Trump at 30,000 Feet: Airborne Nonsense and Grounded Rights

From declaring King Charles his “wonderful friend” to fantasizing about seizing air bases, jailing protesters, and yanking TV licenses, the president’s Air Force One gaggle was a turbulence of ego

Whew. Today’s Air Force One gaggle was like watching a fog machine argue with itself.

Trump opened with courtier vibes, purring about “being with King Charles, he’s a wonderful guy,” before adding, “the artwork. I saw more paintings than any human being has ever saw and statues.” The tone was Windsor-meets-Mar-a-Lago, part statecraft, part nouveau-riche gallery tour. He insisted, “I knew him before, but now I know him a lot better,” casually casting Charles as his new pal, an awkward fit for a monarch who has spent his reign championing renewable energy while Trump spent the rest of the gaggle railing against “stupid windmills” and solar panels that “fry” birds. But the kingly reverie quickly devolved into geopolitics and domestic score-settling with all the precision of a shopping cart with one bad wheel. Asked about “regime change in Venezuela,” Trump twice insisted, “No, I haven’t,” then, seconds later, flexed his imaginary muscles: “We’re going to finish the wars. We have a couple of them going, as you know. You look at Gaza, you look at Russia, Ukraine. We’re working on that and I’m working with Congress.” And at some unspecified future “right time,” he promised he’d call a ceasefire “harsh.” Sure.

He mangled his way through what sounded like Bagram Air Base, “Bram… Bakra… you could land a planet on top of it”, to argue it should be “brought back,” because “they need a lot from us.”

He declared it “gross incompetence to give that up” since “it’s one of the most powerful bases in the world in terms of runway strength and length. The strength and length. You could land anything on there.” To Trump, this wasn’t just an airfield, it was apparently a cosmic docking station. “Can you imagine? They gave it up for nothing. Just, oh, let’s leave. And it’s an hour away from where they make their missiles. China.” The cartography of that plan remains, let’s say, lunar.

On Antifa, he boasted about designating a leaderless movement a terrorist organization: “We’re going to find out, right? We’re going to see.” When pressed on how you target a group with no defined membership, he had nothing beyond the royal “we’ll see.” On protesters at Joe’s Stone Crab, he suggested jail, calling them a “threat.” The free speech portion of the program ended there.

Energy? He delivered his usual elegy for fossil fuels and tirade against renewables: the North Sea is overflowing with untapped riches, windmills are “stupid,” “ugly,” “bad for the environment,” and “every time you put up a windmill, it costs the country millions of dollars a year to have that horrible thing turned.” Solar fared no better, cue the imagery of “black plastic from China” and birds “fried” on landing. “You don’t need a sauce,” he said, auditioning for Hannibal Lecter’s climate podcast.

He cheered Congress censuring Ilhan Omar — “Good… she should be impeached” — over her comments after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The reality was a bit less triumphant: Nancy Mace’s censure measure collapsed in the House 214–213, after four Republicans crossed over to join Democrats in blocking it. Cory Mills of Florida was one of the defectors, citing the “First Amendment” as his reason. Mace, furious, accused Mills of “stifling free speech” and even claimed he “threatened” her in a text, to which Mills coolly replied that reminding a colleague of her past Jan. 6 criticisms of Trump hardly counts as a threat.

The whole episode quickly devolved into a GOP knife fight, with Mace sending the names of the four dissenters to Trump himself like a tattling courtier. Mills, for his part, enjoyed a side benefit: Democrats quietly dropped their retaliatory censure effort over his unresolved ethics and abuse allegations. But none of that made it into Trump’s version of events, in his retelling, Omar was already impeached in spirit, and ready for deportation. He then plunged into nativist sneering: “They come from a place with nothing… and then they tell us how to run our country.” He asked the press corps, as if Somalia were a blank spot on the map: “Is she originally from Somalia? Yes, sir. So, how are they doing? How’s their government? Do they have a president? Do they have a council? Do they have anything? Do they have police?” The rhetorical answer, in Trump’s world, was no, a country of nothing, populated by nobodies who have no right to sit in Congress. (Somalia does, in fact, have a president, a parliament, a police force, and, unlike Trump’s fantasy world, a functioning grasp of geography, but facts were barred from the cabin.)

London’s mayor? “Among the worst mayors in the world.” Trump bragged he “asked that he not be there” for the state visit, sneering about “the stampings and the dirt and the filth.” He told reporters, “He wanted to be there as I understand. I didn’t want him. I’ve not liked him for a long time.”

What we know: Khan wasn’t at the state banquet or the big Windsor gatherings. Officially, no one from the Palace or City Hall has confirmed he was disinvited; Trump’s own boast is the only account on the record. Given the long-running feud, Khan has blasted Trump’s Muslim ban rhetoric and Trump has called him a “stone cold loser”, the story fits neatly into Trump’s pattern of rewriting protocol as personal score-settling. Whether Khan was actually scratched from the guest list by Trump’s request or was simply never invited, the effect was the same: a public snub, wrapped in Trump’s glee at expelling an enemy from what he imagines as his court.

And then came the kicker: “On immigration, he’s a disaster.” Which is rich, since the mayor of London doesn’t control Britain’s borders, that’s handled by Parliament and the Home Office. Khan can weigh in on refugee housing or local policing, but he’s not in charge of who stamps passports at Heathrow. Trump’s swipe revealed the absurdity of his vendetta: berating Khan for a “border policy” he couldn’t control even if he wanted to.

Diplomatic!

Crime and punishment got the paramilitary flourish: D.C. is safe now because “we took 1,500 people out of there,” many “not coming back,” and what Chicago “really need is our big, strong soldiers.” He claimed he’s already had FBI in Chicago for months, but the solution is troops, immediately.

Then came the licensing fantasies. Having pushed Jimmy Kimmel off the air, Trump mused that networks whose late-night hosts “hit Trump” should lose their broadcast licenses: “I would think maybe their license should be taken away. It will be up to Brendan Carr.” He called the FCC commissioner “a patriot. He loves our country and he’s a tough guy.” He floated that “97%” of coverage opposes him, yet he somehow “won easily… all seven swing states, popular won everything” , a greatest-hits remix of grievances and imaginary victories.

He even waxed nostalgic for the days when networks had to reapply for licenses every few years, sighing: “It was a big deal every four or five years… I don’t hear about that. The only one I’ve heard even bring it up is Brendan Carr.” And, as ever, he congratulated himself on extracting big settlements from broadcasters: “They had to pay me $15 million… I beat CBS for much more money than that.” The implied moral was crystal clear: criticize me, lose your license; flatter me, keep your spectrum.There were the pageant touches, “the women looked beautiful… even the men looked beautiful”, and a royal gossip button: he “sat with” Princess Kate, Melania “thought she was great,” and William is “wonderful.” The food? “Whatever the hell they served.”

If you were hoping for clarity on Ukraine, Gaza, Antifa, or the role of federal power in American cities, you got a flavor instead: punitive, personal, and permanently aggrieved. The policy through-line is simple enough to embroider on a state-dinner napkin, Drill, Deport, Discipline the Press, while the constitutional niceties get tossed in the overhead bin.