Trump’s Qatar Airplane Problem Keeps Flying
Donald Trump’s Middle East trip took him to three countries where his company has significant investments, including an 80-floor hotel in the United Arab Emirates, Trump-branded apartments in Saudi Arabia, and a $5.5 billion golf club in Qatar.
Trump is, of course, comfortable receiving a private jet as a “gift” from the Qatari royal family. This act has legal, ethical, and security concerns that even the president’s most loyal allies have questioned. The plane will be given to the Department of Defense and then become the exclusive property of the Trump Presidential Library after he leaves office. It will, therefore, be available to Trump for the rest of his life.
Presidential aircraft have not only security but also defense capabilities. If you try to imagine, say, Beijing, offering to refurbish the Situation Room, the president’s private residence in the White House, the Oval Office, and the presidential limousine, someone might say, “Beware the Chinese even bearing gifts.”
In addition to being a form of transport, the aircraft is used for war planning, is a de facto residence for the president, and includes a bedroom and shower.
No White House would allow a Beijing crew to redo 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This would be in pari passu. To ensure the plane’s security, it would require ripping it apart. No wonder Kathleen Clark, an ethics specialist at Washington University Law School, told PBS that the gift is no boon for taxpayers. The government’s costs are projected to exceed a billion dollars.
“The government isn’t getting the equivalent of Air Force One for free, Clark said. “They’re getting an airplane frame that they will then have to—as you say—strip down and examine” for surveillance devices, then rebuild from the studs. “This is no bargain. It’s not even a corrupt bargain. It’s just corrupt.”
Trump is famously incapable of observing long-standing lines between public service and private profit. Another name for such tendencies is corruption. The Constitution couldn’t have quite anticipated a president’s refusal to form a blind trust and keep a hand in his businesses while in office. Still, they drew red lines since the Founders were petrified that foreign monarchies would try to overthrow their new government. The president had to be a natural-born citizen, senators citizens for 14 years, and representatives for seven. And gifts from abroad were blatantly forbidden.
Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution provides, as follows:
[N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States] shall, without the consent of the Congress accept of any present, Emolument…of any kind from any King, Prince or foreign state.”
Trump once said he wanted to “terminate” the Constitution to overturn the 2020 election and reinstate him to power. When it comes to terminating the Constitution, beware the opening wedge. The Constitution is but a detail that always seems to get in his way.
Amber Phillips, a Washington Post political reporter, points out that Trump’s dealings with the Middle East are just one aspect of his potential conflicts of interest, involving lobbyists leading government agencies, selling Bibles, earning millions off cryptocurrency, and more.
“Conflicts of interest are the hallmark of both President Trump’s presidencies,” Meredith McGehee, an independent expert on Congress and advocacy, government ethics, and money in politics, told The Washington Post. “The fact that he got away with a lot of apparent conflicts in his first term, I think, has emboldened him in his second. The magnitude is jaw-dropping.”
According to Phillips, here’s the deal.
Lobbyists. He’s elevated lobbyists to senior government roles: Trump 1.0 tried to keep lobbyists from taking positions in government, but in Trump 2.0, oil and mining lobbyists with deep ties to their industries are leading energy policy for the U.S. government, according to the Campaign Legal Center. Trump has also relaxed the reins on what foreign lobbyists can do, which “leaves the United States susceptible to hostile foreign influence,” CLC reports.
Firing Watchdog Officials. Many of Trump’s moves are being fought in the courts. He fired inspectors general and other watchdog officials who probe corruption in the government. He may have ignored the law to do it. The watchman sometimes waketh in vain, but it makes no difference if there is no watchman.
Merchandising. He shamelessly sells merchandise in a way that smacks of a Byzantine bazaar, everything from a Sharpie pen ($3) to a Bible ($60) and more. Past presidents have made millions writing and selling books, but McGehee said it seems unprecedented how brazen Trump is by hawking his wares while still in office. “I can’t think of another president who had this dynamic,” she said.
Crypto. The pick of the litter in Trump’s merchandising is his venture into cryptocurrency, the very financial product that he once condemned. An Emirates fund invested $2 billion in a Trump crypto firm. His family is involved in several crypto businesses, but sticking out is a Trump digital coin, a $TRUMP meme coin. The meme coin technically has no inherent value, but individuals are deeply invested. Investors were recently spurred to buy millions of dollars’ worth of the coin to earn an invitation to an “intimate, private dinner” with the president. The “intimate, private dinner” will be held next week at his Virginia golf club for the top 220 holders of the $TRUMP coin. Every day, Trump supporters have lost money as the coin’s value plummeted, but Trump, like a stockbroker, earns money every time coins are sold, bought, or traded. The Trump group has garnered hundreds of millions in fees and crypto sales so far, report The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell and Jeremy B. Merrill. To crib the title of Fred Schwed’s 1940 Wall Street classic, “Where are the customers’ yachts?”
“A [president] who has almost 40 percent of his net worth in his crypto ventures points out Norman Eisen, past White House ethics czar and co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment in 2020. “At the same time as he is regulating the digital currency industry—and, for good measure, has substantial foreign government cash pouring into those ventures!” writes Eisen.
In his first term, Trump was criticized for putting up foreign visitors to the White House at his Washington hotel. There, they held events trying to win favor. What is going on now makes what happened in Trump 1.0 look like the petty corruption Donald Trump grew up with in Queens. As Eisen says, “It is the single most profound presidential conflict of the modern era.”
Sovereign Wealth Funds. Trump’s family and friends are awash in cash gushing from the desert. According to The Wall Street Journal, sovereign funds from the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia and Qatar “have committed more than $3.5 billion to a private-equity fund run by Trump’s son-in-law,” and that “state-backed funds from Qatar and the U.A.E. were major investors in a $6 billion fundraising round” for Elon Musk’s xAI. Sporting a groomsman’s gray tie, Musk sat behind Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the president spoke in Riyadh.
McGehee, the government-ethics expert, said Congress is the only check on a president with such a multitude of conflicts. The Supreme Court already granted presidents immunity for official acts. But Congress could probe Trump’s business deals—as Republicans did with President Joe Biden’s family—and at least bring the focus to how he is ripping us off, if not pass appropriate legislation.
But even as Republican lawmakers increasingly express discomfort with the GOP’s proverbial blind eye to the telescope, Trump told reporters that the plane was “just a gesture of good faith” by the Qataris, and there the matter lies. Rest assured, if the Democrats win the House in 2026, item one on the agenda will be the Qatari plane and the Emoluments Clause. However, Republican lawmakers do not appear to be worried, and in any event, they do not want to risk a public confrontation with the president.
“So, he’s going to keep doing this until he can’t,” McGehee said, “and there is a hubris there that I think is beyond even just having a conflict. I think the American people are mistaken if they believe that just because you’re rich, you can’t be bought.” And just because you’re rich, you can still be sold.
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