Overseen by the Air Force but the work is being done by Boeing. From a CNN article on the delays with the current two in progress:
There are multiple reasons for the delay in delivery. After signing the original contract in 2017, Boeing began refurbishing two 747 jets in February 2020 that it had built for another customer but never delivered because of that customer’s bankruptcy — a process that in hindsight probably was more expensive and time consuming than if it had built from scratch.
And the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which started just weeks after Boeing began refurbishing the planes, caused significant additional delays.
He’s selected L3Harris for the refit, not Boeing. The plane’s already been in service w/the Qatari Royal Family. They expect it ready before the end of the year.
When he leaves office, it’s going to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation… which, of course, means it’s just going to be his, and a tax write-off.
Speaking of a life of luxury…Yeah, somebody who idolizes Putin above all other government leaders – and is gleefully building a crap-ton of personal crypto projects – is definitely not idolizing luxury and wealth. Definitely not. Nope.
And yet the “rich businessmen would make the best presidents” myth tends to persist in too many people’s heads…Maybe some of our esteemed opinion writers should start writing down the historical facts about what wealth-loving-and-grabbing rulers tend to “accomplish” for their nations’ residents…
Putin, for example – believed by some experts to possibly be the richest person in the world (sorry, Elon, you apparently have to run the whole government to rake in the really.big bucks) – … Yet last time I looked the Russians themselves aren’t doing too well. Average Russian life expectancy, for example, stands at 112th in the world or thereabouts. IOW, far below not just our anemic 45th place but well below dozens of what Putin and Trump would certainly both call “shithole” countries. …
Is this something Americans realize about governments run by Richie Riches and their rich allies? Because everybody should.
I have trouble believing Boeing won’t be involved, with L3Harris as a subcontractor. Boeing has to manage the QC on airframe and engines, and handle the flight tests and certification. Sounds like they just won’t be doing the high security stuff.
And yes, if this EVER happened – which of course it wouldn’t! – in a Democratic administration, the media would be going NUTS, as would Republicans, who would be scrambling to get back to Washington, DC to start impeachment hearings IMMEDIATELY! Which, of course, in an even semi-functional democracy, is what SHOULD happen if a president is as wildly corrupt, lawless and scornful of the constitution as this one. But the Republican Party is completely f’ed at this point, so here we are.
You’re probably thinking of Nixon’s “Checkers speech,” which he gave when he was running for V-P in 1952. From the Wikipedia article on that speech (emphasis mine):
The Checkers speech or Fund speech was an address made on September 23, 1952, by Senator Richard Nixon (R-CA), six weeks before the 1952 United States presidential election, in which he was the Republican nominee for Vice President. Nixon had been accused of improprieties relating to a fund established by his backers to reimburse him for his political expenses. His place was in doubt on the Republican ticket, so he flew to Los Angeles and delivered a half-hour television address in which he defended himself, attacked his opponents, and urged the audience to contact the Republican National Committee (RNC) to tell it whether he should remain on the ticket. During the speech, he stated that he intended to keep one gift, regardless of the outcome: a black-and-white Cocker Spaniel that his children had named Checkers, thus giving the address its popular name.
Yeah, that’s my hope, too. … Obviously no single one of his stupid attacks on institutions will move many but gradually seeing the consequences of one after another after another of the destructions seems likely to move at least some people…I do hope that eventually some of those moved are Republican lawmakers.
Either way, the new president should insist on keeping it as a backup for national security reasons for a period of 18 years and to be returned to the Trump library on June 14, 2046 in honor of the centenial of his birth.
Maybe we could find a democrat peanut farmer in Georgia to be president who has some organizational skill to begin to repair the damage caused by trump/Musk & cult
I think the best thing to do would be to move them out of office.
My impression is that most GQP lawmakers are bought and paid for; so, there’s not going to be a shift in their support for PoTUS’s program.
But given how entrenched the Republican brand is in so many states and given how many states they hold and how covertly powerful the conservative-white-Christian voting machine is, I don’t see that as a short-term possibility – so, lackig that, as long as there’s a Republican party unified in backing Trump no matter what, we’re pretty screwed…
I’m hoping there can be an interim step in which we at least get a group of Republicans who’ll vote and act to oppose his crap. …
ETA: As I thnk about this, I kind of picture Kruschev figuring out that something was wrong with Stalin’s regime… What NK went on to say and do wasn’t a complete for permanent fix by any means, of course. But it did make a difference.
And you’ve got to start somewhere. There’s not going to be any magic wand…
American Communist Party member Dorothy Ray Healey on how truths she finally recognized in Kruschev’s Secret Speech led her to break with the party: “The speech went on for four hours, and I was reduced to tears after about 30 minutes. Fact after fact of monstrous things had happened. It was a relentless account. But I believed it. There was no questioning its authenticity.”
There’ve gotta be at least one or two elected Republican who could recognize some of Trump’s actions as “monstrous things” if they were explained correctly and by someone to whom they would give some credence, don’t you think? I mean, the list of monstrous things coming out of the Trump regime already could add up to at least a four-hour speech. “Fact after fact of monstrous things had happened” sounds to me like a very apt description of just the first three and a half months of Trump Two!
