As you’ve seen people on board Mike Pence’s campaign plane had a few scary moments last night when the plane skidded off the runway at La Guardia airport – a notorious short runway. But is there something more going on here?
An NBC embed who was on the plane was just on MSNBC talking about the incident. Notably, he said that earlier yesterday they had had another incident earlier in the day – a hard landing where the plane bounced up off the ground before landing safely. Planes do have hard landings. They’re not unprecedented. Probably many of you have had one. But the NBC reporter seemed to suggest it was more than just a bumpy landing.
And that’s not all. Back in September, retired police officer Vincent Caldara, who was then Pence’s pilot, was dismissed after it was revealed that he had two severe road rage incidents in his past.
Retired police officer Vincent Caldara last year pleaded not guilty to a charge of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon for allegedly, intentionally ramming a former colleague with his car, leaving the colleague with serious physical injuries and over $200,000 in medical bills, according to The Guardian.
Caldara’s former business associate Jeff Shanley said Caldara repeatedly struck him with his vehicle, forcing him to undergo two surgeries and leaving him unable to bend his right hand.
In another incident, a woman sued Caldara for driving his Harley-Davidson motorcycle into her, causing her serious physical harm.
Caldara appeared with Trump at an event in Fort Myers as recently as last week, and spoke on his behalf at a campaign event in Cocoa Beach earlier in September, where he praised the real estate mogul as the “law and order candidate.” Though the campaign declined to tell The Guardian whether Caldara still worked for the law enforcement coalition, all references to his involvement have been stripped from the Florida Trump campaign’s social media accounts. Pence’s press secretary told the publication that Caldara was not a paid employee of the campaign.
I confess I cannot think of a reason why Pence would have more than one inexperienced or bad pilot. But a lot seems to be going on on that plane.
