Donald Trump is in talks to accept a $400 million gift from Qatar—presumably not simply out of generosity.
Donald Trump is in talks to accept a $400 million gift from a foreign government. The president has become impatient as he awaits replacements for Air Force One—initially due from Boeing in 2024, they’re now expected in 2027—and ABC News reported yesterday that the small Persian Gulf country of Qatar, an American ally, intends to give him a plane.
The most astonishing thing is that Trump is doing this out in the open. One secret to his impunity thus far has been that rather than try to hide his misdeeds—that’s what amateurs such as Nixon and Harding did—he calculates that if he makes no pretense, he can get away with them. This worked when he called on foreign countries to interfere in U.S. elections, when he declined to divest from his companies in his first term, and when he tried to subvert the 2020 presidential election. Now he is daring the courts, Congress, and Americans to either stop him or else declare graft legal—at least for him.
Underscoring the crookedness, the plane would ultimately belong not to the U.S. government but to Trump: Once he leaves office, it would reportedly “be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation no later than Jan. 1, 2029, and any costs relating to its transfer will be paid for by the U.S. Air Force,” per ABC. In short, a foreign government might give the president of the United States a $400 million personal gift. Not a bad haul at a time when Trump is asking American children to do with fewer dolls and pencils. (Federal law allows officials to accept personal gifts below a certain amount, currently set at $480. That’s 0.0001 percent the estimated value of the plane.)
Just how final this deal is remains unclear—a Qatari government spokesperson said it is under consideration—but Trump confirmed the arrangement on Truth Social. “So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane,” he wrote.
Accepting an aircraft from a foreign country, even an ally, raises many questions about national security. Who can vouch for the safety of the plane? Who will inspect every inch of the plane to be sure it’s not bugged? (A standard 747 has 171 miles of wiring, according to Boeing.
