Mr. Trump's Wild Ride: The Thrills, Chills, Screams, and Occasional Blackouts of an Extraordinary Presidency by Major Garrett

Author:Major Garrett [Garrett, Major]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: political science, American Government, Executive Branch, Commentary & Opinion
ISBN: 9781250185921
Google: nHtJDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2018-09-18T20:29:35.293387+00:00

Eight

Saudi Arabia and the Middle East

The main cabin door of Air Force One swung open and one of Trump’s senior Secret Service agents surveyed the scene and dared not take another step, lest he fall more than 20 feet to the tarmac of King Khalid airport below.

It was May 19, just less than four months into his presidency and Trump had just landed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the last place anyone in America would have reasonably imagined the author of the “Muslim ban” would be touching down at this stage of his reign. Something was amiss and it wasn’t upended expectations. While Air Force One powered down, Saudi laborers had feverishly unrolled a red carpet toward it, but the carpet did not align with the cabin door. The idea was that the movable stairs Trump and First Lady Melania were to descend would line up perfectly with the red carpet because the same red carpet with ornate gold trim on the edges also ran the length of the stairs. Inside the terminal, Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud waited and increasingly frantic Saudi laborers and aides tried to come up with a plan. One thing was certain: Trump wasn’t backing up Air Force One one inch.

An agent stood in the cabin door looking slightly befuddled, his arms outstretched and his hands clasping the inside of the cabin door, an American sentry in the desert kingdom. Reporters and Trump advisors spilled out of the back of the plane and shaded themselves under the wing on the port side. From the tarmac, the deep blue cone, baby blue trim and chrome belly of Air Force One looked as bright and polished as ever, even after flying nearly 7,000 miles. From the formal reception area where King Salman waited, however, Air Force One looked overwhelmed by the desert void behind it, its buffed metal lines melting into the pale and dusty horizon beyond.

The color scheme of Air Force One was chosen by President Kennedy, the product of cut-and-paste discussions on the floor of the Oval Office with legendary post–World War II industrial designer Raymond Loewy in 1962. The darker blue was thought by Kennedy to represent the future, the lighter blue tradition. The distinctive lettering on the side was inspired by the wide-spaced script on the original version of the Declaration of Independence. When designing Air Force One, Kennedy rejected a red color scheme and red uniforms for Air Force attendants because he didn’t like the color and, more importantly, thought it reeked of imperial pretension. Imperial pretension. Inside America’s flying White House Trump waited patiently for the signal that red-carpeted stairs, a king, a government of royals and a nation inching into a new future awaited his handshake.

Trump’s arrival in Riyadh was engineered almost entirely by son-in-law and foreign policy novice Jared Kushner, the advisor Trump designated during the transition to handle his most sensitive foreign policy interactions. When nations stunned by Trump’s victory clamored for an explanation of this new president’s intentions, Kushner met them—provided they were important enough to U.

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