldiers can see it, because it’s truly magnificent.”

The deception — and its revelation — are incredibly rare if not unprecedented.

Then-President Bill Clinton similarly used Air Force One as a decoy in 2000 during a high-risk trip to Pakistan, but at least some reporters were aware ahead of time and the ploy was revealed publicly upon arrival.

Notice he left the reporters on the original plane. Hmmm.

It’s Only A Problem When President Trump Does It!

Posted on by

On Saturday, Breitbart posted an article about the airplane Qatar is giving to America to replace Air Force One. It seems that this was not a spur-of-the-moment decision by Qatar.

The article reports:

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) pointed out that talks regarding Qatar giving the United States a plane to temporarily replace Air Force One began under the Biden administration.

In an interview on CNN, Mullin pointed out that the U.S. needed a temporary replacement for Air Force One since President Donald Trump was “flying around on a 40-year-old plane.”

“Here’s what’s interesting to me, what the media isn’t telling you — what no one’s talking to you about, is the same 747 has been in negotiations for a year,” Mullin said. “The Biden administration is the one that started these conversations. It didn’t start underneath the Trump administration. Why? Because we need a back-up for Air Force One.”

“The President of the United States is flying around on a 40-year-old plane, and there is no back-up for it,” Mullin continued. “The back-up we had, the air frame started having structural issues. No one’s discussing that part.”

The article concludes:

Ali Al-Ansari, Qatar’s Media Attaché to the U.S., previously described reports that Qatar was gifting a plane to the U.S. during Trump’s visit to Qatar as “inaccurate” and said the “possible transfer” of a plane to the U.S. was “under consideration.”

“Reports that a jet is being gifted by Qatar to the United States government during the upcoming visit of President Trump are inaccurate,” Al-Ansari said in a statement. “The possible transfer of an aircraft for temporary use as Air Force One is currently under consideration between Qatar’s Ministry of Defense and the US Department of Defense, but the matter remains under review by the respective legal departments, and no decision has been made.”

As usual, the political left is creating much ado about nothing.

No, It’s Not Illegal

Posted on by

On May 14th, The Daily Caller posted an article including Attorney Alan Dershowitz’s comments on whether or not President Trump should accept the gift of an airplane from Saudi Arabia.

The article reports:

Noted attorney Alan Dershowitz on Tuesday detailed two reasons President Donald Trump would probably be able to keep a 747 reportedly being gifted to the United States.

Qatar offered Trump the $400 million Boeing 747-8 for modification into a VC-25 configuration to serve as Air Force One, with the jet being donated to Trump’s presidential library after his term in office ends. Dershowitz, on “The Dershow,” noted that the Constitution’s “emoluments clause,” something cited by some critics, actually would not prohibit the gift to the United States government.

“Okay, here’s what the Constitution says: No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States,” Dershowitz said. “In other words, we don’t have sirs and knights, or anything like that. So we can’t grant titles of nobility and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, that means the president, shall without the consent of Congress, and this is the key, without the consent of Congress, accept any present, emoluments, office or title of any kind whatever from any king, prince or foreign state. Now, obviously, Qatar has the king. Oh, I guess he’s the emir, doesn’t say emir, he’s the emir, I know, I met him three times, the emir of Qatar, I know he’s an emir and I guess he comes under the category of king, prince or foreign state.”

This is how Attorney Dershowitz applies the law:

“Now this means no person shall receive the gift,” Dershowitz said. “We know that gifts are given to governments all the time… when you go to the Oval Office, where the White House, you see all over the place, gifts that have been given by foreign governments to the White House, great portraits of Winston Churchill and other things that are gifts the British government or other governments have been given to the United States. But when the incumbent president or any officer leaves, he doesn’t take the gifts with him, he leaves them. There have been a couple of occasions where the presidents of taken a few gifts, for example, letters they take letters now letters could be worth a fortune… I think presidents have taken some of those, but mostly they go to the Library of Congress or to the Smithsonian or to the presidential libraries.”

“Now presidential libraries are not the property of the president himself or of the former president,” Dershowitz continued. “They are the property of the Smithsonian Institute, the archives. They are the property of the United States of America, and so, if the emir of Qatar or the Qatari state gives the president of the United States a $400 million dollar airplane, that is not a violation of the emoluments clause, it’s perfectly constitutional.”

Dershowitz said that even if Trump were to keep the plane for his personal use, which would possibly make the plane a gift and thus conflict with the constitutional provision, critics of the gift still faced an additional hurdle beside the legal merits when it came to bringing the case in court.

Please follow the link to the article for further details. The bottom line is that this is much ado about nothing–typical for the Democrats.

Negotiating Just Saved Americans A Lot Of Money

Posted on by

The Gateway Pundit is reporting today that President Trump has reached a new deal with Boeing Corporation on the construction of two new Air Force One airplanes. The article states that the president reportedly saved the country $1.4 billion on the deal. Admittedly, $1.4 billion is only a small dent in national expenditures, but it is still a move in the right direction.

A New Low In Political Theater

Posted on by

Breitbart.com posted an article today about an aspect of the gun-control debate that seems to have been missed in the news coverage.

It seems that the families who had lost loved ones in the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, were not initially informed as to the reason for their Air Force One trip to Washington.

The article quotes a Maureen Dowd article in the New York Times:

Murphy said it was hard, flying down on Air Force One with the trepidatious Sandy Hook families, to explain that they would be lobbying to get a vote on a vote. “They thought they were coming down here to argue for a ban on high-capacity magazines and universal background checks, and we told them that they were coming to argue to avert a filibuster and allow us to debate,” he said. “And that was really heartbreaking and deflating for some of them. But they rose to the occasion, and it was wonderful to see them at the end of the trip feeling like they had made a difference.”

So let me get this straight. The families thought they were going to Washington to argue for specific changes to gun laws. Once aboard Air Force One they were told something entirely different. Then the article says it’s all okay because they left feeling good.  I realize that I don’t always understand what goes on politically, but I think this is a new low in American politics and in media exploitation of people who have just suffered a tragedy.

If the gun control people had to lie to get these people to go to Washington, what else are they lying about?

Enhanced by Zemanta