Don’t Get Conned By Trump’s Big, Beautiful Air Force One Boondoggle

INSIDE: Stephen Miller ... Pam Bondi ... David Souter

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Who’s Conning Whom Exactly?

Before jumping ahead to the constitutionality of President Trump accepting as a “gift” from Qatar a $400 million 747 jumbo jet as short-term replacement for Air Force One and the legality of then transferring the plane to his corrupt presidential library foundation for him to use post-presidency – before ALL of that – can we discuss whether this can even be accomplished as a practical matter?

Much of the coverage treats it as a foregone conclusion that the Air Force can simply retrofit the Qatari plane and Trump can be soaring in luxury by the end of the year. It was that timeline, reported by the NYT, that caught my eye. First off, the Air Force doesn’t have this capability; it has to contract out the work.

The WSJ reported on some aspects of this a couple of weeks ago, suggesting that L3Harris had already been commissioned to retrofit a Qatari plane for use as Air Force One (but the NYT reported yesterday that no agreement on a contract has been reached yet). The plane in the WSJ story seems to be the same plane Trump is talking about now, with delivery on a similarly unrealistic timeline. “Trump wants to have the plane available for use as early as the fall,” the WSJ reported.

It’s clear though a bit buried in the reporting that retrofitting a 747 (Boeing stopped 747 production in 2022) is not some clever workaround to the challenges Boeing has faced in producing a new generation Air Force One. The array of capabilities that Air Force One currently has are the nut of the contracting problem. There’s nothing to suggest that you can solve that problem merely by starting with a lux 747. Here’s how the WSJ described it in a May 1 story:

Building out an interim airplane by the end of this year poses its own challenges. The plane might not be a true VC-25A that is as capable as the current jets. A quick turnaround would likely limit modifications, said Andrew Hunter, the Air Force’s acquisition chief during the Biden administration, who wasn’t familiar with the new plans. “You could do some paint, you could do some communications upgrades, and I suspect it would be hard to do too much beyond that on that timeline,” he said.

So the best case is that Trump would end up an Air Force One Lite?

What features and capabilities exactly would be sacrificed for an Air Force One Lite? Its complex communications systems? Its elaborate defense systems? Its intense security protections? These do not seems like the kinds of tradeoffs anyone would – or necessarily could as a practical matter – make to get a plane in service quickly, let alone to preserve continuity of government in an attack or other crisis.

“We’re talking years, not months,” an anonymous Defense Department official told the NYT.

This whole episode has all the trademarks of another Trump boondoggle. While the apparent lawlessness of such an arrangement is alarming, there’s an emperor has no clothes aspect to the whole thing. Trump wants what he wants, and no one wants to tell him no. And so everyone pretends it’s possible, even to the point of entertaining wildly corrupt scenarios to make it happen. But in the end, the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own ridiculousness.

🚨RED ALERT🚨

Every utterance by Stephen Miller needs to be caveated with “Not a lawyer; never a lawyer”:

But CNN reports it’s not just Miller who’s toying with unlawfully suspending habeas corpus: “President Donald Trump has been personally involved in discussions inside the administration over potentially suspending habeas corpus, a legal procedure that allows people to challenge their detention in court.”

For a deeper dive on habeas corpus and why suspending it for migrants means suspending it for everyone, Steve Vladeck has you covered.

Good Read

Politico’s Kyle Cheney: Judges warn Trump’s mass deportations could lay groundwork to ensnare Americans

Ozturk Set Free And Returns To Boston

Early Friday afternoon, U.S. District Judge William Sessions of Vermont ordered the immediate release of Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk from federal detention while her case is pending. When the Trump administration did not immediately comply with his order – delaying her release while it fitted her with an ankle monitor – Sessions issued a follow-up order late in the afternoon that she was to be released unconditionally without any monitoring devices or travel restrictions.

House Dems Threatened With Arrest

Following the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka for alleged trespassing during an ICE detention center protest in his city, the Trump administration sent not-so-subtle signals that Democratic members of Congress who were present at the protest may also face arrest.

Trump Tries To Stiff-Arm The Senate

The NYT’s Charlie Savage unpacks President Trump’s attempt to install Jeanine Pirro as interim U.S. attorney for D.C. and bypass the Senate confirmation proess.

Investigating The Investigators

Jay Bratt, who as a top deputy to Special Counsel Jack Smith led the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation, appears to be the first member of Smith’s team hauled before Congress by House Republicans for a deposition, scheduled for Wednesday, The Guardian reports.

D’oh! Pam Bondi Got O’Keefe’d

The Daily Beast: Pam Bondi Spilled Epstein Secrets to Bogus ‘Nanny’ at Brunch

IMPORTANT

In perhaps the most sweeping order by any judge confronted with Trump II lawlessness, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston of San Francisco blocked a wide range of administration layoffs and agency dismantlings. In the case brought by labor unions, nonprofit organizations, and local governments, Illston ordered a two-week pause in the Trump administration’s rampage through the federal government.

“It is the prerogative of presidents to pursue new policy priorities and to imprint their stamp on the federal government,” Illston wrote. “But to make large-scale overhauls of federal agencies, any president must enlist the help of his coequal branch and partner, the Congress.”

Thread Of The Day

Responding Judge Illston’s order above, Roger Parloff explores how slowly and reluctantly most federal judges have been to confront the DOGE-driven Trump II rampage:

The Purges

• CPSC: President Trump purported to fire the three Democrats on the five-member Consumer Product Safety Commission.

• U.S. Copyright Office: President Trump fired Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, who was appointed head of the U.S. Copyright Office by the Librarian of Congress, whom Trump fired last week.

The Dumbing Down Of The U.S. Military

Most of the focus on book bans and stifled academic freedom has involved the U.S. Naval Academy, but the Pentagon is launching a broad attack against the service academies:

• AP: ” The Pentagon has ordered all military leaders and commands to pull and review all of their library books that address diversity, anti-racism or gender issues by May 21, according to a memo issued to the force on Friday.”

• NYT: The Pentagon’s Culture Wars Strike West Point

• Graham Parsons, a tenured professor of philosophy at West Point who is resigning at the end of this semester in protest of the Trump-led attack on the U.S. Military Academy:

Academic freedom is important at any institution of higher learning, but it has an additional importance at a military academy. The health of our democratic system depends on the military being politically neutral. Protecting freedom of thought and speech in the academic curriculum at West Point is an important way to avoid political partisanship. By allowing the government to impose an ideological orthodoxy on its classrooms, West Point is abandoning its neutrality and jeopardizing a critical component of the very constitutional order that the military exists to protect.

David Souter, 1939-2025

On the occasion of former Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s death, Adam Liptak revives a 2012 pre-Trump warning from Souter: “I don’t believe there is any problem of American politics and American public life which is more significant today than the pervasive civic ignorance of the Constitution of the United States and the structure of government.” A portion of his warning:

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!