Daily Kos86%
The cost of Trump’s bribe plane is soaring 96%
By Lisa Needham97%
7/20/2026, 11:30:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 28 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Ad Hominem, and Ambiguity (Equivocation), with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 78.6% saturation with 401 hits. Analysis detected 1,905 faulty-reasoning hits from 510 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 93% and a BS Rank of 96% (938 of 19,908 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 95.30% of the article peer group.
President Donald Trump really does not want you to know about his bribe plane and all its problems, but he *really* wants more of your tax dollars so that his bribe plane can be “maxed out.”
Wait, so it wasn’t maxed out after we all paid an unknown amount to spruce it up after the Qatari government gave Trump a $400 million plane out of the goodness of its heart?
Turns out, no.
“It has a lot of capability, but as I understand it, in about a month or so, they’re going to send it to have it be maxed out,” Trump told reporters on Sunday.
Of course, at the same time, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is insisting it’s already the bestest plane ever, saying, “The new Air Force One is perfectly safe for the President’s travels, but will receive additional upgrades and enhancements in the fall which will take approximately one month to complete.”
What a short and ignominious career the bribe plane has had.
After a hyped-up maiden flight to North Dakota on July 1, where Trump sycophants posted pictures of themselves showing off the tacky interior, Trump took the plane to Turkey a week later.
For his return trip, however, he had to take his old, busted, non-bribe plane, because apparently, the bribe plane was not secure enough?
Seems bad.
Rather than interrogating how spending millions on retrofitting a bribe plane—one Trump declared he’ll take with him when he leaves the White House—somehow resulted in only a week of official service before being grounded, the Trump administration is going after The New York Times for having the gall to report on this travesty.
Like, *really going after*.
News broke last week that the Department of Justice had subpoenaed Times journalists because how dare they report on his flight follies, but it’s actually much, much worse.
In a court filing seeking to quash the subpoenas, The New York Times revealed that the DOJ has subpoenaed phone providers, demanding phone and text records of the journalists.
They’re demanding phone records from relatives, including the mother of one reporter.
Come.
On.
The subpoenas seek phone records back to Jan. 1, or six full months before the Times reported that the bribe plane had its wings clipped over security concerns.
That overreach makes it pretty clear this is an attempt at a fishing expedition to get at confidential sources, along with, of course, an attempt to silence the press.
It is objectively newsworthy that the bribe plane we paid untold millions to upgrade to be secure enough to ferry Trump around turned out to be not secure enough to ferry Trump around.
But this administration loathes accurate reporting, because it highlights what a grift the administration is.
But back to the bribe plane.
Place your Polymarket bets on whether the maxing out is because the thing turned out to have major security flaws or because it is just getting a little extra gold gilt.
Either way, it’s all on your dime.
Analysis
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