← Videos · Foreign Policy & Defense

Trump Greets U.S. Air Force Service Members and Shows the New Air Force One, Jun. 19, 2026

June 19, 2026 · The White House · 0:31:01

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump greeted U.S. Air Force service members in the new hangar at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, presenting the aircraft converted to serve as Air Force One. The hangar itself is new, he said, because the replacement aircraft is far larger than the roughly 35-year-old plane it succeeds: “It’s like virtually double the size.” The aircraft — a 747 provided by Qatar with, as he stated it, some 800 hours on it — was transformed, he said, in about ten months by the airmen and generals at Andrews into “a flying White House at a level of luxury that nobody’s ever seen before,” with “great protective mechanisms, very, very the latest and the greatest in every aspect.”

He thanked Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine — “I liked his name right away. I had him raising Caine and he does” — and the general who led the conversion work: “This was love, right? This was not your normal general… his whole group was just unbelievable.” The plane carries new colors — red, white, and blue with a waving flag in place of the old straight stripe — and “all of the planes in the fleet are being changed into this look,” the President said. He previewed the July 4 flyover the aircraft would lead over the Capitol and the White House, and announced a gift to the base: Jack Nicklaus is redesigning Andrews’s golf courses — two full courses and a nine-hole course for young people and the disabled — into what he called world-championship courses.

He also framed the moment with the war record as he states it: Iran’s navy, air force, anti-missile weapons, and radar knocked out “in one week,” the agreement “signed last night” with its 60-day window, and some 700 ships flowing out of the Strait of Hormuz.

Why it matters

Air Force One is the presidency’s most visible machine, and this event is its formal handover to the Air Force crews who built it out — a service-member audience, at their own base, in the 250th year. The aircraft’s arrival also closes the interim-arrangement story that ran through the President’s travel all year, including the first flight of the new plane paged in this collection on July 1.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Greets U.S. Air Force Service Members,” Joint Base Andrews, MD (official upload, embedded above). All figures and characterizations as stated by the President at the event.