That or he’ll start dumping all over the Air Force for creating such utter chaos and panic. He takes great joy in dumping on the military as it is.
He’d throw anyone under the bus to save his hide...look at what he did to dear old Grandma, the white racist.
I think some VIP tourists were on that plane. I bet the line of thinking was, “Hey, they’ve used the plane for photo ops before, let’s do that and we’ll put so-and-so on for the ride!”
Once they get in the air, somebody with enough pull to put the pilot’s butt in a sling if there was a refusal, “requests” that they do some sightseeing.
A quick google image search shows pictures of AF1 going past Mt. Rushmore, but I couldn’t find any credit for the photo, as you would expect to see if it was DOD...in fact, I saw at least one site selling the image.
It might be public domain, or it might have been taken by Boeing before they handed it the aircraft over...it would be very interesting to get the particulars behind that Mt. Rushmore photo op. When was it taken? Were there fighter escorts then? Who took the pictures, and from what aircraft?
Someone with some knowledge of who owns the pictures should be able to shed a lot of light on how and why they are taken.
It would also be interesting to see if the schedules for Dem VIPs can be checked to see if any of them were free for the time that the flight took place...