President Donald Trump’s departure for Texas took an unusual turn Wednesday when an emergency slide was seen hanging from his new Air Force One.
The inflatable slide was deployed as Trump prepared to leave Joint Base Andrews for the Republican midterm convention in Dallas. The president told reporters that officials were “doing a check on the slide” that would take about 15 minutes.
But the delay caught CNN host Brianna Keilar’s attention.
“It is extremely uncharacteristic for the president to show up at Andrews Air Force Base in Marine One and then not get off pretty quickly,” Keilar said as CNN carried live pictures from the base.
Trump instead remained aboard the helicopter for several minutes before walking over to the Qatari-gifted Boeing 747 and speaking with reporters.
Keilar said it wasn’t initially clear what was causing the holdup because the network could only see what was shown by the pool camera. But the CNN anchor still had questions even after the deployed slide was revealed.
“Why exactly was this deployed?” she asked. “He said they’re testing it. Was this deployed accidentally? We don’t know.”
“This was quite the unusual scene,” Keilar added.
She noted to viewers that an emergency slide was accidentally deployed aboard Air Force One in 1994 as President Bill Clinton returned from Germany.
Trump eventually boarded the plane and departed for Dallas, according to media reports.