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‘Apprentice’ star Jeremy Strong says ‘truth under assault’

“The Apprentice” star Jeremy Strong — who was nominated for an Oscar for playing Donald Trump’s ruthless early mentor — said Tuesday that “truth is under assault”.Strong told reporters at the Cannes Film Festival that lawyer Roy Cohn, who he played in the controversial biopic, was the inventor of “fake news”.President Trump’s lawyers threatened to file a lawsuit against the film, which was released during last year’s presidential campaign.”Roy Cohn I see essentially as the progenitor of fake news and alternative facts, and we’re living in the aftermath of what I think he created,” said Strong, who is on the jury at Cannes.The actor, best known for his role in the series “Succession”, said we are living at a “time where truth is under assault, where truth is becoming increasingly in danger”.”Here specifically in this temple of film, the role of film is increasingly critical, because it can combat those forces in the entropy of truth, and it can communicate truths, individual truths, human truths, societal truths, and affirm and celebrate our shared humanity,” he said.”The Apprentice”, directed by Ali Abbasi, portrays a younger Trump as a nervous, naive outsider trying to make his way in cutthroat Manhattan.But in one shocking scene, it also shows him raping his first wife, Ivana, after she belittles him for growing overweight and bald.In real life, Ivana accused Trump of raping her during divorce proceedings, but later withdrew the allegation. She died in 2022.The movie also shows Trump suffering erectile dysfunction, and undergoing liposuction and surgery for hair loss.The film was eventually released in October last year before the presidential election that he won.In his first 100 days, his administration has slashed federal funding for disinformation research.Social media platforms have scaled back content moderation, with Meta suspending third-party fact-checking in the United States.

US consumer inflation cooled in April to lowest level since 2021

US consumer inflation cooled slightly in April to reach its lowest level since February 2021, beating expectations as President Donald Trump’s sweeping “liberation day” tariffs came into effect.The data covers the early days of Trump’s new levies against most countries — including steep duties on China — which spooked financial markets and raised fears of a spike in prices. The US president has since reversed some of the duties and paused others, helping to soothe nervous investors. The consumer price index (CPI) eased to 2.3 percent in April from a year ago, a tick below the 2.4 percent figure recorded in March, the Labor Department said in a statement. This was the smallest 12-month increase since February 2021, and was slightly lower than the median estimate from surveys of economists conducted by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.”This may be the low point in 2025,” Nationwide Senior Economist Ben Ayers wrote in a note shared with AFP. “As tariff costs increasingly flow into consumer prices, we expect a jump in the CPI this summer, pushing the annual reading back above three percent.”Inflation picked up to 0.2 percent from a month earlier, with “more than half” of the increase due to a 0.3 percent rise in shelter costs, according to the Labor Department.Excluding volatile food and energy costs, inflation increased 0.2 percent from a month earlier, and by 2.8 percent over the past 12 months.The monthly figure was slightly below expectations, while the annual figure was in line with forecasts. US stocks opened mixed on the news. – ‘Too early’ to tell -Despite the good news overall, there were nevertheless some signs of Trump’s tariffs in the data. The index for household furnishings and operations increased 1.0 percent in April after standing still in March, the Labor Department said. In a recent investor note, economists at Deutsche Bank had flagged that this data point would provide a good indication of how some “import-heavy categories” could be affected by tariffs.But, they added, it was still “too early for tariffs to be evident in the aggregate numbers.” The energy index — which fell sharply in March — increased 0.7 percent in April, according to the Labor Department, spurred by a sharp rise in natural gas and electricity prices. The gasoline index decreased 0.1 percent over the month on a seasonally-adjusted basis, and by 11.8 percent over the past 12 months.”And just like that, the markets’ twin fears — a tariff-induced recession and sticky inflation — have been greatly assuaged,” Northlight Asset Management chief investment officer Chris Zaccarelli said in a statement.”Fears of slowing growth and a recession caused by punitive tariffs drove markets lower in the first week of April,” he said. “But they’ve rebounded on the heels of a tariff pause and a Chinese trade breakthrough, and now a better-than-expected inflation report removes the last big overhang for the market.”The data will likely be well-received by the Federal Reserve as it weighs when to cut interest rates. Futures traders see a roughly 90 percent chance that it will extend its recent pause at the next rate decision in June, holding its benchmark lending rate at between 4.25 percent and 4.50 percent, according to data from CME Group.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ ex Cassie expected to testify

Sean “Diddy” Combs’s former partner Casandra Ventura is expected to testify at his trial Tuesday with a now infamous clip of the fallen music mogul allegedly beating the singer expected to dominate questioning. Jurors heard Monday that the hip-hop icon used violence and threats of reputational ruin to control women, including Ventura, whom he abused for years, before hearing graphic witness testimony.In a hotel surveillance clip from March 2016 shown to jurors Monday, Combs is apparently seen brutally beating and dragging singer and model Ventura, who is now pregnant, down a hallway.A former security officer at an LA area InterContinental hotel, Israel Florez, told the court Monday that he was first on the scene after the incident and that Combs sought to pay him off.Florez’s testimony provided the foundation for the prosecution to introduce the security footage that was published by CNN last year.Prosecutor Emily Johnson also alleged Monday that Combs exerted control over Ventura by threatening to release videos of her participating in elaborate sex parties dubbed “freak-offs.”The panel of 12 jurors and six alternates responsible for determining Combs’s fate heard of the famed artist’s explosive outbursts and an attempt to preserve his own reputation and celebrity through bribery.But the 55-year-old’s defense team insisted while some of his behavior was questionable — at times constituting domestic abuse — it did not amount to evidence of racketeering and sex trafficking with which he is charged.- ‘Coercive and criminal’ -Combs has pleaded not guilty on all counts, including the racketeering charge that the hip-hop pioneer led a sex crime ring that included drug-fueled sex parties by use of force, threats and violence.Johnson also told jurors Combs had set a man’s car ablaze and dangled a woman from a balcony, and made impossible demands of his lovers and employees alike.”Let me be clear,” US attorney Johnson said, “this case is not about a celebrity’s private sexual preferences.””It’s coercive and criminal.”But Combs’s defense lawyer Teny Geragos told jurors the “case is about love, jealousy and infidelity and money.”Geragos called Combs’s accusers “capable, strong adult women,” and said his situation with Ventura was a “toxic relationship” but “between two people who loved each other.””Being a willing participant in your own sex life is not sex trafficking,” she said, adding that the defense would admit there was domestic violence — but that Combs is not charged with such crimes.Florez’s testimony was followed by a male dancer who engaged in a sexual relationship, often in exchange for money, with Combs and Ventura from 2012 to approximately the end of 2013.If convicted, the one-time rap producer and global superstar, who is often credited for his role in bringing hip-hop into the mainstream, could spend the rest of his life in prison. The proceedings are expected to last eight to 10 weeks.

Putin skipping talks would signal Moscow not seeking peace: Kyiv

Ukraine said Tuesday that if Vladimir Putin skips talks in Turkey it would be a “clear sign” to the world the Russian leader is not serious about peace, and the West should reply with boosted military support to Kyiv.The meeting set for Thursday in Istanbul would be the first direct negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian officials since the early months of Moscow’s invasion in 2022.Zelensky has called on Putin to personally attend the talks that the Kremlin leader himself suggested, but Moscow on Tuesday declined for the second day running to respond to that invitation.”If Vladimir Putin refuses to come to Turkey, it will be the final signal that Russia does not want to end this war, that Russia is not willing and not ready for any negotiations,” Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said in a statement published by the Ukrainian presidency.US President Donald Trump on Monday urged both leaders to attend and said he was “thinking” about going to the talks as well.But Putin’s spokesman on Tuesday refused to say who Russia would send to Istanbul.”The Russian side continues to prepare for the talks scheduled for Thursday. That is all we can say at this point. We do not intend to comment further at this time,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.Asked if he could name Russia’s negotiating team, Peskov said: “No… as soon as the president deems it necessary, we will announce it.”Putin proposed negotiations in a late-night statement over the weekend — a counteroffer after Kyiv and European countries urged Moscow to agree to a full and unconditional 30-day ceasefire starting Monday.Tens of thousands have been killed and millions forced to flee their homes since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, while Moscow’s army now controls around one-fifth of the country — including the Crimean peninsula, annexed in 2014.- Sanctions, military aid -Russia did not explicitly respond to Ukraine and the leaders of France, Britain, Germany and Poland calling for Moscow to agree a 30-day ceasefire from Monday, though the Kremlin blasted European “ultimatums” in an apparent rejection.Kyiv on Tuesday urged fresh support from its Western backers if Putin refused to talk to Zelensky in Istanbul.”If Russia refuses to negotiate, there must be a strong response from the United States and the entire world: new sanctions against Russia and increased military aid to Ukraine.”Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he is ready to host and urged the warring sides on Monday to seize the “window of opportunity” to reach a peace settlement.Trump told reporters on Monday he would attend talks if he “thought it would be helpful”.”I was thinking about actually flying over there. There’s a possibility of it, I guess, if I think things can happen,” Trump told journalists at the White House prior to departing for a trip to the Middle East.Putin has said any direct talks with Ukraine should focus on the “root causes” of the conflict, and did not “exclude” a possible ceasefire coming out of any talks in Istanbul.Russia’s references to the “root causes” of the conflict typically refer to alleged grievances with Kyiv and the West that Moscow has put forward as justification for its invasion.They include pledges to “de-Nazify” and de-militarise Ukraine, protect Russian speakers in the country’s east and push back against NATO expansion.Kyiv and the West have rejected all of them, saying Russia’s invasion is nothing more than an imperial-style land grab.Russian and Ukrainian officials held talks in Istanbul in March 2022 aimed at halting the conflict but did not strike a deal.Contact between the warring sides has been extremely limited since, mainly dedicated to humanitarian issues like prisoner-of-war exchanges and the return of killed soldiers’ bodies.

‘Unlimited power’: Testimony against Sean Combs tells of lurid violence

The courtroom fell eerily silent as the footage of Sean “Diddy” Combs beating, kicking and dragging his then-girlfriend began — a video already seen worldwide but which took on new gravity played before the jurors who will determine his future.Prosecutors played the footage repeatedly throughout their questioning of Israel Florez, a police officer who in 2016 was the security guard during an encounter with Combs that could prove pivotal during the fallen music mogul’s federal racketeering and sex trafficking trial.Combs’s family, including his 18-year-old twin daughters, watched stoically on Monday as prosecutors played the harrowing footage again and again.”She just kept saying she wanted to leave,” Florez said of Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, the singer who was dating Combs at the time and is expected to testify in the trial as early as Tuesday.Visibly tense but intensely alert, Combs watched as the security guard described the artist’s attempts to bribe him with a wad of bills to stay quiet over the incident at a Los Angeles hotel.The immensely wealthy mogul who was a key figure in 1990s and 2000s-era hip hop is accused of running a criminal sex ring that enforced its power with arson, kidnapping, bribery and forced labor.”He sometimes called himself the king,” said prosecutor Emily Johnson during opening statements.”And he expected to be treated like one.”Combs denies all charges, and his defense team says the sex acts were consensual.CNN released the security footage of the hotel encounter involving Combs and Ventura last year, and a number of jurors said during selection they were acquainted with it.But Monday’s testimony included fresh details, like photos of a smashed vase of flowers Florez said he found Ventura huddled next to.Florez said Combs had a “devilish stare” when the security guard arrived to the scene.He added that he offered to call the police but didn’t because Ventura, who he described as having a “purple” eye, insisted multiple times she simply wanted to go.- ‘Just for insurance’ -Florez’s testimony was followed by that of Daniel Phillip, a now 41-year-old who ran a “male revue” show in New York.He said he first met Ventura and Combs in 2012, after he was called to perform at a bachelorette party.He arrived at Manhattan’s Gramercy Hotel expecting to do a quick striptease for a group of partying women, he said.But instead Ventura, wearing red lace lingerie paired with high heels, a red wig and dark sunglasses, answered the door.Thus began Phillip’s relationship with the famous pair, an encounter that began with the dancer giving Ventura a massage with baby oil and ended with sex while a masked Combs watched in the corner.Phillip would routinely receive payment from the couple anywhere from $700 to $6,000, he told jurors.Throughout Phillip’s at times intensely lurid testimony, members of Combs’s family, including his 18-year-old twin daughters, left the room.Phillip said his enthusiasm for the relationship — which involved Combs directing sexual acts and sometimes filming them — waned after the first time he witnessed Combs strike and drag Ventura by the hair.”I was shocked,” Phillip said. “It came out of nowhere. I was terrified.”Phillip said he urged Ventura to get out — but that she insisted she would be alright.After witnessing Combs’s abuse Phillip said he began to find it difficult to perform sexually in front of him.Asked why he didn’t call the police, Phillip said that “this was someone with unlimited power.”Combs had already previously taken a photo of Phillip’s identification card “just for insurance,” the dancer said.”I understood it to be he was threatening me.”Phillip’s testimony will continue Tuesday.

Inner workings of AI an enigma – even to its creators

Even the greatest human minds building generative artificial intelligence that is poised to change the world admit they do not comprehend how digital minds think.”People outside the field are often surprised and alarmed to learn that we do not understand how our own AI creations work,” Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei wrote in an essay posted online in April.”This lack of understanding is essentially unprecedented in the history of technology.”Unlike traditional software programs that follow pre-ordained paths of logic dictated by programmers, generative AI (gen AI) models are trained to find their own way to success once prompted.In a recent podcast Chris Olah, who was part of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI before joining Anthropic, described gen AI as “scaffolding” on which circuits grow.Olah is considered an authority in so-called mechanistic interpretability, a method of reverse engineering AI models to figure out how they work.This science, born about a decade ago, seeks to determine exactly how AI gets from a query to an answer.”Grasping the entirety of a large language model is an incredibly ambitious task,” said Neel Nanda, a senior research scientist at the Google DeepMind AI lab. It was “somewhat analogous to trying to fully understand the human brain,” Nanda added to AFP, noting neuroscientists have yet to succeed on that front.Delving into digital minds to understand their inner workings has gone from a little-known field just a few years ago to being a hot area of academic study.”Students are very much attracted to it because they perceive the impact that it can have,” said Boston University computer science professor Mark Crovella.The area of study is also gaining traction due to its potential to make gen AI even more powerful, and because peering into digital brains can be intellectually exciting, the professor added.- Keeping AI honest -Mechanistic interpretability involves studying not just results served up by gen AI but scrutinizing calculations performed while the technology mulls queries, according to Crovella.”You could look into the model…observe the computations that are being performed and try to understand those,” the professor explained.Startup Goodfire uses AI software capable of representing data in the form of reasoning steps to better understand gen AI processing and correct errors.The tool is also intended to prevent gen AI models from being used maliciously or from deciding on their own to deceive humans about what they are up to.”It does feel like a race against time to get there before we implement extremely intelligent AI models into the world with no understanding of how they work,” said Goodfire chief executive Eric Ho.In his essay, Amodei said recent progress has made him optimistic that the key to fully deciphering AI will be found within two years.”I agree that by 2027, we could have interpretability that reliably detects model biases and harmful intentions,” said Auburn University associate professor Anh Nguyen.According to Boston University’s Crovella, researchers can already access representations of every digital neuron in AI brains.”Unlike the human brain, we actually have the equivalent of every neuron instrumented inside these models”, the academic said. “Everything that happens inside the model is fully known to us. It’s a question of discovering the right way to interrogate that.”Harnessing the inner workings of gen AI minds could clear the way for its adoption in areas where tiny errors can have dramatic consequences, like national security, Amodei said.For Nanda, better understanding what gen AI is doing could also catapult human discoveries, much like DeepMind’s chess-playing AI, AlphaZero, revealed entirely new chess moves that none of the grand masters had ever thought about.Properly understood, a gen AI model with a stamp of reliability would grab competitive advantage in the market.Such a breakthrough by a US company would also be a win for the nation in its technology rivalry with China.”Powerful AI will shape humanity’s destiny,” Amodei wrote.”We deserve to understand our own creations before they radically transform our economy, our lives, and our future.”

Progressive influencer tells of detention at US airport

A high-profile left-wing influencer and political commentator said Monday he was detained for hours by US border officials and interrogated about his political views. US citizen Hasan Piker — who has millions of followers on YouTube, Twitch and X, and been outspoken in his criticism of Israel — says he was held at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport for over two hours on Sunday.He spoke out as the administration of President Donald Trump is facing growing criticism over claims of punitive action taken by federal agents against US citizens and legal residents for merely voicing progressive opinions.Pike said his exchanges with officials were largely cordial but an officer asked his views on Trump and whether he has been in contact with militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.”He’s like, ‘Do you talk about Trump?’ And that was the first time where I was like, ‘What is this question?'” Piker said on a video posted to his YouTube account.”I literally straight up told him. I was like, ‘Why are you asking me this… what does this have to do with anything?'”Piker says he told the official: “I don’t like Trump. Like, what are you going to do? It’s protected by the First Amendment.”The Turkish-American 33-year-old was born in New Jersey, and has hosted US Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on his platform in the past.Department of Homeland Security official Tricia McLaughlin responded Monday denying that Piker’s political beliefs triggered the secondary screening, according to media reports.”Upon entering the country, this individual was referred for further inspection — a routine, lawful process that occurs daily, and can apply for any traveler. Once his inspection was complete, he was promptly released,” McLaughlin told US media.Piker maintains that his online content has never broken the law and only engaged in speech protected by the US Constitution.”The reason for why they’re doing that is, I think, to try to create an environment of fear, to try to get people like myself — or at least like others that would be in my shoes that don’t have that same level of security — to shut… up,” he added. Advocacy group Defending Rights & Dissent said it was “deeply disturbed” by the notion of border officials stopping political commentators to interrogate them about constitutionally-protected speech. “Such an abuse of power is an affront to press freedom,” it said.

US, China agree to slash tariffs as Trump says will speak to Xi

The United States and China announced Monday an agreement to drastically reduce tit-for-tat tariffs for 90 days, an outcome President Donald Trump dubbed a “total reset” as he said talks with counterpart Xi Jinping could soon follow.After the first meetings between Washington and Beijing since Trump ratcheted up his trade war, the world’s two biggest economies agreed in a joint statement to bring their triple-digit tariffs down to two figures and continue negotiations.The announcement sent financial markets soaring after weeks of turmoil over tariff fears. Major Wall Street indexes surged, with the broad-based S&P 500 closing 3.3 percent higher.”Yesterday we achieved a total reset with China after productive talks in Geneva,” Trump said. “I’ll speak to President Xi, maybe at the end of the week.”US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described weekend discussions with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and international trade representative Li Chenggang as “productive” and “robust” with both sides anticipated to meet again soon.Trump’s fresh duties on many imports from China came up to 145 percent this year, compared to 10 percent for other countries in a global tariff blitz launched last month.Beijing hit back with duties of 125 percent on US goods.The United States agreed to lower its tariffs on Chinese goods to 30 percent while China will reduce its own to 10 percent.These actions take effect at 12:01 am on Wednesday, according to an executive order released by the White House.The United States also lowered a levy on low-value imports from China that had hit e-commerce sites such as Shein and Temu. Under Trump’s executive order, “de minimis” items sent through the US Postal Service will be hit with duties of 54 percent of their value, or a $100 payment. The prior tariff had been set at 120 percent.Bessent told CNBC Monday that he expects United States and Chinese representatives to meet again in the coming weeks to work out “a more fulsome agreement.”While Washington does not want broad decoupling from China, it seeks “decoupling for strategic necessities,” Bessent said.He added to CNBC that the 90-day pause was also done to see what the United States could do about non-tariff barriers weighing on US firms. China hailed the “substantial progress” made at the talks, held at the discreet villa residence of Switzerland’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.This move “is in the interest of the two countries and the common interest of the world,” the Chinese commerce ministry said, adding that it hoped Washington would keep working with Beijing “to correct the wrong practice of unilateral tariff rises.”With the agreement, China also committed to suspending or removing non-tariff countermeasures.- Fentanyl ‘cooperation’ -The US additional tariff rate remains higher than China’s because it includes a 20 percent levy over Trump’s complaints about Chinese exports of chemicals used to make fentanyl, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told reporters.”Those remain unchanged for now,” he said. But “both the Chinese and United States agreed to work constructively together on fentanyl and there is a positive path forward there as well.”In a joint statement, the two sides agreed to “establish a mechanism to continue discussions about economic and trade relations.””I think we leave with a very good mechanism to avoid the unfortunate escalations,” Bessent said, noting that the tariffs had essentially created a trade “embargo” between the two superpowers.China’s commerce ministry said both parties “will conduct rolling consultations on a regular or ad hoc basis in China, the US or agreed third countries.”- ‘No guarantee’ -A suspension of higher tariffs marks “substantial de-escalation,” said Capital Economics chief Asia economist Mark Williams in a note.But “there is no guarantee that the 90-day truce will give way to a lasting ceasefire,” he warned. Washington appears to be seeking to rally others towards introducing restrictions on trade with China, he said.Nonetheless, the latest development signals negotiations are moving to a more conciliatory phase, according to a Deutsche Bank Research note.Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, believes the outcome of the weekend meeting was a “success” for Beijing.”China took a tough stance on the US threat of high tariffs and eventually managed to get the tariffs down significantly without making concessions,” he said.Trump’s tariffs and high rates targeting China have rocked financial markets, raising fears the levies would rekindle inflation and cause a global economic downturn.The Geneva meeting came days after Trump unveiled a trade agreement with Britain, the first with any country since his new duties on both friend and foe.burs-nl-bys-jmb/dw

Trump says would be ‘stupid’ to reject Qatari Air Force One gift

US President Donald Trump on Monday angrily dismissed concerns over his plans to receive a jet from Qatar to be used as Air Force One, saying it would be “stupid” not to accept such a gift.The offer from Qatar’s royal family to donate the $400 million 747-8 to be used as the US presidential plane raised major questions about ethics and security, but Trump played them down.”It’s a great gesture,” the 78-year-old billionaire told reporters at the White House when asked if the oil-rich Gulf state would expect anything in exchange.”I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer. I mean, I could be a stupid person (and) say ‘no we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.'”Qatar’s offer came after Trump repeatedly complained of delays and cost overruns in aerospace giant Boeing’s contract to provide two new Air Force One jets to replace the current aging models.Trump responded particularly angrily when asked if he would use the jet in a personal capacity after he left the presidency.”You should be embarrassed asking that question,” Trump told a reporter. “They’re giving us a free jet. I could say, no, no, no, don’t give us I want to pay you $1 billion or $400 million, or whatever it is. Or I could say, thank you very much.”Trump said that instead it would be donated to his future presidential library as an exhibit, in the same way that Ronald Reagan’s library holds a former Air Force One jet.- ‘Nuclear-grade graft’ -Qatar swiftly sought to downplay the uproar, saying the jet would not be a gift.”The possible transfer of an aircraft for temporary use as Air Force One is currently under consideration between Qatar’s Ministry of Defense and the US Department of Defense,” said Ali Al-Ansari, Qatar’s media attache to Washington.But the plan has raised major ethical questions, as the US Constitution prohibits government officials from accepting gifts “from any King, Prince or foreign State.”It has also raised deep security concerns about using a plane donated by a foreign power for use as the ultra-sensitive Air Force One. The jet is designed to serve as a mobile command center for the president in case of an attack on America.Democrats slammed the plan.”Any president who accepts this kind of gift, valued at $400 million, from a foreign government creates a clear conflict of interest,” said a statement by four members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.The statement by Senators Cory Booker, Brian Schatz, Chris Coons and Chris Murphy said it also “raises serious national security questions, invites foreign influence, and undermines public trust in our government.” Murphy said separately that he would also block any arms sale to a “nation that is doing direct personal business with Trump,” describing Qatar’s proposed gift as “nuclear-grade graft.”- ‘Utmost transparency’ -Trump and the White House however claim the Qatari jet would be a gift to the US Department of Defense, which would also get around constitutional concerns.White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Qatar had “graciously offered” to donate a plane to the Pentagon but that the “legal details of that are still being worked out.””Any donation to this government is always done in full compliance with the law, and we commit ourselves to the utmost transparency, and we will continue to do that,” she told Fox News.Trump has long been unhappy with the current Air Force One jets — two highly customized Boeing 747-200B series aircraft that entered service in 1990 under president George H.W. Bush.Earlier this year Trump said his administration was “looking at alternatives” to Boeing following delays in the delivery of two new 747-8 aircraft.Trump also has a model of the future Air Force One in his handpicked red, white and blue colors on the coffee table in the Oval Office, in front of where he sits with foreign leaders.

Air Force One: iconic jet gets the Trump treatment

It is arguably the world’s most iconic plane, an instantly recognizable symbol of the US presidency. But now Air Force One — like many other American institutions once considered sacred — is getting the Donald Trump treatment.- A name, not a plane – Technically Air Force One is the callsign for whichever US Air Force plane, no matter how small, is carrying the US president.But most people identify it with the two heavily modified versions of the Boeing 747-200 jet liner that usually shuttle the US president around the world.The two current models, called the VC-25A in military speak, both entered service in 1990 during the presidency of George H.W. Bush.With its classic blue and white livery the current jumbo jet has become so famous that it even spawned a Hollywood thriller named after it, starring Harrison Ford.Sometimes presidents use smaller planes based on Boeing 757s for shorter flights, dubbed “Baby Air Force One.”- Presidential suite -“Big Air Force One” boasts luxury features fit for a commander-in-chief.The president himself has a large suite that includes an office with leather chairs and a polished wooden desk — a space Trump used for a press conference to sign a proclamation renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.A medical suite on board can also function as an operating room, should the worst happen.There are special cabins for senior advisors, Secret Service members and 13 traveling press. It has two galleys that can feed 100 people at a time, all on specially branded crockery.- Special features – But the plane’s main role is keeping the US president safe.Inflight refueling capability means it can stay in the air almost indefinitely.A hardened electronics system protects against electromagnetic pulses — whether from nuclear explosions or hostile jammers — “allowing the aircraft to function as a mobile command center in the event of an attack on the United States,” the White House said.Those communications also keep Trump constantly in touch with the ground — and able to send social media posts in mid-air.The jet also has top secret air defenses, according to aviation specialists.These reportedly include countermeasures that can jam enemy radars and infrared tracking systems, plus dispensers for chaff — metal shavings that distract radar-guided missiles — and flares that blind heat-seeking missiles.- Historic roles – Inevitably, Air Force One has also played its role in history.The first specially-designed jets were brought in by John F. Kennedy in 1962, using modified Boeing 707s. One of those jets brought Kennedy’s body back to Washington after his assassination in Dallas in 1963.Then in 2001, George W. Bush took to the skies aboard Air Force One after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.- Trump obsession – But Trump has long had something of an obsession with the presidential jets.The Republican has consistently sought to upgrade them, agreeing a deal with Boeing in 2018 during his first term for two new models based on the newer 747-8 jet.He also dreamed up a new color scheme — replacing the one largely in place since Kennedy’s time — with a deep red stripe down the middle of the aircraft and a dark blue underbelly.Trump likes the new look so much that he still has a model of it on his coffee table in the Oval Office, and showed it off at his inauguration for a second term.But now he has repeatedly complained about delays and cost overruns.”We’re very disappointed that it’s taking Boeing so long… We have an Air Force one that’s 40 years old,” Trump said on Monday.”You look at some of the Arab countries and the planes they have parked alongside of the United States of America plane, it’s like from a different planet.”One of those same Arab countries, Qatar, has now offered the United States a Boeing 747-8 from the royal family to use as a stopgap Air Force One.But with ethical concerns and security worries about using a plane from a foreign power for such an ultra-sensitive purpose, it’s unclear whether the scheme will ever leave the ground.