Inflatable slide deploys on Qatari-gifted Air Force One ahead of Trump's Dallas trip
Trump told reporters that they were "doing a check on the slide."
An inflatable slide deployed on President Donald Trump's Qatari-gifted Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday afternoon before he was set to board it to head to the Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas, Texas.
Trump appeared to indicate that the emergency slide was deployed intentionally as he waited for about 20 minutes inside Marine One on the tarmac.
"They’re checking the slide over here. And I think it's gonna take 15 minutes. They were doing a check on the slide, you know, the emergency -- so I think it takes about 15 minutes,” Trump told reporters, before adding that it was safe to fly on.
Asked by ABC News why the slide was being checked and if there was a security concern, Trump said they just want to make sure it "works perfectly." Slides are not typically checked by deploying them before departure as it is a time-consuming process to remove and replace them once they are deployed.
Asked if he was sure the plane was safe to fly, Trump said he was confident that it was.
"Yeah, I am, or I wouldn't be on it," Trump said.
The president is set to deliver the keynote address on Wednesday night at the Republicans' first-ever midterm convention.
The White House referred back the president’s comments when asked about the slide's deployment.
The slide was later pulled off of the plane and hauled away on the back of a pick-up truck before the plane took off for Dallas.
Trump's old Air Force One pulled up behind the new jet as a back-up option.
The newly retrofitted Air Force One, a gift from the Qatari royal family worth $400 million, has raised questions from some lawmakers and ethics experts over the unprecedented foreign gift.
Earlier this year, Trump called the jet, which is approximately 14 years old, "the world's most luxurious plane." Trump told reporters in July that the plane was going to be "maxed out" -- a process that would happen "in about a month or so" he said.
Also in July, Trump secretly switched planes -- using a catering food truck and a military aircraft, sources told ABC News -- while leaving a NATO summit in Turkey amid threats against him from Iran.
ABC News' Sam Sweeney and Sarah Beth Hensley contributed to this report.
