Donald Trump is stealing from the American people and rewriting history

At 3:44 this afternoon, Donald Trump stepped out of the freshly redesigned Air Force One to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” blaring through the massive military hangar. He clapped as he emerged, paused to catch his breath, raised a fist toward the crowd, and then carefully began making his way down the staircase, gripping the rail and staring at his feet the entire time. Halfway down, he stopped, struggling to take in a deep breath, before continuing the rest of the descent and greeting military personnel waiting below.

He was there to show off his newly refurbished luxury jet, one gifted by the ruling family of Qatar and refashioned at taxpayer expense. A flying palace complete with glossy wood finishes, leather interiors, and a paint scheme modeled after his own personal aircraft. This was how the President of the United States chose to spend Juneteenth. Not honoring the day that marks the end of slavery in America, nor reflecting on the unfinished work of equality or freedom. Instead, he arrived to celebrate what he proudly described as a flying White House unlike anything the world had ever seen before. A luxury aircraft remodeled to his personal taste so that he can travel like a King instead of the President of the United States of America.

There is a reason Trump insists that the song is played everywhere. “God Bless the USA” became part of the American identity after September 11th, when it captured the raw, genuine patriotism of a country in grief. Trump commandeered it because he has spent years trying to capture that same spirit, to borrow the emotional power of something that had nothing to do with him. And so there it was again today, blaring through the speakers as he descended the stairs of a foreign country’s luxury jet, asking us to pretend it was a celebration of America rather than another celebration of himself.

Standing in front of that aircraft, Trump told the assembled crowd that it had been “transformed into a flying White House at a level of luxury that nobody has ever seen before.” He recalled personally calling the emir of Qatar to ask for the plane, and then said, without any awareness of how it sounded, “See, a normal president wouldn’t do this. A normal president wants to stay away from aircraft.” He was right about one thing. A normal president would not do this. A normal president has dignity and wouldn’t beg to be given a castaway plane. A real president would see this as a waste of money that could go towards the very real needs of the American people. He went on to say that when the United States lands at airports in London or Germany, “nobody tops this one, and that’s the way we have to have it for our country. Nobody even comes close.” He was not describing the strength of our democracy or the courage of our people. He was describing the interior of a plane that he did not pay for.

The redesign tells its own story. For over 60 years, presidents of both parties traveled aboard aircraft draped in the same robin’s egg blue that Jacqueline Kennedy introduced in 1962. That design was not just a color. It was continuity. It represented the idea that the office was bigger than any one person. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden. All of them flew under the same colors because the presidency was never supposed to be about personal branding. Trump looked at sixty years of shared American history and said, “It was time for a change.” He does not want us to remember the presidents who came before him. He wants to be the only one we see and remember.

Then there is the question of what this arrangement is actually costing us. The Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause explicitly prohibits a president from accepting any present from a foreign state without the consent of Congress, and Congress never voted on this. Senator Patty Murray called it “hard to imagine more brazen corruption or a clearer violation of our Constitution’s Emoluments Clause” and said it “puts our country’s national security at risk.” Trump dismissed the criticism. His former Attorney General, Pam Bondi, had already issued legal guidance clearing the deal, and it moved forward without congressional approval.

But even setting aside the constitutional questions, this plane is not free. Aviation experts estimate the full security overhaul, the installation of classified communications systems, missile defense, and hardened command infrastructure, could cost well over one billion dollars. The Air Force separately leased an additional 747 for pilot training, purchased a used one from Lufthansa for crew familiarization, and built a full three-dimensional mock-up of the interior for staff training. All of that was paid for by American taxpayers.

Under the terms of this arrangement, the aircraft will be transferred to Trump’s presidential library foundation when he leaves office in January 2029. The classified equipment will be stripped out, and the jet will become the property of his foundation. Taxpayers are spending more than a billion dollars to retrofit a four hundred million dollar airplane that will be used for roughly two years before being handed over to Trump. The American public pays to upgrade it, secure it, train pilots on it, operate it, and remove equipment in two years. And then it will become part of Trump’s legacy project.

And while all of this was happening, Trump’s official White House schedule for today listed no events marking Juneteenth. No proclamations, public statements, or ceremonies. For the second consecutive year, the President of the United States refused to acknowledge a federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery. Last year, when pressed about whether he would mark the day, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said simply, “I’m not tracking his signature on a proclamation today.” And that same evening, Trump posted on Truth Social, complaining about “too many non-working holidays,” calling it a cost of “BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all of these businesses closed.”

The American people are seeing this for what it is. A new Franklin and Marshall College poll released this week found that only 29 percent of Pennsylvania’s registered voters rate Trump’s job performance positively, down from 39 percent in March and his lowest mark across 19 versions of the survey dating back to 2017. His approval on handling inflation has fallen to just 17 percent. And in a critical warning sign for November, Democrats in Pennsylvania now hold a 13 point advantage over Republicans heading into the upcoming elections. This is not a small shift. Pennsylvania helped return him to the White House, and now voters there are watching the corruption, the chaos, the rising costs, and the endless spectacle, and they are turning away. The people are paying attention.

Because 24 hours before, Trump stood beneath the lights at Joint Base Andrews, celebrating a luxury aircraft remodeled in his image, a large crowd gathered on Chicago’s South Side for the dedication of the Obama Presidential Center. The event brought together all three other living former presidents. Clinton, Bush, and Biden were all there. The only living president absent was the current one. Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder performed. Jennifer Hudson, John Legend, Common, Christina Aguilera, and Bono took the stage as well. The center opened to the public today, on Juneteenth. And that timing was not an accident.

When Michelle Obama stood at the podium yesterday, her message was heard loud and clear. Without ever saying Trump’s name, she made it clear exactly who she was talking about. She said that her husband had “proven that a lasting legacy isn’t an award or name on a building or a number of zeros in a bank account, but the difference we make in one another’s lives.” Then she included this:

“And that’s why, folks, we simply don’t have the luxury or time to be cynical or complacent, to wring our hands in despair, to wait for someone else to fix the problem. Y’all, hope is all we have, because hope is the essential spark that lights the fire of change, but hope is a choice. Whether or not we use our voices to speak up is a choice. Voting is a choice. Being a decent human being is a choice. Believing that we still hold the power to build a country that reflects us all is a choice.”

Today, on Juneteenth, those words carry a weight that reaches far beyond that ceremony in Chicago. So many of us did not grow up with Juneteenth. We were not taught about it in school. And we did not know the history of Liberation Day until much later in life. We were taught that slavery ended with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Yet for millions of Black Americans held in bondage across the South, freedom was not a signature on a page. It was a promise that had not yet arrived. The Civil War ended in April of 1865, more than two years later, but even then, freedom did not come right away. More than two months passed before Union soldiers finally arrived in Galveston, Texas, on June 19th and told the enslaved people there that they were free. Texas was among the last to receive the news. Justice was not automatic. Rights were declared, but they still had to be defended, enforced, and carried forward by people willing to do the work. Liberation was not a single moment. It moved at the speed of courage and geography, and for those who waited the longest, it arrived years after it was promised. That is why Juneteenth matters. It is a living history lesson and a day to be celebrated.

It is also a reminder that freedom is not real until it reaches everyone. That a nation’s promise means nothing if it is not enforced. That the distance between a declaration and its fulfillment can be measured in years, and in lives, and in suffering.

Everything we are seeing today, the corruption, the erasure, the cruelty, so much of it traces back to the same root. Racism and greed, and a man who has been able to weasel his way into the most powerful office in the world with the help of enablers who benefit from keeping him there.

Tonight, we need to hold onto the hope that Michelle Obama spoke about yesterday. That we can’t wait for someone else to fix our problems. That all of us have a responsibility to use our voices and speak out. Because we already know who the heroes of this story are. Us. Ordinary people who refuse to give up on each other, on democracy, and on the country we love. No one is coming to save us, because we are the ones doing the saving. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.

Picture of the day: I find so much hope from the small protests people just decide to have on a Friday. The ones people hold not because there are nationwide rallies planned, but the ones where a person or two take it upon themselves to speak out and remind us all what this country was really built on.

Sources:

https://abcnews.com/Politics/trump-unveil-qatari-donated-747-serve-air-force/story?id=134040929

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/19/trump-unveils-the-new-air-force-one-a-converted-qatari-jet.html

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-trump-unveils-new-air-force-one-plane-gifted-by-qatar-at-joint-base-andrews

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/air-force-one-new-plane-trump-qatar/

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/20/g-s1-73675/trump-silent-about-juneteenth

https://www.fandmpoll.org/franklin-marshall-college-poll-release-june-2026/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/live-blog/obama-presidential-center-museum-opening-ceremony-live-updates-rcna350649

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/michelle-obama-speech-presidential-center-opening/

https://barackobama.medium.com/president-obama-and-mrs-obamas-remarks-at-the-opening-of-the-obama-presidential-center-cb614fd04bdd