July 27, 2025, 7:00 a.m. ETPresident Donald Trump speaks to the media after arriving Friday on Air Force One in Glasgow, Scotland.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York TimesPresident Trump was expected to hold talks on Sunday in Scotland with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, as the possibility of a damaging trans-Atlantic trade war loomed.Mr. Trump, who is on a four-day visit to Scotland, spent Saturday playing golf at one of his courses as he began a trip that will also include meetings with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain and John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister.But the announcement of Sunday’s meeting with Ms. von der Leyen — made public on Friday — raised hopes that Mr. Trump’s visit might bring progress over the fraught issue of U.S. trade with the 27-nation European Union.Several days ago, officials in the bloc said they believed that a deal with the U.S. could be reached in time to avert the tariffs of 30 percent on European imports that Mr. Trump had threatened to impose on Aug. 1.On Friday, Ms. von der Leyen wrote on social media that, following a “good call” with Mr. Trump, the two leaders had agreed to discuss trans-Atlantic trade relations in Scotland on Sunday.The White House has expressed more caution over prospects of a deal before the deadline, and Mr. Trump himself rated the odds at a 50-50 chance as he left for Scotland.But European officials are hoping for an agreement that sets tariffs at 15 percent on most goods, including on cars and car parts, although they have indicated that they are ready to retaliate should negotiations collapse.A breakthrough would mark a significant moment because Mr. Trump has been outspoken in his criticism of European trade policy, describing the bloc as “in many ways, nastier than China.”As he arrived in Scotland on Friday, however, Mr. Trump’s harsh rhetoric was directed against Europe’s immigration — rather than its trade — policies. “On immigration, you better get your act together or you’re not going to have Europe anymore,” he said.Britain, which has a more balanced trade relationship with the United States than the European Union, has secured a deal with the United States that includes a tariff level of 10 percent on most products. When Mr. Starmer meets Mr. Trump this week, however, he is expected to continue to press for a better deal for British steel exports.On Saturday, a large security operation was underway at Trump Turnberry in South Ayrshire, where the president was seen playing golf at his luxury resort. Roads were closed around the course, and a large number of police and military personnel were visible.In Edinburgh and Aberdeen, cities well away from Turnberry, hundreds of demonstrators gathered to protest the president’s visit.On Monday, Mr. Trump is scheduled to meet Mr. Starmer at Turnberry before traveling to Aberdeenshire, in northeast Scotland, to open another 18-hole course.July 27, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ETDavid E. Sanger and Eric SchmittDavid E. Sanger has covered five American presidents and flown around the world in the cramped press section of Air Force One. Eric Schmitt has covered the Pentagon for 35 years, riding on far less comfortable planes.News AnalysisThe Boeing 747-8 from Qatar at Palm Beach International Airport in Florida after President Trump took a tour of the plane in February. Renovation will begin soon at a Texas facility known for secret technology projects.Credit...Al Drago for The New York TimesPresident Trump makes no secret of his displeasure over the cost of renovating the Federal Reserve headquarters — around $2.5 billion, or even higher by the president’s accounting.But getting the White House to discuss another of Washington’s expensive renovation projects, the cost of refurbishing a “free” Air Force One from Qatar, is quite another matter.Officially, and conveniently, the price tag has been classified. But even by Washington standards, where “black budgets” are often used as an excuse to avoid revealing the cost of outdated spy satellites and lavish end-of-year parties, the techniques being used to hide the cost of Mr. Trump’s pet project are inventive.Which may explain why no one wants to discuss a mysterious, $934 million transfer of funds from one of the Pentagon’s most over-budget, out-of-control projects — the modernization of America’s aging, ground-based nuclear missiles.In recent weeks, congressional budget sleuths have come to think that amount, slipped into an obscure Pentagon document sent to Capitol Hill as a “transfer” to an unnamed classified project, almost certainly includes the renovation of the new, gold-adorned Air Force One that Mr. Trump desperately wants in the air before his term is over. (It is not clear if the entire transfer will be devoted to stripping the new Air Force One back to its airframe, but Air Force officials privately acknowledge dipping into nuclear modernization funds for the complex project.)Qatar’s defense minister and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed the final memorandum of understanding a few weeks ago, paving the way for the renovation to begin soon at a Texas facility known for secret technology projects. The document was reported earlier by The Washington Post.Mr. Trump’s plane probably won’t fly for long: It will take a year or two to get the work done, and then the Qatari gift — improved with the latest communications and in-flight protective technology — will be transferred to the yet-to-be-created Trump presidential library after he leaves office in 2029, the president has said.Concerns over the many apparent conflicts of interests involved in the transaction, given Mr. Trump’s government dealings and business ties with the Qataris, have swirled since reports of the gift emerged this spring. But the president himself said he was unconcerned, casting the decision as a no-brainer for taxpayers.“I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer,” the president said in May. “I mean, I could be a stupid person and say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’”It is free in the sense that a used car handed over by a neighbor looking to get it out of his driveway is free. In this case, among the many modifications will be hardened communications, antimissile systems and afterburners to take the president quickly to safety as one of the older Air Force Ones did on Sept. 11, 2001, when Al Qaeda attacked the United States. And there is the delicate matter of ridding the jet of any hidden electronic listening devices that U.S. officials suspect may be embedded in the walls.Mr. Trump talks to reporters aboard Air Force One in May.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesThen, of course, it has to be stuffed with the luxuries — and gold trim — with which the 47th president surrounds himself, whether he is in the Oval Office or in the air. The jet’s upper deck has a lounge and a communications center, while the main bedroom can be converted into a flying sick bay in a medical emergency.So it’s no surprise that one of Washington’s biggest guessing games these days is assessing just where the price tag will end up, on top of the $4 billion already being spent on the wildly-behind-schedule presidential planes that Boeing was supposed to deliver last year. It was those delays that led Mr. Trump to look for a gift.Air Force officials privately concede that they are paying for renovations of the Qatari Air Force One with the transfer from another the massively-over-budget, behind-schedule program, called the Sentinel. That is named for the missile at the heart of Washington’s long-running effort to rebuild America’s aging, leaky, ground-launched nuclear missile system.The project was first sold to Congress as a $77.7 billion program to replace all 400 Minuteman III missiles, complete with launch facilities and communications built to withstand both nuclear and cyber attack. By the time Mr. Trump came back into office, that figure had ballooned by 81 percent, to $140 billion and climbing, all to reconstruct what nuclear strategists agree is the most vulnerable, impossible-to-hide element of America’s nuclear deterrent.And that was the number before the Air Force announced a few months ago that it would have to dig all new silos across Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota, because the old Minuteman silos were leaking and crumbling.The first of the Minutemans were installed 55 years ago, when Richard Nixon was president and Leonid Brezhnev was inside the Kremlin. Washington and Moscow had a combined total of more than 30,000 nuclear weapons pointed at each other. (Today it is closer to 3,100.)The good news is that in the first Trump administration, the Air Force got rid of the command-and-control systems that still used 8-inch floppy disks, proving that the so-called deep state can get something done when it digs, well, deep.Some nuclear strategists argue that the ground-based nuclear weapons do not need to be replaced at all; they are far more vulnerable than weapons traveling under the sea on stealthy submarines, or that can be loaded on bombers. But the Pentagon doesn’t want to part with a third of the nuclear “triad,” and the silos and their command posts are big employers in the rural West.They serve another function in the second Trump administration. The modernization program has proved to be the perfect thing if you were determined to hide how much you are spending on an airplane, especially one equipped to order up a nuclear strike, if needed.Troy E. Meink, the Air Force secretary, testifying before the House Committee on Armed Services in June.Credit...Jose Luis Magana/Associated PressIn testimony before Congress in June, Troy E. Meink, the Air Force secretary, said that he thought the cost of the Air Force One renovations would be manageable. “I think there has been a number thrown around on the order of $1 billion,” he said. “But a lot of those costs associated with that are costs that we’d have experienced anyway, we will just experience them early,” before Boeing delivers its two Air Force Ones. “So it wouldn’t be anywhere near that.”“We believe the actual retrofit of that aircraft is probably less than $400 million,” he said.If so, that would be a bargain. But engineers and Air Force experts who have been through similar projects have their doubts that it can be accomplished for anything like that price. Members of Congress express concern that Mr. Trump will pressure the Air Force to do the work so fast that sufficient security measures are not built into the plane. When asked last week, the Air Force said it simply could not discuss the cost — or anything else about the plane — because it’s classified.(For collectors of such bureaucratic evasions, yes, the Air Force is willing to discuss the cost of building a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles, but not the cost of renovating the president’s aircraft.)Mr. Trump disembarking Air Force One in Scotland on Friday. The president is expected to redecorate the new plane with his signature gold trim.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York TimesOnly at the Pentagon could someone reprogram $934 million and expect no one to notice. The coffers were refilled with the passage of the budget reconciliation bill several weeks ago, budget officials say.“The more we learn about this deal, the more disturbing it becomes,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, who serves on the Armed Services Committee. “The security implications of accepting a private plane from a foreign nation as Air Force One and the resulting ethical concerns a gift of that sizes creates were already significant.”But it was more worrisome, Ms. Shaheen said, that “this administration is diverting funds from the nuclear modernization budget to finance costly renovations to this plane.”In doing so, she said, “we’re weakening our credibility to fund a vanity project for President Trump.”July 26, 2025, 11:19 a.m. ETVideoDemonstrators held signs criticizing President Trump on a range of issues, from his stances on immigration and Gaza, and his ties to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.CreditCredit...Robert Ormerod for The New York TimesAs President Trump golfed Saturday at his course in Turnberry, Scotland, hundreds of protesters took to the streets to denounce his presence in Britain, opposing the administration’s policies on immigration, the war in Gaza and myriad other issues.In Edinburgh, one woman played the bagpipes while holding an anti-Trump sign.Mr. Trump, an avid golfer who spends many weeks on his American courses, played with his son Eric and Warren A. Stephens, his ambassador to the United Kingdom, and the diplomat’s son.Donald Trump Jr. also accompanied his father on the trip to Scotland, where they were greeted at Glasgow Prestwick Airport by a crowd of supporters.“The best course anywhere in the world is Turnberry,” Mr. Trump boasted to reporters after touching down, before saying he had a twofold message to deliver to Europe’s leaders: Halt mass migration and turn away from wind power.“This immigration is killing Europe,” Mr. Trump said. “And the other thing, stop the windmills. Killing the beauty of your countries.”On Saturday, the Scots, who opinion polls show have low regard for Mr. Trump, let their opposition to his policies be known.A group called Stop Trump Scotland organized a rally as a “festival of resistance” against Mr. Trump that drew hundreds in Aberdeen, in Scotland’s north, and Edinburgh.Protesters carried signs objecting to Mr. Trump’s policies, from the environment and immigration to trade and the war in Gaza. Several held signs invoking the current controversy circling around Mr. Trump: his administration’s handling of the so-called Epstein files, the records that pertain to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.At the Edinburgh protest, one woman held a sign that contained nine photos of Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein together over the years, along with the words “Best Friends Forever.”“I think it’s quite current with what’s going on right now, with the fact that he’s not wanting to release the Epstein files,” said Melissa Park, 24, of Glasgow. “It’s obviously because he’s a big part of it, and there’s clear evidence that he’s been best friends with Jeffrey Epstein for years of his life.”Mr. Trump and his son Eric at the Trump Turnberry golf course in Scotland on Saturday.Credit...Andy Buchanan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMany signs at the rally contained similar insults about Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Epstein. The two men, both wealthy New Yorkers, were friends for some 15 years, before they had a falling out in 2004. Mr. Epstein killed himself in jail in 2019.Mel Young, 58, of Alloa, held a sign that said “Release The Epstein Files.” She said her opposition to Mr. Trump is far more wide-ranging than concerns about the president’s association with Mr. Epstein, but, she argued, it was the latest example of outrageous behavior.“I’m just so horrified by the normalization of cruelty, corruption and mass disinformation,” she said. “This is just one tiny plot of the whole thing.”Speaking to reporters Friday, Mr. Trump denied reports that he had been briefed that his name was contained within the Epstein files. He criticized news reports’ continued focus on the files instead of trade deals he is pursuing in Europe.“I’m focused on making deals,” he said. “I’m not focused on conspiracy theories.”After Mr. Trump’s rounds of golf, he planned to meet Sunday with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, to discuss trade.The president’s administration once promised to secure 90 trade deals in 90 days but fell well short of that goal. Recently, however, Mr. Trump has begun to announce more deals, including one with Japan.As for striking a trade deal this weekend, he said, “With the European Union, I think we have a good 50/50 chance,” adding that there were still about 20 issues to resolve.“That would be actually the biggest deal of them all, if we make it,” the president said.