"Trump Had Deal With Scotland Airport That Sent Flight Crews to His Resort." The headline is pretty incriminating right? The New York Times report, published earlier this week, explained how Air Force crew members en route to Kuwait stayed at the Trump Turnberry resort for the night.
A separate Politico report suggested that the incident "raises the possibility that the military has helped keep Trump’s Turnberry resort afloat."
Critics were outraged about the accommodations, but Brig Gen Edward Thomas explained in a letter that the Trump facility was "the closest available and least expensive accommodations to the airfield within the crews’ allowable hotel rates."
"While we are still reviewing the trip records, we have found nothing that falls outside the guidelines associated with selecting stopover airports on travel routes and hotel accommodations for crew rest," Thomas added.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who served as a pilot in the Air Guard, said there's more to this sensationalized story than the media allowed.
"When aircrews need to stay overnight somewhere, the location is generally based on mission requirements and government fuel contract availability. In many cases, that location comes down from Scott Air Force Base in a planning cell called the Tactical Air Control Center (TACC)."
"If a crew is given the option of picking an overnight location, there are strict guidelines as to where that location can be, like taking into account fuel availability and crew rest times among a host of other variables. This also sheds light on why an entire cell of the military is dedicated to planning such logistics."
It's not a scandal, nor is it "unethical" for the crew to have chosen Trump Turnberry, Kinzinger concludes.
"To those who continue to use the military as pawns, particularly while exhibiting zero interest in finding out the truth and the actual rules, please do us all a favor and just stop."