Trump wings it

It is for psychologists to determine precisely what triggered Donald Trump’s out-of-theclear-blue-sky threat to cancel Boeing’s contract to build a new Air Force One, due for delivery around 2023. Trump claims the costs of the program are “out of control, more than $4 billion,” a figure that official accounting has yet to verify.

But the President-elect’s cavalier urging to “cancel order!” ignores the fact that the commander-in-chief — Trump or his successors — will need a next-generation version of the sophisticated, safe-in-a-crisis set of wings when the current plane, delivered during the term of George H.W. Bush, is put out to pasture.

Your typical Delta 747, or even a jumbo jet with TRUMP plastered on its side, lacks the ability to fly and communicate securely in worst-case scenarios like nuclear war.

Still, with deficits and debt both far too high, presidential price sensitivity is appreciated.

But it is curious that Trump is focusing his fury on what is, in the scheme of the federal government, a minor overrun, and has yet to mutter a single complaint about a huge, just-published exposé on military spending.

The Washington Post on Monday revealed the existence of an internal Defense Department study delivered in early 2015. The document detailed a staggering $125 billion in waste, including a swollen back-office bureaucracy with more than 1 million employees — only to be buried by Pentagon brass petrified that Congress might use the findings as cause to slash their budget.

In fact, as a candidate, former budget hawk Trump pledged to demolish existing Defense Department budget caps and jack up military spending to historic highs. One conservative estimate puts the cost of the Trump buildup at $60 billion per year — even as he plans to slash taxes, mostly for the wealthy.

So don’t curse the President-elect’s sudden scrutiny of military spending. Pray it represents a new birth of budget sanity.