Groundbreaking is set for a 97,000-square-foot facility devoted to the aircraft’s life story, formative years, and conservation legacy.
MEDORA, N.D.—Hours after President Trump completed the maiden flight of the new Air Force One, a $400 million Boeing 747-8 gifted by Qatar’s royal family, the White House announced that the aircraft will receive a presidential library of its own.
Wednesday’s flight to the dedication of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library marked the jet’s first official use carrying a sitting president, according to Newsweek. Trump, who touted the plane as “maybe the greatest commercial plane ever built,” toured Roosevelt’s 96,000-square-foot facility ahead of its July 4 public opening. The aircraft’s library was announced roughly ninety minutes later.
The Office of Commemorative Aviation, created Wednesday by internal memorandum, said the facility will occupy 97,000 square feet on land adjacent to Joint Base Andrews, one thousand square feet larger than Roosevelt’s. Its budget is $451 million, one million more than the Roosevelt project. Officials described both figures as coincidences.
Formative Years in Doha
Planning documents reviewed by Newswax describe a biographical layout modeled on presidential-library convention. Visitors will enter through a hall titled “Formative Years: Doha, 2012-2025,” tracing the aircraft’s youth in the Qatari royal fleet, before proceeding to “The Retrofit: A Nation Invests,” covering the period in which the Air Force spent close to an additional $400 million making the gift presidential.
“Roosevelt came to Dakota in 1883 to hunt buffalo and left having invested $14,000 of his own money,” said Corinne Vasquez-Bloom, 58, the library’s director of interpretive planning, who previously curated a traveling exhibition on the desks of the vice presidents. “The aircraft came to Andrews valued at $400 million and roughly doubled. Both are American stories of growth. We are not choosing favorites.”
The New Air Force One, Increased and Not Impaired
A conservation wing will honor the aircraft’s environmental record, which planners characterized as strong at cruising altitude. They noted that the Roosevelt library’s wall carries the former president’s charge to treat natural resources as “assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired.” The jet, one planning memo observes, qualifies.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who requested the president’s Medora visit, told Fox News that “the parallels between Theodore Roosevelt and President Trump just keep adding up and up and up.” A senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the aircraft has not yet reviewed its exhibit text, said the parallels now extend to the plane itself. “Roosevelt was 42 when he took office, the youngest ever. The aircraft is 14. Both were considered young for the role.”
A Library That Leaves
Because the new Air Force One remains in active service until replacement jets arrive in 2028, the building will be constructed around it with a retractable eastern wall, allowing the centerpiece to taxi out for missions. Docents will describe the aircraft during absences as “on loan to the skies.” Visitors arriving mid-mission will view a full-scale plywood silhouette and a looping video of the plane at rest.
The announcement arrives amid unresolved questions about the gift itself. The Constitution bars officials from accepting presents “of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State” without congressional consent, which was not sought. The New York Times has reported that the Air Force folded part of the retrofit’s cost into a classified transfer from the Sentinel nuclear-missile modernization program, which is itself billions of dollars over budget. And the jet was already promised somewhere: the White House has said the plane will be donated to Trump’s own presidential library when he leaves office.
Officials confirmed the two commitments are compatible. The aircraft’s library will be donated along with the aircraft, making it the first presidential library housed inside another presidential library. It is the administration’s third commemorative structure announced this year, after the triumphal arch approved by a commission the president appointed after dismissing the previous commission and the gladiator academy planned for the East Wing site.
“The Constitution says you cannot keep a present from a king unless Congress agrees,” the senior official said. “It does not say the present cannot have a museum. We looked.”
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