Trump would ‘absolutely’ scrap Biden’s Air Force One colors, adviser says

If Donald Trump returns to the presidency, he’ll have another shot at achieving a goal that eluded him last time: Changing the colors of Air Force One to his beloved red, white and dark blue.

And he’ll likely do it — even though replacing the traditional light-blue-and-white design with Trump’s preferred scheme would be complicated and expensive.

A former senior Trump White House official who remains close to him says it would be totally in character for the former president to insist on using his preferred colors on the planes.

"Absolutely. 100 percent," said the former official, granted anonymity to discuss Trump’s thinking.

The Air Force is still modifying two Boeing 747-8s to replace the existing aircraft, and the two planes are on track to be delivered in 2026 and 2027, years late and well over budget. When they arrive, they’ll be sporting the traditional white-and-light-blue livery that has adorned presidential aircraft since the Kennedy administration.

But according to three people familiar with the program, there’s still time for Trump to order the color scheme back to his favored palette, similar to the pattern already on his private plane . In 2019, the then-president told ABC host George Stephanopoulos that he wanted to shake up the traditional pattern with a design he made himself.

“There’s your new Air Force One,” Trump said at the time, holding up mock-ups of the aircraft that at the time was supposed to be delivered by this year. “I’m doing that for other presidents, not for me.”

After POLITICO reported in 2022 that Trump’s preferred colors would lead to expensive design fixes, the Biden White House scrapped the plan and brought back the traditional palette.

The person familiar with Trump’s thinking said he expects him to change the colors back because of how proud the former president was of the design change.

“The model was on the coffee table in the Oval Office and he pointed it out many times to foreign and domestic visitors," the person said. “He thought it represented America more and represented strength, the red, white and blue.”

Yet the cost of bringing back Trump’s favored shade hasn’t gone away.

At some point after Trump announced he was changing the colors in 2019, Boeing determined that the dark blue paint on the underside of the plane and its engines would likely contribute to excessive temperatures, a problem that Boeing would likely have to pay out-of-pocket to fix.

Specifically, the dark color would require modifications to cool some of its components, the three people familiar with the changes said. The people were granted anonymity to speak freely about the sensitive program.

The people said changing the color scheme this far in the process may require more engineering work, millions of dollars in cost overruns, and further delays.

“For example, Boeing would need to ensure antennas work with the new livery and that there is no interference,” one person said.

Boeing referred to the Air Force for comment. An Air Force spokesperson said the service does not speculate on hypotheticals. Asked for comment, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said “Sounds like Joe Biden hates the Red, White, and Blue.” He did not specifically answer whether Trump would change the color.

As president, Trump took pride in personally getting involved in the negotiations for the replacement aircraft once he learned of the cost. In February 2017, he said the Air Force was “close to signing a $4.2 billion deal” and “we got that price down by over $1 billion.”

The Air Force awarded Boeing a $3.9 billion contract in 2018 for the two modified 747-8s to replace the existing Air Force One aircraft, based on the 747-200B model that has been flying since the 1990s.

The company consented to a fixed-price contract with the Air Force, meaning any changes made to the airplane are at Boeing’s cost, not the government’s. The program is already more than $2 billion over budget.

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun told investors in 2022 that company executives should never have agreed to Trump’s terms for the Air Force contract six years ago.

The program faced major problems when a subcontractor hired to furnish the cabin interior went bankrupt, and Boeing had to switch to a new supplier. The program also faced hurdles due to labor shortages and a lack of employees with the proper clearances to work on the sensitive program.

During Trump’s presidency, Democrats registered their opposition to his decision to change Air Force One's paint scheme. After winning control of the House in 2019, Democrats pushed to limit changes to the paint job or interior decorations on the program.

Defense legislation that passed the House that year included language limiting changes to the aircraft's livery and interior design to what was included in the contract.

Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), who sponsored the proposal, said at the time that Congress needed to rein in “less essential aspects” of the new planes and close a potential “backdoor for the program to hemorrhage” money.

“The president will have an opportunity to make some suggestions and changes to the plane,” Courtney said during the 2019 House Armed Services Committee deliberations on the defense bill. “But we do want to keep this within the parameters of the existing contract process so that, again, we're not creating additional costs for the operation of the plane.”

“Additional paint can add weight to the plane,” he noted.

Republicans, however, accused Democrats of using the program to take a swipe at Trump. Then-Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.) criticized the effort as “an attempt to just poke at the president.”

“Prior to 2017, I don’t recall attempts to block things like paint colors,” he said.

The measure passed the House, but not the Senate. Lawmakers ultimately approved a compromise bill that required the Air Force to notify Congress before it undertook any “over and above” work on the aircraft.