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The renaming of President Donald J. Trump International Airport took effect at 5 a.m. July 9. To celebrate the occasion, some of the Trump family, along with officials and dignitaries, were aboard "Trump Force One," the Trump family's private plane, as it became the first flight to arrive at the renamed airport.Shortly after arrival, the president’s son, Eric, sat down with The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network, for an exclusive interview in the cabin of Trump Force One. The discussion covered a range of topics including the airport renaming, growing up at Mar-a-Lago and the proposed Trump presidential library in Miami.Here is an edited transcript of the conversation.Question: Today was an early wake up, but a day you and your family probably have been waiting for.Answer: I'm fairly close. I live up in Jupiter. It's an exciting day. I mean, the amount of times I've flown into this airport during the course of my life. And there's probably no one that's flown into this airport more times than Donald Trump. He's probably touched down on that runway about 10,000 times, and I'm not joking. As long as I can ever remember, obviously he bought Mar-a-Lago and has been flying it here virtually weekly, you know, ever since. Obviously he loves this area, so it's a special moment, right? As a son and as somebody who really pushed incredibly hard to get this done and make it happen. It's a special moment. I think he deserves it. He's done a hell of a lot for Palm Beach.I mean, you could argue that Palm Beach wouldn't be Palm Beach without kind of what he's contributed, and I think even now more than ever, right? In between kind of [Mar-a-Lago] being the Winter White House and everybody, I mean, he really put Palm Beach on the map in a way that, without him, I think the community would still be amazing, but I think it would be very, very different. And so I think he deserves this honor and when you look at the support between the [Florida] Legislature and [Palm Beach County] and obviously the [Florida] Senate and the governor and the attorney general and everybody else. It's been, it's been amazing. It's been truly amazing. And even by the way, all five of the airlines have signed onto it ... So it was amazing to see all those pieces kind of come together in a really meaningful way.Give us a snapshot of what this inaugural flight looked like. What did it sound like? What were people talking about?We had all the [Palm Beach County] commissioners. We had everybody that really worked hard. A couple guys from the company who worked very hard, obviously, and, in terms of the county, all the local representatives that were supportive. We invited everybody, even people who weren't supportive of it. We invited every single one of the county commissioners and it was fun. The pilot announced we're departing Palm Beach International and congratulations, we're gonna be the first plane to ever land at the new President Donald Trump International Airport. It was fun. And we had to sneak in before UPS. They're always the first plane that lands at PBI every morning delivering packages. They probably would hold them up a couple minutes if we were running a couple minutes late. We wanted to be certain that we were going to be the first, the first wheels to touch down on that runway. Huge round of applause ... with everybody in here. You can see the excitement, and I think it should be great for Palm Beach, right?Tell us about the airport. What's next?It puts a lot of attention on the airport. Hopefully it means fantastic funding for the airport. That's a great thing. Palm Beach is one of the fastest growing airports in the country and Travel & Leisure just named it one of the best airports. People love the fact that it's almost 10 million people out here a year. But it's kind of got this mom and pop feel to it, which we all love. If I have a 5 a.m. flight, I literally leave my house 15 minutes before and walk right on. Try and do that at LaGuardia [Airport in Queens, New York], try to do that at any other airport in the country, you can't. At the same time, you want modern technology, you want modern [Air Traffic Control], you want your concourses to be stunning and beautiful. And to accomplish little things. I think this is put a lot of eyes on the airport. I think this will get the airport a lot of funding. Ultimately, put politics aside, I think that's really incredibly creative for the county and for Florida in general.If you look at Palm Beach County compared to, say, Miami-Dade County, there's no reason why this airport can't be the "go to" airport for a ton of people from Broward [County] all the way up to the Treasure Coast. What is the vision going forward?It's already becoming that, right? I mean, almost running 10 million people through this airport, I think that number's right around 9 [million], a serious lift going out of one airport, right? It's one of the fastest growing airports. You look at Palm Beach County, I look at real estate maps all the time in terms of pricing, and you've got a lot of places where real estate has been flat around Florida, especially west coast and north-northwest. Then all of a sudden you see Palm Beach County, and it's just, the green arrows are sky high. The amount of people who've come to this area, the amount of people that love this area, the boom of this area, the amount of businesses that are coming to West Palm [Beach]. Let's follow Wall Street South for a reason. And yet, they're still keeping kind of that community feel without the vastness of Miami. So everything kind of comes with that. I think it's very special. And so, listen, I think airline lift is going to continue to pick up. Even look at the private aviation side of this airport. It was not like this 10 years ago. It was significant, but not like what it is right now, and it's great. It's a great thing. I think for the hotels, great thing for businesses. Look at how the restaurants are prospering, look at how the businesses are prospering. There's a lot of places in the country in various states where they've lost the wealth because it's all come down here. They've lost those businesses to come down here. That's not good for those areas. But it's been phenomenal for Palm Beach.Do you know how old you would have been the first time you came to this airport?Probably, uh, about zero. Literally, it would have been 1984, that was the year I was born. We had the [Boeing] 727 back then before obviously this [aircraft], and we used to fly in here every single weekend. Back forth, back forth, and we were down here a ton. That's when Mar-a-Lago was a private house. That was before the aspirations of creating the club. It was a very different place. Where the tennis courts are the ballroom is now and where the back parking is now, we called that the jungle, because it was literally a jungle with banyan trees and dilapidated greenhouses, the biggest greenhouses you've ever seen from the Marjorie Merriweather Post days. I had a little ATV on the property. I used to make jumps out of two-by-fours and plywood. It was very different, to say the least, from what it is today. It's just a vast house, so amazing, but a house you could almost not have as a house because of the size. You walk out on the patio and you're the only person out there. It's pretty eccentric. ... The life from back then as a child, to see how that's morphed, to see Mar-a-Lago grow, to see this club get formed, to see it really prosper, and then obviously to become a very big part of a political story in so many ways. In the first term, to see foreign delegations, all over the world, whether it be President Xi Jinping of China coming in, all the significant moments, all the things that were accomplished there, all the state visits there. Then the craziness afterward: the raid, 30 FBI agents and we obviously know what happened from there. And then coming back four years later and then seeing him play probably an even more substantial role in the second term, including inauguration, victory speeches, him relaunching the campaign. It's played such a big part of his life, of our life, certainly of history at this point. It's been fantastic to watch this progression of a journey from something that was so innocent of, an amazing house, that was otherwise going to fall into disrepair. And it was "let's create something really magical, and let's put a developer's touch on it" to where we are right now, where you have a property that symbolizes so much more than, obviously, a club or real estate. It's really become almost a second beacon for the country, right? It's very special.Do you think you would have believed it when you were that young, walking through that airport, if someone came up to you and said, one day, this is going to be …No, I would not. I'm not sure if I would have believed it in 2015, let alone when I was a kid. But, again, well, you know, a lot of times you hear ideas and you kind of roll your eyes to them and say, "Hey, that sounds amazing, but it's unlikely." You know, [state Rep.] Meg [Weinberger] was amazing. Meg was truly, totally amazing. We call her MAGA Meg. She's a total pitbull and I say that in the greatest way. I mean, she has something on her mind and she just goes. She called me up and she's like, "Hey, I want to do this. Let's do this together." And I said, basically, do you think we can? But again, the support in Tallahassee on both sides was just beyond incredible. The support in the County Commission was pretty amazing, to say the least. Even people that aren't on the political same side of the aisle, they saw the benefits. ... Obviously, we got Southern Boulevard renamed. You see what we're doing down in Miami with the presidential library. The incredible thing is you look at the amount of money that all of this will bring to the state of Florida, not just today, but in perpetuity. If you would have gone back to 2015, and said that this would have happened in Florida, I might have laughed at you, right? It was so obvious that that would have been kind of New York-centric. Donald Trump was the kind of the epitome of the New York developer. He built the skyline, lived there his entire life. You would have thought that that's where the museum would have been. You would have thought that that's where the airport would have been. And yet, you had [Florida] that kind of embraced him and the family in such a way that not only did we all leave there a bunch of years ago, now he wants to tie his entire legacy to a place, and I venture to guess if you went back in time, you wouldn't have guessed that little turn to the story, even. Does that make sense?You mentioned the presidential library. What is the plan for that? Wait for the term to be over, or do you have plans to start working on that site ahead of time?I work on it every day. You know where it is, right? Right next to the Freedom Tower [in downtown Miami]. We just got this piece of land. We locked up the site. The attorney general was amazing. The governor was amazing. And that was Miami-Dade College and we're very, very close to them. The woman who is president of the college is incredible. She's been beyond amazing. So we're going to have a lot of tie-ins with the university and academics and all those things. There will be a lot of tie-ins with the Freedom Tower. In fact, 6th Street right there is going to get closed, right? You’re going to have effectively a joint kind of promenade. But they said, listen, you know, you're going to bring a million and half dollars into the city. The amount of tourists that will obviously go through that site … and it's going to be amazing. Air Force One will be in the base of that.Tell us about how Air Force One will be included.Obviously, they're retiring two Air Force ones now, the 2900 and the 29100z. The 2900 will be at the base of that building. There’s tremendous history between everything [my father] did first term and now second term, and all the state visits. That aircraft was flying for 30 years. That was the aircraft that George W. Bush got thrown on in the height of 9-11. It was commissioned by [Ronald] Reagan, and it has flown something like 6.5 million miles with a president on board in the course of 30 years.Have you guys figured how to get the plane in there?My whole life has been building buildings, right? And those are the kind of tough challenges that you sit up at night thinking about. And they are also the things that make it fun. We’re really lucky we’re right on the water right there. So it'd be pretty easy to take the plane down on the water and then they would come across [to the site]. Well, I say easy. Nothing's easy, right? You have to build a skyscraper around a 747. I'm sure wings will have to come off in order to just sneak it in there, but we'll make it happen … that'll be fun. … I've been to all the presidential libraries. I’ve been to Reagan a ton of times, Nixon’s too. I've been to, fortunately, all of them. Went out to [the Theodore] Roosevelt library this last week, and there will be nothing like this. It's really exciting.Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com.
