When the Trump administration formally accepted a superluxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar, there was a long line of questions about the arrangement, including ones about why Attorney General Pam Bondi was involved in approving the process, despite her previous work as a paid registered lobbyist for the Qatari government.
But at the top of the list a financial line of inquiry: Where will Donald Trump and his team find the money to pay for this?
To hear the president tell it, there’s no need to worry, because the price tag is $0. In mid-May, for example, the Republican argued online that the jet would be “FREE OF CHARGE.” He returned to the point a few days later, asking why taxpayers should be “forced to pay hundreds of millions of Dollars” for a plane “when they can get it for FREE” from Qatar.
The president added soon after that only “a stupid person [would] say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’”
Even if the luxury jet were free, this arrangement would still be a legal, ethical and political mess. But there’s a related problem: The “free” plane isn’t free at all — with projected costs of roughly $1 billion.
And where, pray tell, do Trump and his team plan to find that money? The New York Times reported that administration officials are going out of their way to “hide the cost” of Trump’s pet project, but an answer to the underlying question is apparently coming into focus:
[The administration’s inventive techniques to obscure the cost] may explain why no one wants to discuss a mysterious, $934 million transfer of funds from one of the Pentagon’s most over-budget, out-of-control projects — the modernization of America’s aging, ground-based nuclear missiles. In recent weeks, congressional budget sleuths have come to think that amount, slipped into an obscure Pentagon document sent to Capitol Hill as a ‘transfer’ to an unnamed classified project, almost certainly includes the renovation of the new, gold-adorned Air Force One that Mr. Trump desperately wants in the air before his term is over.
The Times’ report hasn’t been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News. That said, Air Force officials have acknowledged “dipping into nuclear modernization funds for the complex project,” according to the Times.
Once the effort is complete, the not-at-all-free jet will apparently head to the president’s future presidential library — reinforcing impressions that this is less a “gift” to the United States, and more a present for Trump. Complicating matters, if the Times’ reporting is correct, and the administration is shifting funds away from nuclear modernization initiatives, that poses a related set of concerns, because the physical condition of old silos — the ones holding nuclear missiles — are leaking, crumbling and falling into disrepair. “The more we learn about this deal, the more disturbing it becomes,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said. The New Hampshire Democrat, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, added that one of her principal concerns is that “this administration is diverting funds from the nuclear modernization budget to finance costly renovations to this plane.” I don’t imagine we’ve heard the last of this one.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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