Let’s discuss planes, energy, and priorities.
Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth simply discovered almost a billion {dollars} — $934 million to be precise — hidden deep within the Pentagon sofa cushions. That cash was purported to fund Sentinel, a $77.7 billion modernization challenge for America’s getting older nuclear missile system. As a substitute, it’s being rerouted to a categorised challenge.
However right here’s what we find out about that categorised challenge, because of reporting from The New York Times: a part of it’s funding a private, Qatar-backed Air Drive One challenge for President Trump.
Sure, you heard that proper. Do not forget that Boeing 747-8 aircraft that the Qatari royal household donated to Trump earlier this yr, effectively, it’s now being retrofitted for the commander-in-chief. The Secretary of the Air Drive estimates the job will price “lower than $400 million,” however aviation consultants and engineers say that quantity is optimistic at finest.
NBC Information reported that the precise price could climb north of $1 billion — presumably extra — particularly because the plane must be stripped almost to the studs to put in encrypted communications, harden defenses, and defend towards cyber and bodily threats.
And the kicker? This aircraft most likely gained’t even be used for lengthy. President Trump has stated it’ll ultimately be housed at his yet-to-be-built presidential library after he leaves workplace in 2029.
That library, by the best way, is shaping as much as be fairly the monument to Trump’s authorized and monetary battles. He’s already obtained two settlements — one from Disney and one other from Paramount, totaling $32 million — to fund it. That’s not precisely the “folks’s library,” is it?
Let me be clear: there are moral questions right here — like, why we’re accepting a jet from a international authorities, even a pleasant one like Qatar.
The Emoluments Clause within the U.S. Structure prevents the president from accepting a present from a “King, Prince, or international State,” with out congressional consent.
However even in case you put that apart for a second, there’s a a lot greater problem that ought to concern Democrats, Republicans, and particularly so-called fiscal conservatives: We’re spending cash we merely don’t have.
CBS Information just lately dug into Treasury Division stories and located that in Trump’s first 100 days again in workplace, the federal authorities spent greater than $200 billion greater than it had throughout the identical interval final yr. We’re spending extra, day-to-day, than now we have in 9 of the previous ten years. The one yr that beats this one was 2021 — the peak of the pandemic, after we had been making an attempt to keep away from a full-blown financial collapse.
And simply this month, the president signed what he known as a “large, lovely invoice” into regulation. Lovely for whom, precisely? As a result of the nonpartisan Congressional Finances Workplace says it’s going so as to add $3.4 trillion to the nationwide debt over the subsequent decade. That’s not a rounding error. That’s generational debt.
So after we take a look at this reboot of Air Drive One — a Qatari jet, rerouted Pentagon funds, and a price that would spiral into the billions — now we have to ask: Whom is that this truly serving? It’s not the subsequent president. It’s not the American taxpayer. And it’s definitely not the women and men who rely on the protection packages now dropping funding.
It’s simply one other instance of how energy — when unchecked — bends programs to private profit.
So right here’s my lens: Whether or not you’re pink or blue, MAGA or reasonable, we must always all be capable to agree that nationwide protection {dollars} shouldn’t turn into private vainness tasks. Not when households are struggling, the deficit is ballooning, and our nation’s infrastructure — each bodily and monetary — wants pressing consideration.
As a result of the true price of this aircraft gained’t be measured in {dollars} alone. It’ll be measured in what we uncared for to fund as a substitute.
Lindsey Granger is a Information Nation contributor and co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising.” This column is an edited transcription of her on-air commentary.