In the middle of Pennsylvania Ave.
by Tom Sullivan
C-17 takes off from Prestwick Airport near Glasgow, Saturday August 31, 2019. Image from video by Jim Ramsay via YouTube.
The grifter-in-chief has gotten away with everything else so far, so why not robbing taxpayers in the middle of Pennsylvania Ave.?
In early Spring of this year, an Air National Guard crew made a routine trip from the U.S. to Kuwait to deliver supplies.Politico reports the C-17 transport stopped each way to refuel at Prestwick Airport, the closest airport to Trump Turnberry, rather than at U.S. military bases in Germany, in Spain, or in the Azores, as it had on dozens of other trips. One crew member told a friend Turnberry was so posh he could not afford food or drink on an airman's per diem.
What wasn’t routine was where the crew stopped along the way: President Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort, about 50 miles outside Glasgow, Scotland.
The stopovers suggest Defense Department spending for civilian-priced fuel is helping prop up "debt-ridden" Prestwick Airport's business 32 miles south of Glasgow. Prestwick sought contracts to service frontline U.S. military flights "both while Trump was the Republican presidential candidate and since he became president," according to February 2018 Guardian report:
The documents seen by the Guardian show Prestwick struck deals with Trump Turnberry to supply cut-price rooms for select passengers and crew. According to the Sunday Post newspaper, Prestwick also offered free rounds of golf at Turnberry to visiting US military and civilian air crews. Prestwick said it had special arrangements with other hotels in Ayrshire.The Pentagon spending on fuel at Prestwick since October 2017 has raised eyebrows in Congress (Politico again):
Taken together, the incidents raise the possibility that the military has helped keep Trump’s Turnberry resort afloat — the property lost $4.5 million in 2017, but revenue went up $3 million in 2018.A Pentagon spokesperson told The Guardian last year, “The selection and use of any airfield by the Department of Defense is guided strictly by that airfield’s ability to support combined (US, UK, and Nato) air operations in support of our shared security objectives.”
“The Defense Department has not produced a single document in this investigation,” said a senior Democratic aide on the oversight panel. “The committee will be forced to consider alternative steps if the Pentagon does not begin complying voluntarily in the coming days.”