Rumors abound that Donald Trump changed out the entire Air Force One crew out of paranoia

| 2:45 am EDT May 13, 2017
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Donald Trump is, by any objective measure, suffering from paranoia. He thinks President Obama somehow wiretapped Trump Tower. He fires anyone in the government whom he thinks might be investigating him. And according to a burgeoning rumor on social media that we’re still trying to track down, Trump changed out the entire crew on Air Force One yesterday out of sheer paranoia as well.

The matter was referenced by respected political pundit Jester, who disclaimed it as a mere rumor he’s hearing (link). The same thing has also been popping up from other unconfirmed sources as well. We’ve put out feelers to try to confirm this, and we don’t have it yet. But would this be something that Donald Trump could simply do on a whim?

According to the site HowStuffWorks, Air Force One crew members are “carefully screened military personnel, with exemplary service histories. Even the crew members who prepare meals must operate with a high level of security” (link). So it’s not as if Trump could simply bring his own new trusted people to be Air Force One crew members on short notice. And if any existing crew members were fired, they’d surely be talking about it rather loudly. But what is possible is for Trump to have swapped one existing crew for another, because there are enough total crew members to make that possible.

So if this rumor is true, the most likely scenario would be that Trump sat one Air Force One crew down because he became paranoid that something he said or did in front of them might have somehow leaked. It’s incredibly difficult to believe that anyone working on Air Force One would risk their distinguished careers, and the reputations of their entire crew, by leaking anything of the sort. But Trump is clearly paranoid enough to believe that they might have. We’ll keep working on this one. Help fund Palmer Report