Trump’s Air Force One Deal Was So Bad And Risky That Boeing Lost Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars

Donald Trump loves deals. He can’t get enough of them. “Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully or write poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That’s how I get my kicks,” he tweeted in 2014. But if you Google “trump deals,” one of the first links that comes up is an article from Global Witness. Under the headline “Exposing Trump’s Deals,” it reads, “Our investigations into Donald Trump’s business deals have exposed corruption, conflicts of interests, and money laundering red flags.” Just because he tried to turn deals into an “art” form doesn’t mean he’s any good at them.

Here’s another for the highlight reel:

Boeing should have rejected then-President Donald Trump’s proposed terms to build two new Air Force One aircraft, the company’s CEO said Wednesday. Dave Calhoun spoke Wednesday on the company’s quarterly earnings call, just hours after Boeing disclosed that it has lost $660 million transforming two 747 airliners into flying White Houses… Then-Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, who was dismissed in December 2019, personally negotiated the Air Force One terms with Trump.

“Air Force One I’m just going to call a very unique moment, a very unique negotiation, a very unique set of risks that Boeing probably shouldn’t have taken,” Calhoun said about the pair of Boeing 747 jetliners that were abandoned by a bankrupt Russian airline. “But we are where we are, and we’re going to deliver great airplanes.”

As one of his passion projects, Trump required that the new Air Force One be painted red, white, and blue instead of the blue and white color scheme used since the 1960s. “It’s going to be the top of the line, the top in the world,” he said. But for now, the new 747 airliners can’t even play the Harrison Ford thriller Air Force One on DVD.

(Via Defense One)