The plane a foreign government gave the President of the United States as a gift blew out an inflatable emergency slide on the tarmac Wednesday before Trump could even board it. The old Air Force One had to roll up as backup. This is completely normal and fine.
The Slide, the Tarmac, and the 20-Minute Wait
According to CBS News, Trump was sitting inside Marine One at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday, waiting to board the Qatar-gifted jet for a flight to Dallas and the RNC Midterm Convention, when workers and reporters noticed something unusual: an inflatable emergency slide had deployed from the plane's right-hand door and was sitting fully extended on the tarmac.
The New York Post reports Trump waited in his helicopter for about 20 minutes while this was sorted out. At some point during that wait, the older blue-and-white 747 that traditionally serves as Air Force One rolled up and parked a couple hundred meters behind the Qatari plane, deploying its own front and rear steps. Just in case.
Workers eventually deflated the slide and hauled it away. The plane took off without further incident. Trump made it to Dallas. The RNC convention presumably proceeded. The slide is presumably somewhere, deflated, thinking about what it did.
Trump's Explanation Was Very Reassuring
When Trump finally got off the helicopter and walked over to reporters, he had a characteristically breezy take on the whole thing. "So they're checking the slide over here," he told reporters, per CBS News. "They were doing a check on the slide, you know?"
Asked directly whether there was a security concern with the plane, the president said, "No, they were checking it before. And they just wanted to make sure. So they've, I guess they've already put it up. They want to make sure everything works perfectly."
Asked whether he was confident the plane was safe, Trump told the New York Post: "Yeah I am. Or I wouldn't be on it." A philosophical position that raises more questions than it answers, but here we are.
This Plane Has Had a Rough Few Months
Let's do a brief history of the Qatar jet, because it's been eventful. Trump unveiled the luxury 747 earlier this summer after accepting it as a gift from the Qatari government, a transaction that generated its own galaxy of controversy and legal debate that we are setting aside for now.
CBS News reports that back in July, when Trump was departing a NATO summit in Turkey, he quietly slipped off the new plane via a catering truck and boarded a different military aircraft instead. Reporters traveling with him had no idea the switch had happened. The White House later confirmed this was due to a credible missile threat from Iran. The right-hand door of the Qatari jet, the New York Post notes, was the same door Trump used for that covert exit in Turkey. It is also the door from which Wednesday's slide deployed.
After the Turkey incident, the White House said Trump would go back to using the old Air Force One while the newer jet received additional security enhancements. Despite all of this, CBS News reports Trump is planning to take the Qatar plane on an overseas trip to Ireland later this month.
The Part Where We Talk About the Security Stuff
Here is a detail the New York Post includes that is worth sitting with for a moment: Trump himself acknowledged the Qatar-gifted jet does not have some of the defensive countermeasures the older Air Force One carries. He said this out loud, to reporters, as a fact, and then said he was confident in the plane anyway.
The older 747 that pulled up as a backup Wednesday exists for reasons. Air Force One is not just a fancy plane. It is a hardened, heavily modified aircraft built to survive scenarios that regular commercial jets cannot. The Qatar plane is a luxury 747 that a foreign government gave the United States as a gift, which has now had an emergency slide deploy spontaneously on a tarmac, forced a secret catering-truck exit during a missile threat, and required an unspecified round of security enhancements that apparently still have not concluded.
And yet the trip to Ireland is booked on that plane.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to look at a foreign-gifted luxury jet spontaneously blowing out an emergency slide on the tarmac of a military base and think: routine maintenance check, nothing to see here. And maybe that's all it was. But consider the full picture CBS News and the Post have assembled: a plane that sent Trump sneaking out a catering truck under missile threat, that lacks defensive systems the older jet carries, that required a post-Turkey security overhaul that apparently isn't finished, and that now can't make it through pre-flight prep without inflating its own slide onto the ground. This is the plane chosen for a presidential trip to Ireland in a few weeks.
The old Air Force One showing up and deploying its steps while the new one sat there with a slide hanging out of it is the most honest image this story produced. That plane has flown presidents through some of the tensest moments in modern American history. It is right there. It is ready. And instead the plan is to keep flying the gift jet that a Gulf monarchy handed over amid an active federal bribery investigation into whether the gift itself was legal.
The slide went back up. The plane took off. Nothing happened. But "nothing happened" is doing an awful lot of work in this story, and it's going to keep doing that work every time Trump boards that plane until the day it doesn't.
Comments