Buried inside Wednesday’s Fox News briefing was a genuine $22.5 billion airport renovation plan, along with a smaller detail about Trump placing a holiday roughly five months later than it actually happened.
He was talking through a call with Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry about crime in New Orleans when the calendar got away from him. “Louisiana, New Orleans. The governor called. He said we need help. So we gave him help. Crime is down by 72%. And they just finished Mardi Gras. They said it was the safest Mardi Gras on record,” he said.
Trump: “They just finished Mardi Gras”
(Mardi Gras is in February) pic.twitter.com/UNTXzcJQYi
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 29, 2026
Mardi Gras fell on February 17 this year, the traditional close of Carnival season before the start of Lent. Wednesday’s briefing aired on July 29.
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The gap didn’t go unnoticed online.
This man’s brain is mashed potatoes. He’s gone.
— WATT (@WATT499663) July 29, 2026
Hey, only nearly a half a year off?
— bradvegas (@bradvegas) July 29, 2026
I swear, the cartilage between the vertebrae in my neck is wearing down from continually shaking my head every time I hear this stupid fuck speak.
— Andrew A (@Used_2B_SEMPER) July 29, 2026
It’s so funny how on daily basis he shows why everyone thinks he’s such an ignorant loser …here and overseas😆
— PSMidCentury (@PalmSpringsJP) July 30, 2026
To be fair he slept through it……
— Brooklyn Kid 718 (@BigLdaGod) July 29, 2026
That exchange came in the middle of what was actually the substance of the briefing.
Trump laid out a $22.5 billion plan to rebuild Washington Dulles International Airport, financed through the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority and low-interest municipal bonds rather than a direct federal appropriation. He presented the plan from behind a scale model that covered his Oval Office desk, tracing new parking areas, four additional concourses and an expanded AeroTrain meant to replace the mobile lounge shuttles that have ferried passengers between terminals since the 1960s.
“This is very exciting to me as a builder — somebody that builds lots of big, nice projects before I got here, and we’re doing some of the best in the world right now,” he said, before turning his attention to the airport as it currently exists. “It should be a great airport, and it’s not a good airport at all. It’s a terrible airport.”
Some of the plan will still need congressional sign off, though Trump spoke as if those approvals were already in the bag.
“It’s largely financed, and yeah, we need some approvals from Congress probably. But generally speaking, it’s been very bipartisan,” he said.
Dulles isn’t the only airport getting this kind of attention from the administration this year.
Palm Beach International Airport, which carried that name for nearly fifty years, was officially renamed Donald J. Trump International Airport on July 9, following a bill Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed back in March and described as a “landmark tribute.”
Featured image via X screengrab
