Republican senator blocks bill seeking to stop upgrades to Trump's Qatar-gifted Air Force One

WASHINGTON, DC: Senator Deb Fischer from Nebraska stepped in and stopped a Democratic bill on Wednesday, July 22.

The bill would’ve stopped the Defense Department from spending more taxpayer money to upgrade the luxury jet that Qatar gave to the US, the same jet President Trump ordered to be turned into the new Air Force One.

Chuck Schumer calls it 'corruption,' cites nuclear-fund transfer

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, had sought unanimous consent to pass his Presidential Airlift Security Act, which would have prohibited the Pentagon from using further public funds on the Boeing 747-8, worth roughly $400 million.

Fischer's objection came just days after Trump himself said the jet would be "maxed out" with additional security equipment and after it emerged that the aircraft was not considered secure enough for Trump to fly home on after last month's NATO summit in Turkey.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the jet is slated for further upgrades this fall that will ground it for about a month, during which Trump will fly on the older Air Force One instead. Leavitt maintained the new jet is "perfectly safe for the president's travels" in its current form.

Schumer used the floor speech to renew his criticism of the arrangement, which he has repeatedly called the largest foreign gift a sitting president has ever accepted.

"You thought this illegal gift was bad before, it's even worse now. We just learned that this new jet wasn't safe enough for Trump to make the return flight from the NATO summit in Turkey," Schumer said, adding that taxpayers would now be on the hook for further security upgrades on top of what has already been spent.

Democrats have previously noted that the Pentagon shifted hundreds of millions of dollars from its nuclear missile modernization budget toward the retrofit project, a detail that has fueled concerns about both the cost and the trade-offs involved in prioritizing the jet's upgrades.

GOP objections center on security risk, not just cost

“Now he wants the taxpayers to fund his palace in the sky as well. Trump’s $400 million foreign jet, the biggest gift a president has received from a foreign government ever, is anything but free. Taxpayers will have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to outfit Trump’s luxury jet with the security upgrades it needs to serve as Air Force One,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.

Fischer rose to object and pointed out that Schumer’s proposal had already been considered and voted down by the Senate earlier this year.

Fischer also argued that Schumer’s bill would negatively impact the Survivable Airborne Operations Center program, which is designed to provide the president with a hardened airborne command post during a nuclear conflict.

“Unfortunately, this legislation would also apply to a different aircraft, the Survivable Air Operations Center aircraft. Those aircraft were actually purchased from Korea Air so this legislation would hamper a crucial program that ensures presidential safety in the event of nuclear war,” she said.

Republicans who are blocking the bill aren’t really arguing that it’s okay to accept the gift. Instead, they’re focusing on national security. Schumer argued the need to make additional security upgrades to the Qatari jet further shows why accepting it was a bad idea.