The real D.C. crime wave

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In a sense, it’s a daring crime given that the aircraft and the individual traveling in its executive cabin are among the most heavily secured entities in the world. And yet, it has become shockingly common — a rite of passage where the thieves proudly discuss and display their stolen goods.

Everyone, it appears, is pilfering from Air Force One.

And it’s gotten so bad that last month, NBC correspondent KELLY O’DONNELL, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, included a terse reminder to colleagues that taking items off the plane was not allowed and reflected poorly on the press corps as a whole, several individuals who saw the off-the-record email confirmed.

The rampant thievery makes sense when you remember that Washington is a town populated by a lot of ambitious, status-seeking dorks. Many people who fly with the president on Air Force One really want you to know they’ve flown on Air Force One.

And sure, a picture that you tweet out may suffice. A tarmac photo of yourself beneath the hulking plane or a certificate from your first flight, which the Air Force will gladly produce and send you by mail, is fine, too.

But what better way to convey your arrival in that stratosphere than with an actual keepsake?

For years, scores of journalists — and others — have quietly stuffed everything from engraved whiskey tumblers to wine glasses to pretty much anything with the Air Force One insignia on it into their bag before stepping off the plane.

“On my first flight, the person next to me was like, ‘You should take that glass,’” one current White House reporter told West Wing Playbook. “They were like: ‘Everyone does it.’”

And they do.

When we raised the subject with current and former White House correspondents, stories spilled forth. There’s one about the senator in the front of the plane who — as a chatty aide told reporters — was taking everything not bolted down. Several colleagues of one former White House correspondent for a major newspaper described them hosting a dinner party where all the food was served on gold-rimmed Air Force One plates, evidently taken bit by bit over the course of some time. Reporters recalled coming down the back stairs after returning to Joint Base Andrews in the evening with the sounds of clinking glassware or porcelain plates in their backpacks.

But this may be changing.

O’Donnell’s warning to colleagues arose after a multi-day west coast swing in early February, according to six people familiar with the matter. The Air Force crew that serves passengers aboard the plane inventoried items following the trip and notified the White House Travel Office on Feb. 5 that several were missing from the press cabin.

BRIE MOORE, the former director of press advance, passed word onto the press office, four of the people who spoke about the matter to West Wing Playbook confirmed.

One of the press wranglers emailed everyone who’d been part of the press pool on the trip. The email, the people said, was not accusatory.

“It was like, ‘Hey, if you inadvertently wound up taking something off the plane by mistake, we can help facilitate a quiet return.’”

One individual who received the email had, in fact, gotten off the plane with an Air Force One embroidered pillowcase, and probably not by accident. When they wrote back admitting as much, arrangements were made for a discreet return.

The wrangler slipped out of the White House to meet the reporter by the statue of ANDREW JACKSON in Lafayette Square, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the north gates. The pillowcase changed hands, and that was that.

None of the other members of the pool replied to the email.

The point of the crackdown, White House officials familiar with the matter said, was not to embarrass individual reporters but to send a message that the thefts needed to stop.

A former administration official said that it hasn’t amounted to “a massive amount of theft. It was just a petty, chronic grift. But we appreciated that Kelly O took it seriously and sent that note.”

In that note, O’Donnell relayed that Air Force One emblazoned items could, in fact, be purchased.

“But the glasses that are sold on the [Air Force] site aren’t the same as the ones they have on the plane,” another former administration official said. “Same with the blankets. That’s why the ones on board are so coveted.”

MESSAGE US — Are you IN POSSESSION OF AIR FORCE ONE DINNERWARE? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at [email protected].

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POTUS PUZZLER

During which presidency was the White House Easter Egg Roll first broadcast over radio?

(Answer at bottom.)

The Oval

ALL-STAR THURSDAY: President Biden is in New York City tonight for his star-studded fundraising extravaganza at Radio City Music Hall, which our ELENA SCHNEIDER reports will raise $25 million for his reelection bid.

Biden spent much of the day hanging with his old boss, President BARACK OBAMA, who traveled with him from D.C. on Air Force One. The two were later joined at the president’s hotel by former President BILL CLINTON to tape an interview with the “SmartLess” podcast, the White House said. It’s Biden’s second appearance on the popular show. (Has a podcast episode ever gone 6 hours???)

Pool reporters traveling with the president spotted HUNTER BIDEN hanging around the hotel in the afternoon. He said he was looking forward to this evening’s big event.

A PRESIDENTIAL ‘PARADOX’: That’s how NYT’s LISA LERER and REID J. EPSTEIN framed the big night in NYC. Of the three Democratic presidents who will share the Radio City stage, Biden “has racked up the most expansive list of legislative accomplishments — and has received the least amount of credit for them,” they write.

While Obama alums will probably quibble with that characterization (they got little credit for the Affordable Care Act at the time), it is fair to note that Biden has had difficulty breaking through in an era of hardened partisanship and a public that’s lost faith in America’s politics in recent years.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: University of Michigan’s March consumer sentiment index released Thursday, which climbed to 79.4 from the expected reading of 76.5 earlier this month, reaching the highest since July 2021, Bloomberg’s VINCE GOLLE reports. The 2.9-point increase from early March is also the highest intramonth gain since August 2022.

“Not only did inflation expectations fall sharply, so did inflation uncertainty,” JOANNE HSU, director of the survey, said. “As such, consumers are now broadly in agreement that inflation will continue to slow both over the short term and the long term.”

Communications director BEN LABOLT, deputy communications director HERBIE ZISKEND and communications adviser for economic messaging ROB FRIEDLANDER shared the news on X.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This piece by AP’s ALEXA ST. JOHN, MATTHEW DALY and JOSHUA A. BICKEL, who report that two years after Biden’s $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program was signed into law, only four states have opened charging stations funded by the program. Biden has set a goal of having 500,000 easily accessible chargers open by 2030, which are key to his pitch to push drivers to move away from gasoline-powered vehicles. And some of the government’s own experts believe 500,000 chargers still won’t be enough to meet Biden’s ambitious goals of cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030.

CAMPAIGN HQ

HE IS SPARTACUS: With former New Jersey Gov. CHRIS CHRISTIE becoming the latest also-ran to say no thanks to being No Labels’ presidential nominee, one of the group’s 800 voting delegates is ready to volunteer for the gig. ELBERT “AL” BARTELL, a former independent Senate and gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, told NOTUS’ ALEX ROARTY on Thursday that he would accept the organization’s presidential nomination if offered, suggesting that the group should turn to an authentically independent candidate. “People like me are beginning to say, ‘Somebody has to step up,” Bartell said as he floated his own name.

THE BUREAUCRATS

NOT MUCH SUSPENSE ON THIS ONE: House Republicans will send articles of impeachment against Homeland Security ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS to the Senate on April 10, our JORDAIN CARNEY, URSULA PERANO and OLIVIA BEAVERS report.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER on Thursday, Speaker MIKE JOHNSON and 11 other Republican impeachment managers urged Schumer to “expeditiously” schedule a trial once Congress comes back from its two-week recess.

The impeachment articles narrowly passed the House in February. And, look, we are not in the business of making predictions, but we think this one will probably die in the Senate.

FIRST IN WEST WING PLAYBOOK: LAURA GERRARD is now senior adviser for Deputy Treasury Secretary WALLY ADEYEMO, our DANIEL LIPPMAN has learned. She most recently was deputy chief of staff for Sen. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-Mass.). CAITLIN MELOSKI, senior adviser for Adeyemo, plans to depart from her post in the near future.

Agenda Setting

NEED TO ACTUALLY END THE WAR FIRST. BUT…. The Biden administration is in preliminary talks about options for stabilizing post-war Gaza, including a proposal from the Pentagon that would establish a multinational force or Palestinian peacekeeping team, our ALEXANDER WARD, LARA SELIGMAN and JOSEPH GEDEON report. According to multiple officials, the options being discussed would not involve U.S. troops on the ground. But funding from the Department of Defense would go towards the needs of the security force.

A final plan could take weeks or months to approve.

COME ON IN: President Biden on Thursday announced his administration is expanding the window for low-income Americans to enroll in Obamacare, our ADAM CANCRYN reports. Tens of millions of people who were enrolled in Medicaid will now have until Nov. 30 to sign up for new coverage under a plan announced Thursday. It is an expansion of the previous July 31 deadline.

The move comes as the president is pitching voters on the fact that he presided over a historic expansion of health care coverage. But following the expiration of a Covid-era policy meant to prevent vulnerable people from losing coverage during the crisis, millions of people have been kicked off their Medicaid coverage.

AI CRACK DOWN: As a part of the sweeping AI order signed by the president in October, U.S. federal agencies must prove that the artificial intelligence tools they’re using aren’t harming the public, Vice President KAMALA HARRIS said ahead of the announcement on Thursday. By December, each agency must have a set of comprehensive safeguards that lay out how their AI tools are used, AP’s MATT O’BRIEN reports.

Harris said the order also requires that federal agencies hire a chief AI officer with the “experience, expertise and authority” to oversee the technology being used by the agency. And each year, agencies must provide a public inventory of the AI technology it uses, as well as an assessment of any risks it might pose.

We couldn’t help but wonder: What if the AI technology becomes so self-aware that it knows its being inventoried and works its way around the threat assessment? Did the government think of that???

What We're Reading

Kamala Harris’s Epic Fail in Puerto Rico (NYT’s Yarimar Bonilla)

U.S. Support for Israel’s War Has Become Indefensible (Phil Klay for The Atlantic)

Joe Lieberman’s Last Words on Israel (Alan M. Dershowitz for WSJ)

The Oppo Book

For most 10-year-olds, Saturdays are spent sleeping in and playing video games. But chief of staff JEFF ZIENTS was not most 10-year-olds. Every Saturday, using the funds from his paper route, Zients would comb through the classified ads, calling up two dozen listed garage sales. After a thorough search, he would pick the two most promising ones in the hope of scoring mint-condition Topps baseball cards.

After begging his dad to drive him, he would start the grind and scour through the cards. By college, Zients had accrued a collection of cards valued at almost $30,000. Not surprising that in 2002, with a net worth of $149 million, he made Fortune magazine’s list of 40 richest Americans under 40 — just ahead of actress JULIA ROBERTS.

Jeff, what’s the best card currently in your possession? We wanna know and maybe trade.

POTUS PUZZLER ANSWER

During the HERBERT HOOVER presidency, the White House Easter Egg Roll was broadcast over the radio for the first time. The music from the Marine Band could be heard but President Hoover and first lady LOU HENRY HOOVER did not speak, according to the White House Historical Association. To bring home your own piece of White House Easter Egg Roll history, purchase the Official 2024 White House Easter Egg Set.

Thanks to the White House Historical Association for this question!

A CALL OUT! Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents, with a citation or sourcing, and we may feature it!

Edited by Sam Stein.