Post AwYvMfHoB9dpw6sE0O by theogrin@chaosfem.tw
(DIR) More posts by theogrin@chaosfem.tw
(DIR) Post #AwYjR0aHjio1hPowTo by Nonilex@masto.ai
2025-07-27T12:53:49Z
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#Trump makes no secret of his displeasure over the cost of renovating the #FederalReserve headquarters — around $2.5 billion, or even higher by Trump’s *accounting*.But getting the White House to discuss another of Washington’s expensive renovation projects, the cost of refurbishing a “free” #AirForceOne from #Qatar, is quite another matter.Officially, & conveniently, the price tag has been classified.#hypocrisy https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/us/politics/air-force-one-trump-cost.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
(DIR) Post #AwYjab6PKfRfZ3Pz16 by Nonilex@masto.ai
2025-07-27T12:55:35Z
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But even by Washington standards, where “black budgets” are often used as an excuse to avoid revealing the cost of outdated spy satellites & lavish end-of-year parties, the techniques being used to hide the cost of #Trump’s pet project are inventive.Which may explain why no one wants to discuss a mysterious, $934 million transfer of funds from one of the #Pentagon’s most over-budget, out-of-control projects — the modernization of America’s aging, ground-based nuclear missiles.#hypocrisy
(DIR) Post #AwYjtyW8V4dfgdgzMO by Nonilex@masto.ai
2025-07-27T12:59:05Z
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…congressional #budget sleuths have come to think that amount, slipped into an obscure #Pentagon document…as a “transfer” to an unnamed classified project,…includes the renovation of the new, gold-adorned #AirForceOne that #Trump desperately wants in the air before his term is over. It is not clear if the entire transfer will be devoted to stripping the new Air Force One back to its airframe, but #AirForce ofcls privately acknowledge dipping into nuclear modernization funds for the project.
(DIR) Post #AwYkCe0yx5mXbM1SZU by Nonilex@masto.ai
2025-07-27T13:02:29Z
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…#Trump’s plane probably won’t fly for long: It will take a year or two to get the work done, and then the #Qatar gift — improved with the latest communications & in-flight protective technology — will be transferred to the yet-to-be-created Trump presidential *library* after he leaves office in 2029, the president has said.[So basically Americans are footing the bill for Trump “free” private plane]#theft #law #emoluments #hypocrisy
(DIR) Post #AwYkVARx69TdPRTCzY by Nonilex@masto.ai
2025-07-27T13:05:51Z
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Concerns over the many apparent conflicts of interests involved in the transaction, given Trump’s government dealings & business ties with #Qatar, have swirled since reports of the gift emerged this spring. But #Trump said he was unconcerned, casting the decision as a no-brainer for taxpayers.“I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer,” Trump said in May. “I mean, I could be a stupid person & say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’”#law #emoluments #hypocrisy
(DIR) Post #AwYkgtMQSe1jspTYoK by Nonilex@masto.ai
2025-07-27T13:07:57Z
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It is free in the sense that a used car handed over by a neighbor looking to get it out of his driveway is free. In this case, among the many modifications will be hardened communications, antimissile systems & afterburners to take #Trump quickly to safety an older #AirForceOne did on Sept. 11, 2001, when Al Qaeda attacked the United States. And there is the delicate matter of ridding #Qatar’s jet of any hidden electronic listening devices that #US officials suspect may be embedded in the walls.
(DIR) Post #AwYl8sxHYvPojZ3zdY by Nonilex@masto.ai
2025-07-27T13:13:00Z
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Then…it has to be stuffed w/luxuries & #gold trim with which #Trump surrounds himself, whether in the Oval Office or in the air. The jet’s upper deck has a lounge & a comms center, while the main bedroom can be converted into a sick bay in a medical emergency.…one of Washington’s biggest guessing games…is assessing just where the price tag will end up, on top of the $4 billion already being spent on the wildly-behind-schedule presidential planes that Boeing was supposed to deliver last year.
(DIR) Post #AwYlJvjpYUfcYD2QGu by Nonilex@masto.ai
2025-07-27T13:14:59Z
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It was those delays that led #Trump to look for a *gift*.#AirForce officials privately concede that they are paying for renovations of #Qatar’s #AirForceOne with the transfer from another the massively-over-budget, behind-schedule program, called the #Sentinel. That is named for the missile at the heart of Washington’s long-running effort to rebuild America’s aging, leaky, ground-launched #nuclear missile system.#Theft #law #emoluments #hypocrisy
(DIR) Post #AwYlXb7B1tcMdtTWkq by Nonilex@masto.ai
2025-07-27T13:17:28Z
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The project was first sold to Congress as a $77.7 billion program to replace all 400 #Minuteman III missiles, complete with launch facilities & communications built to withstand both #nuclear & #cyber attack. By the time #Trump came back into office, that figure had ballooned by 81%, to $140 billion & climbing, all to reconstruct what nuclear strategists agree is the most vulnerable, impossible-to-hide element of America’s nuclear deterrent.#Theft #law #emoluments #hypocrisy
(DIR) Post #AwYlff1SNu8L4we1Fw by Nonilex@masto.ai
2025-07-27T13:18:55Z
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And that was the number before the #AirForce announced a few months ago that it would have to dig all new silos across Montana, Wyoming & North Dakota, because the old #Minuteman silos were leaking & crumbling.The first of the Minutemans were installed 55 years ago, when Richard #Nixon was president & Leonid Brezhnev was inside the Kremlin. Washington & Moscow had a combined total of >30,000 nuclear weapons pointed at each other. (Today it is closer to 3,100.)
(DIR) Post #AwYlvnLZCcOzWtkCR6 by Nonilex@masto.ai
2025-07-27T13:21:51Z
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The good news is that in the first #Trump admin, the #AirForce got rid of the command-&-control systems that still used 8-inch floppy disks, proving that the so-called deep state can get something done when it digs, well, deep.Some #nuclear strategists argue that the ground-based nuclear weapons do not need to be replaced at all; they are far more vulnerable than weapons traveling under the sea on stealthy submarines, or that can be loaded on bombers.
(DIR) Post #AwYm5X4QZZZvweN2Zs by Nonilex@masto.ai
2025-07-27T13:23:37Z
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But the #Pentagon doesn’t want to part with a third of the #nuclear “triad,” & the silos & their command posts are big employers in the rural West.They serve another function in the second #Trump admin. The modernization program has proved to be the perfect thing if you were determined to hide how much you are spending on an airplane, especially one equipped to order up a nuclear strike, if needed.#Theft #law #CoverUp #emoluments #hypocrisy
(DIR) Post #AwYmIHy42FUEryTcye by Nonilex@masto.ai
2025-07-27T13:25:55Z
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In testimony before #Congress in June, Troy E. Meink, the #AirForce secretary, said that he thought the cost of the #AirForceOne renovations would be *manageable*. “I think there has been a number thrown around on the order of $1 billion,” he said. “But a lot of those costs associated with that are costs that we’d have experienced anyway, we will just experience them early,” before Boeing delivers its two Air Force Ones. “So it wouldn’t be anywhere near that.”#Trump #law #emoluments #hypocrisy
(DIR) Post #AwYmTL80cpSNrBOk52 by Nonilex@masto.ai
2025-07-27T13:27:55Z
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“We believe the actual retrofit of that aircraft is probably less than $400 million,” he said.If so, that would be a bargain. But engineers & #AirForce experts who have been through similar projects have their doubts that it can be accomplished for anything like that price. Members of #Congress express concern that #Trump will pressure the Air Force to do the work so fast that sufficient security measures are not built into the plane.#Theft #law #CoverUp #emoluments #hypocrisy
(DIR) Post #AwYmbkJirDOaINsxAe by Nonilex@masto.ai
2025-07-27T13:29:26Z
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When asked last week, the #AirForce said it simply could not discuss the cost — or anything else about the plane — because it’s classified.(For collectors of such bureaucratic evasions, yes, the Air Force is willing to discuss the cost of building a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles, but not the cost of renovating #Trump’s aircraft.)#Theft #law #CoverUp #emoluments #hypocrisy
(DIR) Post #AwYn247PrHG1EogAZE by Nonilex@masto.ai
2025-07-27T13:33:33Z
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Only at the #Pentagon could someone reprogram $934 million & expect no one to notice. The coffers were refilled with the passage of the budget reconciliation bill several weeks ago, #budget officials say.“The more we learn about this deal, the more disturbing it becomes,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, who serves on the #ArmedServices Cmte.#Trump #Theft #law #CoverUp #emoluments #hypocrisy
(DIR) Post #AwYn7fwSexGnzcEKo4 by Nonilex@masto.ai
2025-07-27T13:35:11Z
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“The security implications of accepting a private plane from a foreign nation as #AirForceOne & the resulting ethical concerns a gift of that sizes creates were already significant.”But it was more worrisome, Shaheen said, that “this administration is diverting funds from the nuclear modernization budget to finance costly renovations to this plane.”In doing so, she said, “we’re weakening our credibility to fund a vanity project for President #Trump.”#Theft #law #CoverUp #emoluments #hypocrisy
(DIR) Post #AwYqtE61nAgXOS4R2u by Tharpa@hear-me.social
2025-07-27T14:17:18Z
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@Nonilex I bet he never flies in it, because he'll be dead, or in prison.
(DIR) Post #AwYqxCEieHo2me1qkK by ATLeagle@mastodon.online
2025-07-27T14:18:04Z
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@Nonilex can it be forced out of service when it is part of the "library"?
(DIR) Post #AwYvMfHoB9dpw6sE0O by theogrin@chaosfem.tw
2025-07-27T15:07:30Z
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@Nonilex There is a very specific term for this. That term is 'white elephant'. It refers to a 'gift' which is, on paper, quite expensive or otherwise valuable, but in reality has no functional, practical justification for the recipient, and indeed costs far more to maintain than it could ever hope to be worth. I suspect that it was gifted as a joke by the Qatar royal family, seeing if Trump would be stupid enough to grasp it with both his grubby mitts - and sure enough, he did.Even avoiding the sociopolitical ramifications of the most irrational, fathomlessly greedy, unintelligent man ever to fill the high chair being yet more beholden to Qatar, it's an unmitigated disaster of a decision, and I wonder how much of it was just because Trump thinks that style is substance.
(DIR) Post #AwYvT42d3KOERzpCxk by cassandracorvid@mstdn.social
2025-07-27T15:07:45Z
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@Nonilex Cheap considering his weekend marketing boondoggle in Scotland is costing us reportedly $10 million.
(DIR) Post #AwZAuESjuiRTu0S0fo by ChrisHolladay@mastodon.social
2025-07-27T18:01:39Z
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@Nonilex Hopefully the fucking thing goes down like a rock with all the assholes on board
(DIR) Post #AwZB3X1kGCh05NG6Cm by leswarden@mastodon.world
2025-07-27T18:03:20Z
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@Nonilex notice how he slips between ‘I’ and ‘we’. Well DT, YOU may want a costly, secondhand, non-sellable plane…but WE do not.
(DIR) Post #AwZBP7YddU1JSqwGEi by ChrisHolladay@mastodon.social
2025-07-27T18:07:16Z
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@Nonilex Fuckin pimpmobile
(DIR) Post #AwZBUJ4IGd4ebzDZdw by ChrisHolladay@mastodon.social
2025-07-27T18:08:11Z
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@Nonilex Tear apart the plane and still miss surveillance gear 😐
(DIR) Post #AwZEuoQ8cdtzEzlYLA by Lizette603_23@mastodon.social
2025-07-27T18:46:32Z
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@Nonilex since when are taxpayer's taxes "classified"? Since Grift R US
(DIR) Post #AwZHTrMXsLGIPQvQI4 by samiamsam@mastodon.social
2025-07-27T19:15:20Z
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@Nonilex fraud waste abusewhere's doge
(DIR) Post #AwbTuXskGy1kvl7ceW by RevPudDudley@mas.to
2025-07-28T20:44:00Z
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@Nonilex Someone sued CIA to disclose what they do with their budget. Nope! "You are not harmed as an individual, thus you don't have standing to sue, ha ha!"
(DIR) Post #AwgBPjz0KCAakG6YpE by davidarnell@mastodon.world
2025-07-31T03:10:19Z
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@Nonilex Of course this IS the biggest gift in history BUTHowcome nobody is talking about the bigger implication? Trump is part of befitting it as an independent and total control centre for US Gov't and military and he will have THE Command center in his own hands PERMANENTLY!Anybody?