Donald Trump makes deals and Donald Trump makes the very best deals as president of the United States. At least, that’s what the White House would have the public believe.

The Trump administration announced Tuesday that the president had brokered a $3.9 billion deal with Boeing for two brand new Air Force Ones. The arrangement, a White House spokesman claimed, “will save the taxpayers more than $1.4 billion.”

But while that makes good fodder for press releases, a closer look at the costs makes one wonder whether Boeing swindled the president. Consider the following.

The sticker price for Air Force One was always around $4 billion. Trump balked at that price before he even became president, tweeting in Dec. 2016 that “costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel the order!”

Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2016



Though blindsided, Boeing then began haggling. A couple months after his first tweet, Trump bragged that negotiations had been so successful that he had cut a billion off the price tag. "I refuse to fly in a $4.2 billion plane," Trump said at Melbourne, Fla., rally last February. "We've got that price down by over $1 billion and I probably haven't spoken for more than an hour on the project.”

But after all that public back-and-forth the final price only dropped from around $4 billion to $3.9 billion, which according to the White House, amounts to $1.4 billion in savings. That savings can only make sense if the cost of the plane somehow ballooned to $5.3 billion in the last year.

It seems like Boeing jacked up the price of the plane then lowered it to make the discount look bigger. If the president wasn’t such a good deal maker, one would wonder if he fell for a cheap trick used by every used-car salesmen around the country.