Donald J. Trump praises new Air Force One, makes unverified claims on military and economy at Joint Base Andrews

Donald J. Trump, who introduced himself from the podium as "the 45th and 47th president of the United States," unveiled and praised a newly refitted presidential aircraft at Joint Base Andrews and thanked the military and contractors involved in the project.

He described the aircraft as a rapid, high-end refit completed "in only 10 months," and said it included advanced, redundant communications systems including Starlink. "They put a lot of things on here that normally you wouldn't do," he said, adding that the plane had been transformed into a "flying White House."

During the remarks Trump made several operational and numeric assertions, which he presented as facts. He said, "in one week virtually we knocked out their entire navy, their entire air force," referring to Iranian military capabilities; he also said "there were a lot of them, about 700 of them" passing through the strait, and that "we have 19.2 trillion dollars coming into our country from other countries and people." Those statements are reported here as the speaker's claims from the podium and were not substantiated during the event.

Trump thanked a set of named military and industry figures in his remarks, including Troy Mink, Michael Duffy, Daniel Kaine, General Kenneth Wilsbach, Chris Kubasic and pilots Air Force Colonel Pete Donley and Lieutenant Colonel Tyler Sandborn, and he praised Boeing, L3 Harris and the Presidential Airlift Group for their roles in the aircraft refit. The transcript contains several personal names whose spellings are rendered inconsistently; spellings above follow the transcript text and may require independent verification.

He announced plans for a major July 4 flyover led by the new aircraft and said the press would be taken on a brief tour of the plane after the remarks. The event combined ceremonial elements (repeated patriotic refrains) with promotional remarks about the aircraft and broad claims on foreign policy and the economy. Because the speaker made several large, specific factual assertions from the stage, reporters and fact-checkers should seek independent verification of the military, shipping and dollar-amount claims before treating them as established fact.

The remarks ended with a ceremonial thank-you to service members and a reiteration of pride in the new aircraft and in personnel at Joint Base Andrews.