On the Qatari jet subject, the beginning part of this episode of Fresh Air goes into some of the many, many problems with using that jet as AF-1:
Also, it has already cost taxpayers many hundreds of millions to get it so it can be used, and there’s more to do. All that cost, just so Trump can accept an obvious bribe from Qatar.
That episode goes into even more corruption from this unbelievably corrupt administration cabinet, but it’s off-topic for this thread.
Yup, he played “Jones” (or “Jonesy”) in the films. Winslow was also on America’s Got Talent in recent years, performing his noise imitations for live and TV audiences. (He did pretty well but didn’t make it to the finals.)
I don’t think this has been posted anywhere yet. As usual, it’s a good watch from Legal Eagle.
Could you possibly summarize what that video says that hasn’t been said elsewhere in this thread?
From the video description:
Trump’s DOJ Subpoena’d the New York Times for reporting on his Qatari Bribe Jet… it didn’t end well
I dunno. He cost the Times a lot of money and hassle. Did it hurt Trump any?
In the sense that he didn’t win against a journalist in a freedom of the press issue, yes. If the Times didn’t push back, we’d be seeing more of this. If every time (or even just some of the time) someone writes something critical of Trump, he (via the FBI) uses falsified information to attain warrants to have them arrested, along with whatever he does to their family members (in this case, got access to his family member’s phone records), eventually people are going to stop writing articles critical of him. That’s not something we can have.
This is absolutely something that was worth the hassle. It’s unfortunate that Trump is forcing journalists to go through this, but I don’t see an alternative without heading towards having only government controlled news.
Remember, last year, the White House decided they can to pick and choose who’s in the press corps and Hegesth, “committed to transparency”, said Pentagon reporters have to get their articles approved before they can be published (even if the information is unclassified).
Trump is chipping away at the 1st Amendment, any win that keeps the constitution in tact hurts him. But, again, it’s unfortunate that we have to keep fighting these battles against things that have long since been settled and are, in many cases, such basic parts of the constitution, they’re practically used as examples for grade school kids in history class. I’d bet most kids that have made it through 8th grade would answer ‘no’ to 'should the government be allowed to require public schools to post the 10 commandments on the wall of every room and have a bible for each student?".
My point is not that I’m unhappy that the Times fought, nor that it won. My point is that Trump didn’t lose anything, and he’ll just do it again. And i find that depressing.
(Unless he actually did loose something? But if so, i haven’t heard it.)
News right now on CNN about how Orange Foolious snuck off AF1 (the old one) onto a catering truck to move to another plane while fleeing the NATO conference because of a threat.
Of course everyone else on the plane were left hangin. So typical.
? If you mean they were unwittingly used as decoys, they were completely aware there was a credible threat since that’s why Trump purportedly switched to AF1 instead of using Qatari1 that he flew in on (he really switched to a C-32A (757 variant)). All three planes then flew to the UK where all involved transferred to Qatari1 for the flight back to Andrews (after Trump snuck back onto AF1). So nobody was “left hangin” in a travel sense.
Also, whether he was on board or not, AF1 is the most sophisticated passenger aircraft in the world with a bewildering array of defensive counter-measures. I think they were okay, I certainly would have been especially with the bonus that, for once, I wouldn’t have to listen to him bloviate to a captive audience mid-flight.
Being able to fly on AF1 while Trump isn’t there sounds like a good time.