“You can do two things,” Donald Trump told reporters as he stood beside the new retrofitted Air Force One on Wednesday. “You can low-key it, or you can show it.”

He always does the latter. The presidential plane is, as everyone knows, a $400 million present from Qatar. The famous light blue hull is gone. It is painted in Trump’s preferred color scheme – navy blue, red, gold stripes. The Air Force says it spent less than $400 million implementing “security upgrades.” And the aircraft began active service this week and will be used by the President until the end of his second term at least.

It’s hard to know if Americans really care about their Commander-in-Chief flying around in a jet given to him by a sheikh who didn’t need it. But the timing of the Air Force One launch was curious, coming as it did........

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