When I first heard about it, I assumed it was just an idea being floated by the trolls, the latest way of pissing off and thereby owning the libs, and it never occurred to me that it could actually be a straight-faced report about something that might really happen. Stress might – I still don’t believe it. It’s crazy. A President of the United States, accepting as a “gift” fully four hundred million semolians-worth of tricked out, gold-plated, Gulf Potentate-certified stratospheric super yacht in the form of a late-vintage Boeing 747-8? Yeah, sure, Jack. Get the fuck outta here. Yet there was Donald at a press conference subsequent to the story breaking, insisting that damn straight he was offered the plane, and you bet your sweet ass he was going to accept it, ‘cuz for the love of God, people, what kind of moron turns up his nose at a four hundred million dollar gratuity? What, he should politely decline? It’s free stuff. When you were little, did a donkey kick you in the head or something? Turn it down, they say. Idiots. Look, like Sam Snead used to say, God rest his ancient bones, when the ref grants you a “gimme” you take it. He was actually vehement about it. He practically exclaimed, Daffy Duck-like, it’s mine, it’s all mine, and what’s mine is mine!
So, maybe this really is happening. If we’re to believe the stories, it all began when Donald received a private tour of the Qatari jet and fell in love with it, as of course he would. Just look at it:
Shiny gold things! Donny just loves him some shiny gold things! Holy shit! And wowsa! It makes Mar-a-Lago look like a Las Vegas whorehouse! Of course he’s accepting the generous gratuity. Why shouldn’t he?
I know I know, you bleating lib you, you’re going to bring up the breathtaking corruption thing. Yeah, it’s corrupt as all get-out. So what? Nobody’s denying anything, so let’s cut the crap here, this is a personal gift, no matter what Pam Bondi and her captive lawyers might assert (thanks Pam, knew you were the right choice for AG!), albeit framed as if it’s actually a present to the American People via their elected government. That’s just a transparent ruse. When you read the fine print, it’s donated on condition that when Donald leaves office – hey, at least it’s inherent to the scam that Donald might actually leave office when his term’s up, look on the bright side – it gets transferred to Trump’s still entirely hypothetical and frankly unlikely Presidential Library, that is, to Donald himself for his personal use. And sure, this puts it about as far offside the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause as the Great Train Robbery was offside the 8th Commandment, but listen, go big or go home, amiright?
Anyway, what of it? These days it’s acceptable, it’s the new normal, all very ho-hum, I mean, since becoming President Donald has already made billions, literal billions, off various grifts, including the sale of his synthetic meme coins, ethereal worthless bits of nothing (rather like his previous tranche of non-fungible tokens, remember those?) that anybody can buy, whether foreign or domestic, the better to offer what amount to outright bribes to the sitting President. It’s not even crypto, it’s pretend crypto, and it’s selling like hotcakes. He’s even running a contest, no kidding, in which the winners, which is to say the suckers who buy the most meme coins, will get dinner and a personal audience with Burnt Umber Voldemort Himself, I suppose at Mar-a-Lago (or maybe the White House, since we’re being brazen about it?); as Tim Miller said over at the Bulwark, he’s not just influence-peddling in broad daylight, he’s posting a frickin’ leader board on Truth Social. It’s all out in the open, and do you hear anybody complaining, besides your own self? Meanwhile, Donnie Junior is opening up a private club that he’s calling The Executive Branch, at which, for the reasonable membership fee of only half a million clams, you can rub shoulders with the Washington elite, quite possibly including Big Donnie himself, and nobody’s whining about that either, not even NPR. Other shady deals, likewise generally unremarked upon, are known to be going on in the background, it’s all very murky, involving foreign interests (including the Qataris) and a number of real estate developments all over the Middle East, luxury skyscrapers and such, you can read a bit about it here:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/13/politics/trump-middle-east-business-invs
…and overall, it’s estimated that the Trump Crime Syndicate has managed to make itself richer to the tune of about three billion dollars just since Donnie sat his ass back down in the Oval under three months ago. So what’s a little airplane on top of all that? O.K., a big airplane, whatever. Same difference. Nobody cares.
So get out of town with your corruption quibbles, O.K.?
Nobody cares.
The bigger issue comes down to functionality and what the lawyers call “fitness for purpose”.
The thing is, it isn’t immediately obvious what Donald means to do with his new toy while he’s still President and the jet is owned, notionally, by the U.S. Government. Does he think he’ll be flying around in it as he globe-trots his way through his myriad business deals with foreign dictators? Think again, Donnie. That just doesn’t work. That’s what Air Force 1 is for. You see, the President already has access to a number of heavily-modified 747s, not exactly aerial garbage scows themselves, which belong to the Air Force and are designated VC-25 (“Air Force 1” is the call sign of any fixed wing plane in which the President is riding). Those are the planes the President uses, and, not for nothing, only those. They’ve been modified with certain features peculiar to their special mission, features which no plane owned by any overseas autocrat, however over-the-top luxurious, can possibly possess. No other aircraft can sub in for them. Not under any circumstances.
Like what special features? Well, to begin with, the whole interior architecture is different, and unique. VC-25s have segregated compartments in the cabin for the Secret Service and their weapons, and behind that for the scribblers in the Press who tag along on Presidential junkets. It’s part private conveyance for the Commander-in-Chief, and part passenger plane. As is absolutely necessary, when you think about it, they’re also outfitted with specially-equipped conference rooms that serve as “SCIFs”, Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, secure spaces proofed against any form of electronic eavesdropping. These are, you will understand, put together in accordance with some rather strict and specialized construction standards. And that’s just for the everyday stuff. The VC-25s are also configured to serve as airborne command posts in times of national emergency, with secure electronics and satellite communication facilities permitting the President to command the entire U.S. military in response to attack. The planes are thus technologically equivalent to dedicated national command authority jets like the little-publicized E-4B Nightwatch “Doomsday” aircraft, last noticed by the public when airborne over Washington on 9/11:
You can imagine the panoply of hugely sophisticated and ultra-classified equipment necessary to fulfill this role, which contemplates the authorization by the President of massive nuclear retaliation even as his entire country is being pounded into radioactive rubble some 40,000 feet below. And that ain’t the half of it. As part of the package enabling the planes to serve as flying Continuity of Government facilities, maintaining control over both the civilian and military organs of the federal government in the midst of an atomic attack, the planes need to have their electronics and wiring specially hardened to preserve function despite continual exposure to EMPs, the intense electro-magnetic pulses that attend all thermonuclear detonations. EMPs fry ordinary civilian electronics stone-dead in a matter of milliseconds, within blast radii of hundreds of miles, depending upon the altitude of detonation (and high altitude airbursts to inflict EMP damage will certainly be a feature of any well-planned nuclear attack). No worries, though, the blasts of destructive energy just bounce right off the fortified workings of a VC-25 – we can’t have the airborne national command post falling out of the sky when the bombs go off, can we? And speaking of not falling out of the sky, if the whole country is being reduced to a burning, rubble-strewn, irradiated hellscape, it’s quite likely that the VC-25s are going to have to stay aloft for an extended period, indefinitely, actually, until the crisis can be determined to have passed, and a safe landing place for the President has been located amid the general devastation of the aftermath. The planes are therefore equipped for mid-air refuelling, just like the B-52 bombers of Air Combat Command, and this requires all sorts of internal plumbing not found on airliners or private planes, not to mention the installation of a refuelling receptacle behind doors in a modified nose fairing, just like the one seen here on an E-4:
Apart from all that, the VC-25s are equipped with various passive and active defensive systems to thwart both surface-to-air missiles and marauding fighter aircraft, in the form of electronic countermeasures gear, distributed chaff/flare dispensers, and turreted laser dazzlers mounted around the airframe to wash out the seeker heads of infra-red guided missiles. After all, the President travels to some pretty sketchy places, adjacent, often, to turf controlled by thoroughly unfriendly regimes, and who knows when some hostile power might attempt a shoot-down? Safety first.
Plus, what if the President becomes ill while aloft? He could come down with a nasty bug contracted from the locals during his last official visit, or even have a heart attack, or chuck an embolism, or something dire like that. Just in case, the VC-25s therefore have extensive (if compact) medical facilities, including a fully-equipped operating theatre. Be prepared, right?
TL/DR: anything serving as Air Force 1 has to be a specialized monster of a machine with exotic classified facilities and unique capabilities up the yin-yang. The plush four-engined Hotel Xanadu that Trump covets would be wholly inadequate to the task. In fact, it would probably take years, and cost two or even three times what the thing is now said to be worth, to convert the Emir’s flying rumpus room into anything approaching an aircraft that could properly serve as Air Force 1.
By the time any of that could happen Trump, God willing, will be out of office, and new model VC-25s, now being built by Boeing to replace the current models (which are growing long in the tooth, and becoming increasingly expensive to maintain) will finally be coming on line. Like everything involving Boeing these days, the project is mired in delays, cost overruns, and general SNAFUs, but the aim is to supply some impressive new machines, maybe not as outrageously decadent as the flying tribute to conspicuous over-consumption that the Qataris have on offer, but pretty friggin’ snazzy:
More to the point, they’ll have all the necessary bells and whistles built in.
Until these arrive (maybe in 2029?), Trump will have to make do with the current planes, austere though they may seem compared to something decked out with golden fixtures and other accoutrements sufficient to sate the extravagant desires of a decadent, drowning-in-oil-money Persian Gulf autocrat. The Qatari pleasure palace will have to sit on the tarmac somewhere, probably in an air-conditioned hangar, sucking up public resources as it waits for the time when Donald can collect history’s biggest bribe, having already delivered, one assumes, various favours in return via the ongoing and flagrant abuse of his Presidential powers.
Supposing it ever gets delivered. I still don’t believe it. It’s crazy.
the needlefish 