It Ain't Easy to Turn a Flying Palace Into a Flying Fortress For King Trump

Aug 10, 2026 06:30 PM EDT, Mon

Pentagon picks the wrong person to punish for Trump’s Air Force One debacle

Those looking for the actual scandal should look at what the president did, not at what the former Air Force secretary said.

Aug. 10, 2026, 1:01 PM EDT By Steve Benen

By any objective measure, the Qatari-donated Air Force One was already a legal, political and ethical mess, which grew vastly worse last month.

In early July, Donald Trump took the new plane to Turkey for a NATO summit, but he chose not to fly home on it. The president said by way of social media that he was taking the older Air Force One “for old times’ sake” and and denied that the switch had been made because of security concerns.

The New York Times published a related report three weeks ago that highlighted the plane’s deficiencies, which were visible to the naked eye.

Frank Kendall, the former Air Force secretary who supervised the presidential plane modernization project, told the Times soon after, “Time didn’t permit all the normal Air Force One modifications, so some mix of security, communications and support is missing.” He added, “Frankly, I’m surprised to see this plane used outside the U.S.”

Weeks later, Kendall also told the newspaper, “People need to be aware it has a lot of shortfalls compared to Air Force One; they do add a measure of risk.”

The good news is, the Trump administration finally found someone to punish for the Air Force One debacle. The bad news is, officials decided to punish Kendall. The Wall Street Journal reported:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revoked the security clearance of a former high-ranking Biden administration defense official for allegedly leaking classified information about Air Force One. […]

“Safeguarding classified information is a non-negotiable duty,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote in a post on X. “Those who violate that trust forfeit the privilege of access and any role requiring it.” Parnell’s post didn’t specifically say what classified information Kendall released, but referenced “classified information regarding Air Force One’s capabilities.”

“I’m mystified,” Kendall told the Journal soon after. “I’ve been extremely careful to not say anything that could be classified, and as far as I know I have not said anything classified. … So far no one has told me what I’m supposed to have revealed.”

For now, let’s skip the irony of Hegseth’s Pentagon stressing the importance of “safeguarding classified information,” given his unfortunate track record of failing to properly safeguard classified information.

Instead, let’s consider the Defense Department’s decision to punish someone who doesn’t appear to have done anything wrong.

To be sure, the Republican administration has gone to outlandish lengths to weaponize security clearances over the course of Trump’s second term. The White House has routinely treated security clearances as a treat that only the president’s political allies are entitled to enjoy.

But punishing Kendall, who exited public office early last year, is especially bizarre. The former Air Force secretary offered on-the-record quotes to journalists, sharing uncontroversial observations rooted in his extensive experience and expertise.

Hegseth’s Pentagon may have found Kendall’s assessments insulting, but it’s not the former secretary’s fault that the administration screwed this up so badly.

We’re talking about a controversy in which a sitting American president accepted a legally dubious “gift,” and, like a child who wanted immediate access to his new toy, rushed its approval process, apparently indifferent to the fact that many of the security and safety features that were included in the previous Air Force One were left off the Qatari-donated plane.

Those looking for the actual scandal should look at what the president did, not at what the former Air Force secretary said.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

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