Eric Lipton

speaker

759 appearances 6 recordings 4 series first heard Feb 2025 last heard 5 Aug

Eric Lipton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

Appearances

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Fresh Air · How Trump made an estimated $2.2 billion last year · 5 Aug 2026 podcast

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, I mean, we have been tracking Trump's interest in having a new Air Force One since early 2025.

After he returned to the White House, he was immediately obsessed with having a new plane.

He felt like the old Air Force One does not kind of meet his standards and it wasn't worthy of a leader like the Middle East leader.

leaders have these luxurious planes.

He was very jealous and he said so, and he wanted a fresh new plane with luxurious trappings.

And so as of early 25, we started to look at this plane that he identified that he wanted to get a hold of from the Qatari government.

And we were already skeptical by what we were told by people at the Air Force that it could ever be actually ready to serve as a mobile White House command center for the United States government.

And so once it was delivered, we immediately began investigating that.

And it became obvious based on the conversations that we had that there were shortcomings.

There were shortcuts that were taken to get the plane to the president quickly, not only with its air defense systems, but with other smaller things like special exits that are there that are more secure, that are lower and that have built in stairs that the president has to land in an airport without notice.

And there's not ground crews there.

or a second backup power system for the plane that allows its engines to start faster so it can get off the ground quickly if it has to.

Or if it has a power failure, it can still communicate internationally with military leaders or other world leaders.

So these are things that are missing in the retrofitted plane and the rush to get it to them and get them a luxury ride.

Well, the FAA, when it certifies planes, it assumes that the plane is prepared for an emergency landing that's going to have a pretty intense G-force on your body.

And so it tests the chairs to anticipate that force of an emergency landing.

But when it's a sideways-facing chair, it has a different stress on your body.

So this plane has sideways facing chairs.

It's a luxury environment.

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