Trump parades new Air Force One, defends accepting the Qatari royal family’s 747 gift

InDepthNH.org republishes Associated Press stories in partnership with the AP Journalism Fund

By WILL WEISSERT, MIKE CATALINI and JONATHAN J. COOPER Associated Press

BULLHEAD CITY, Ariz. (AP) — President Donald Trump showed off the new Air Force One and defended accepting the luxury jet from the Qatari royal family as he campaigned for Republicans Wednesday in an economically struggling corner of rural Arizona.

His first substantive comments after he got off the plane to address the airport rally described learning that the Qataris had “the best of all the 747s.” He said he called to ask the country’s leader to borrow the aircraft before the emir offered it instead as a gift.

Trump accepted the airplane last year despite strong bipartisan criticism, including from some of his staunchest Republican supporters.

“When you’re given gifts, you take ’em, right?” Trump told the crowd in Bullhead City. “When they give you a 747 you say two words: ‘thank you.'”

Trump was on his second day of a Western campaign swing and was headed to a Republican-leaning U.S. House district in Montana after Arizona, continuing a midterm roadshow designed to rally the GOP. He campaigned in Alaska on Tuesday and in Ohio on Monday.

Trump keeps up a brisk pace of rallies

The visits come as the Republican president works to bolster his party in Nov. 3 elections that will determine control of Congress.

In Arizona, soaring music played as the former Qatari jet flew low over the local airport where supporters awaited Trump in the heat. The president, wearing his signature red baseball cap, emerged with a wave and a fist bump and slowly descended the stairs as speakers blasted Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” the song that marks Trump’s entrance at campaign events.

Air Force One, now wearing Trump’s new red, white, blue and gold paint scheme, and the Black Mountains filled the background as he started speaking.

Mohave County, where Bullhead City is located, has higher poverty and unemployment rates than the state and nation, with a lower per-capita income, according to Census and state unemployment data.

Trump also spoke extensively about his aesthetic flourishes around Washington: the White House ballroom that is under construction and a just-completed helipad on the South Lawn, along with a triumphal arch he has planned for the capital city.

“The fake news media doesn’t talk about how well we’re doing” as a country, Trump said. Journalists ask him instead about “affordability,” he said, pronouncing the word in a dismissive tone.

Trump traveled to Arizona to rally support for Rep. Andy Biggs, who is seeking to defeat Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. Republicans running in the state’s two competitive U.S. House districts, Jay Feely and Rep. Juan Ciscomani, did not attend the event.

Afterward, Trump was heading to Western Montana’s 1st District to try to boost Aaron Flint, a former aide to retiring Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, who was Interior secretary in Trump’s first-term Cabinet.

Trump has kept up a brisk pace of hour-plus-long rallies — new White House press secretary Katie Zacharia called it a “midterm blitz” — in his effort to stem expected Republican losses and fight a historical trend in which the president’s party typically loses seats in elections halfway through their term in the White House.

Arizona stands out as the lone swing state among the president’s recent stops, though the airport rally was in a county Trump won with 78% of the vote in 2024.

His other visits so far in October have taken him into traditionally solid Republican territory — Alabama, Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas — as he weathers low approval ratings, rising costs and the Iran war.

GOP strategy is shifting as Election Day nears

With under three weeks left in the campaign, the Western swing comes as Trump’s party has begun retreating from a handful of battleground U.S. House races and Democrats aim to raise money for candidates who seemed like long shots earlier this year.

The shifting money in the final weeks of midterm campaigns reflects an increasingly defensive posture by Republicans, who have already trimmed their expectations in U.S. Senate races, and new aggression from Democrats, who are trying to capitalize on Trump’s low public approval.

Trump twice won Arizona, in 2016 and 2024, but lost the state in 2020. Montana’s 1st District is slightly less Republican overall than the state, which voted for Trump by double digits in each of his three presidential campaigns.

Biggs, of Arizona, has been a stalwart ally of the president and assisted Trump’s attempt to block certification by the House of Trump’s 2020 election defeat. A one-time head of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, he’s represented a safe GOP seat since winning election in 2016.

He faces Hobbs, who narrowly defeated Republican Kari Lake in the governor’s race four years ago. Arizona was long a GOP stronghold, and registered Republicans still outnumber Democrats and independents by a comfortable margin, but voters have repeatedly rejected Trump allies and handed the state’s top offices to Democrats.

Trump said Biggs “will always stand with law enforcement” and took aim at Hobbs, who he said “does the bidding of the cartels” on the U.S.-Mexico border. Hobbs counters that she has strengthened the border by sending National Guard troops there and has boosted local law enforcement funding.

In Montana, Flint won the president’s and Zinke’s endorsement during the June primary. An Army veteran and talk-radio host, Flint assails progressive Democrats like Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as part of his campaign.

Flint’s opponent is Sam Forstag, a Democratic labor union leader and Forest Service smokejumper, a specialized firefighter who gets to fires by aircraft and parachute.

Catalini reported from Morrisville, Pennsylvania, and Cooper from Phoenix.

The post Trump parades new Air Force One, defends accepting the Qatari royal family’s 747 gift appeared first on InDepthNH.org.