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Former President Donald Trump’s private plane made an emergency landing on Saturday after one of the aircraft’s four engines failed.
The incident reportedly occurred when Trump departed from a speech at a Republican National Committee donor event in New Orleans, according to Politico.
The plane allegedly belonged to an unnamed Trump donor and no injuries were reported. It does not appear that Trump or anyone on the plane got injured.
“The plane was in the air for between 20 and 30 minutes before one of the engines failed and the pilot of the private plane decided to turn around and return to the New Orleans airport, one of the sources said. The plane was en route to Palm Beach, Fla., where Trump resides at his Mar-a-Lago estate,” Politico noted.
“Audio of the communications between the pilot and the air traffic control tower revealed that the landing was described as ’emergency in nature,’ according to the source, who had been briefed on the recording,” the report added.
“A plane carrying former president Donald Trump suffered engine failure late Saturday evening over the Gulf of Mexico, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing in New Orleans shortly after taking off from the city” https://t.co/U9BqajWIwb
— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) March 9, 2022
The Washington Post published a report with additional details.
“The flight had gone approximately 75 miles after taking off from New Orleans Lakefront Airport, reaching an altitude of about 28,000 feet before turning around, according to tracking data from ADSBexchange.com. The Dassault Falcon 900carried a retinue of Secret Service agents, other support staff, Trump, and some of his advisers, the people said. One of the plane’s engines failed, according to people familiar with the episode,” The Post reported.
“The tracking data, reviewed by The Washington Post, show the plane started its journey in Texas, flew to Palm Beach on Saturday afternoon, and then went to New Orleans. A map of the evening flight shows the plane was over the water when it turned around and went back to New Orleans, heading for Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport,” the report added.
Late last month, Trump won the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll for the second straight year, with Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis coming in second place.
The CPAC poll found that Trump received 59% and DeSantis received 28%.
For comparison, the CPAC poll in 2021 found that Trump received 55% and DeSantis got 21% support.
In a hypothetical poll that removed Trump’s name as an option, DeSantis finished first with 61.4%, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo received 6.3%, and Donald Trump Jr. received 5.9%.
The #CPAC2022 STRAW POLL l is out and among attendees, 2024 is Trump and DeSantis' race to lose pic.twitter.com/ta0kLEyHXQ
— Brittany Shepherd (@brittanys) February 27, 2022
With a hypothetically Trump out of the running, FL GOV RON DESANTIS leads #CPAC2022 straw poll runaway leader, with Pompeo following at a mere 6 pts pic.twitter.com/mvYmgH61M5
— Brittany Shepherd (@brittanys) February 27, 2022
While speaking at CPAC on Saturday, Trump dropped his biggest tease yet that he’ll be running again for the White House in 2024.
In a well-received speech, Trump fired verbal salvos at Joe Biden and his administration amid a growing crisis in Ukraine following an invasion late last week by tens of thousands of Russian troops, while promising to help restore Republicans to power in the November midterms and in 2024.
“The socialists, globalists, Marxists, and communists who are attacking our civilization have no idea of the sleeping giant they have awoken,” Trump said Saturday evening.
“But they’re going to find out the hard way, starting on Nov. 8, and then again, even more so in November 2024, they will find out like never before. We did it twice and we’ll do it again. We’re going to be doing it again a third time,” he vowed.
“The radical Left has tried to replace American democracy with woke tyranny,” Trump said. “Our mission in 2022 and in 2024 is to take on this radical and power-hungry ruling class and to deliver them an electoral defeat.”
“Nobody could ever believe how bad and weak and grossly incompetent it has been, and when you have a weak president who is not respected by other nations, you have a very chaotic world and the world hasn’t been this chaotic since world war. Two. I think we can say that very strongly. I have no doubt that President Putin made his decision after watching that pathetic withdrawal from Afghanistan, where the military take it out,” Trump said, slamming Biden’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal.