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Colby Cosh: Trump's airplane shell game raises serious concerns

The president was, for a while, aboard a mystery plane over foreign soil, with the secretary of defence, and almost nobody knew about it

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Sometimes I am just awestruck at the glorious feast future historians will have as they try to decipher White House decision-making from the time of U.S. President Donald Trump. On Wednesday, the U.S. newspapers were full of amazement at the weird series of events that happened on the tarmac at Ankara Esenboga Airport in Turkey on July 8. Shortly before departing a NATO summit in the Turkish capital, the president announced that he would be flying out to the United Kingdom on the old Air Force One (a VC-25, i.e., a modified Boeing 747) instead of the new Qatari gift plane (a 747-8) that has just come into occasional use.

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He muttered that he was using the older aircraft for “old time’s sake,” eventually boarded it …........

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