Governor Gavin Newsom of California used a Friday morning post on X to accuse President Donald Trump of endangering the country by flying his newly acquired, Qatari-donated jumbo jet into a NATO summit in Turkey while the United States remains engaged in active hostilities with Iran, a conflict Newsom has repeatedly said Trump started without a plan to end.
The post, published at 11:22 a.m. on July 10, 2026, from the Governor Press Office account on X, came days after reports confirmed that Trump switched planes before departing Turkey, swapping his newer Boeing 747-8 for an older Air Force One at the urging of the Secret Service. Newsom’s statement read in full:
“It was VERY IRRESPONSIBLE for Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, to fly his less-safe and badly painted ‘Air Fraud One’ to Turkey while we are at WAR — a war he started! When things got dangerous, the Secret Service told him to get back on the REAL Air Force One (the Classic, Beautiful, and FAR SUPERIOR plane) because his jumbo jet from Qatar was not good enough or remotely secure. VERY BAD LOOK FOR THE ‘LEADER’ OF THE FREE WORLD! I do not care for Dozy, he is a very Nasty Man who treats the People of California and Working Americans badly. But even I, his strongest critic, understand that the President should not put our entire Country at RISK because he likes a fancy plane. A REAL LEADER chooses PERFORMANCE over LOOKS. DISQUALIFYING! — Governor Gavin C. Newsom”
The post is the latest escalation in a monthslong feud between Newsom and Trump that has increasingly centered on the war with Iran, its economic fallout, and now the security of the aircraft used to transport the president through an active conflict zone.
The security swap that triggered the post
Newsom’s post directly references reporting from The New York Times, which detailed how Trump departed Ankara on Wednesday night aboard the older Air Force One rather than his new Qatari-gifted jet, a change made at the request of the Secret Service and tied to the resumption of hostilities with Iran. The switch came as U.S. forces carried out strikes against Iranian targets while Trump and other NATO leaders were roughly 1,000 miles away in the Turkish capital.
According to the Times, the swap intensified existing questions about whether the new plane, delivered on an accelerated timeline that Trump had personally pushed for, received adequate security retrofitting, including an advanced missile defense system and other protective modifications standard on presidential aircraft. People briefed on the new jet’s capabilities told the paper that it lacks some features present on the older plane, and that the decision to switch aircraft was a precaution rather than a response to a specific, identified threat.
White House communications director Steven Cheung defended the aircraft in a statement to the Times, saying the new Air Force One “is a state-of-the-art aircraft that has been fitted with high-level security protocols that ensure the safety of the president and his staff.” Cheung added that “there are many enemies of America who have their sights on him, and we use every tool at our disposal — including distraction and misdirection — to address those threats.”
Trump himself offered a different explanation, telling reporters the switch was made so the new jet could arrive early at Mildenhall Air Force Base in England, where it could be shown off to American troops, calling the aircraft “magnificent.” He had earlier posted that he would fly the older plane “for old time’s sake.” But when pressed further by reporters in Ankara, Trump repeatedly noted that he was Iran’s “No. 1 target” and referenced having been briefed on a list of Tehran’s targets, according to the Times’ reporting.
Reporters traveling with the president also noted that he boarded the older aircraft unusually quickly in Ankara, before he could be photographed ascending the stairs as is customary, and that passengers were instructed to lower their window shades before takeoff — a directive Trump later said was because they were “on a dangerous plane.”
Newsom’s broader campaign against Trump over the war
Friday’s post is not an isolated jab. Newsom’s office has built a sustained public record tying the Qatari jet, which the governor’s press account has repeatedly branded “Air Fraud One,” to what it describes as Trump’s mismanagement of the war with Iran and its costs to ordinary Americans. On July 1, when White House officials promoted the jet’s inaugural flight, the Governor Press Office account responded to Cheung’s post with the same “Air Fraud One” label that reappeared in Friday’s statement.
The governor’s official office has also issued a series of formal statements on the war itself. In a release, Newsom’s office said that at the 61-day mark of the conflict, national gas prices had reached their highest level since the early months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, stating that “every state is paying Trump’s Iran war tax, and the White House still has no plan to bring any of it down”
A later statement from the governor’s office, marking more than 100 days since the strikes began, said the conflict had cost Americans “a growing $58.8 billion in extra fuel costs,” and separately noted that jet fuel prices tied to the war had risen to record highs, forcing airlines to raise fares and cut flights
Newsom’s office has also directly criticized the administration’s broader use of luxury aircraft during the war period. A statement published in June listed the Department of Homeland Security’s purchase of two Gulfstream G700 jets for $172 million and a $70 million Boeing 737 Max 8 “even as families struggled to put food on the table,” presenting the spending as part of what the governor’s office called Trump’s “legacy of waste and chaos” during the conflict
The military and cost context behind the jet
The scrutiny of the Qatari jet predates Friday’s post by nearly a year. The aircraft, a retrofitted Boeing 747-8 donated by Qatar, began its security upgrade in the United States last summer under orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, with Air Force officials describing the work only as support for “executive airlift” while classifying further details. Members of Congress raised early concerns that the accelerated schedule would not allow time to install a full suite of protective systems, including missile defenses and hardening against the electromagnetic effects of a nuclear detonation.
Andrew P. Hunter, who oversaw the Air Force One program as an Air Force assistant secretary during the Biden administration, told the Times that a genuine retrofit of a 747 into a presidential aircraft typically requires more than a year of structural work, beyond what the compressed Qatari jet timeline allowed. “In that time they had, they would be able to accommodate communications upgrades,” Hunter said, referring to equipment that keeps a president in constant contact with military and government leadership. “But not anything that would require significant structural work.” He added that “to do a full Air Force One equivalent upgrade does require structural modifications.”
Troy E. Meink, the Air Force secretary, testified to Congress that the modifications would cost “probably less than $400 million,” an estimate that industry and Pentagon officials have said could run closer to $1 billion and take up to two years for a complete retrofit. Newsom’s office has separately flagged reporting that as much as $1 billion from Sentinel, a nuclear modernization program, may have been redirected to fund work on the jet, calling it a matter of “mismanagement.”
What comes next
As of Friday, the White House had not issued a direct response to Newsom’s latest post specifically, though it has previously defended the jet’s security posture in response to related reporting. The Secret Service has declined to comment beyond referring reporters to Trump’s own social media explanation for the Ankara aircraft swap. With the war against Iran continuing and questions about the new Air Force One’s defensive capabilities unresolved, both the security debate and the political sparring between Newsom and Trump appear likely to continue.