Trump Returns from Money Tour, But He Won’t Get the Plane

“My goal is to keep foreign money out of American politics,” Trump said at the October 2016 debate for the presidency. “Hillary Clinton’s goal is to put the Oval Office up for sale to whatever country offers the highest price.”

What a difference a few years make, as Trump, in his first foreign trip since retaking the presidency, again
goes first to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) because that’s where the Trump family has megadollar deals in the works and where influence into the White House is up for sale. Connecticut Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy is the most outspoken of the very few in Congress who have anything to say:

”Let's be clear what this trip is about. This is Trump's corruption tour of the Middle East. He is going to the Gulf in order to collect tribute. What's happening here is an extraordinary level of corruption. “

During Mr. Trump’s first term, the family agreed not to sign any new international deals while he was in office. This time, they issued an ethics statement that said only that they would have “no new transactions with foreign governments”. Just two weeks before papa’s trip, the Trump Organization signed onto a deal to develop in Qatar a $5.5 billion golf and resort. The deal is with a Qatari company called Qatari Diar which happens to be owned by the Qatari government. So much for their ethics statement.
They are doing much the same in Oman (not on the president’s itinerary) – a luxury hotel and golf combination. It’s on government-owned land and the government will get a share. In Dubai (UAE) there is to be the 80-story $1.15 billion Trump International Hotel and Tower, but this time seemingly built by a non-government company. A fund backed by Abu Dhabi (another of the seven emirates) announced it would be making a $2 billion business deal using the Trump firm’s digital coins as currency, for which the Trump company takes a fee.

Trump can rebut this by saying that the Saudis have pledged to invest $600 billion in the United States over the next four years. Trump tried to get them to boost it to $1 trillion. On he went to the UAE which did top a billion — $1.4 billion over 10 years. Pledges say that these kingdoms do not have any specific business plans in the U.S. , else plans rather than pledges would have been announced. That in turn says that Trump has extracted these favors so that the president can boast of his triumphant trip. Unsaid is what pledges Trump has made in turn. A security guarantee has been bruited about, but for the U.S. to make military commitments to these Arab kingdoms in the face of the rising threat of China, and to protect the Trump family interests, is why Chris Murphy is outraged.

More concrete is the deal signed for the Saudis to buy $142 billion of U.S. weaponry described as “state-of-the-art warfighting equipment and services from over a dozen U.S. defense firms.” And while Trump was in Qatar, Boeing secured a $96 billion deal to produce for the Gulf state up to 210 jets, Boeing’s “largest-ever” widebody order, the ailing company said.

The most significant and unexpected development is Trump agreeing to lift sanctions against Syria, to “give them a chance at greatness”. The State Department had already drafted a carefully staged plan to roll back the layers of sanctions, each step in return for specific Syrian actions. Trump impetuously blew that up, agreeing to remove all sanctions all at once.

He said the Saudis persuaded him to do so, and arranged for Syria’s new president to come to Riyadh and meet with President Trump. As said above, what a difference a few years make. Trump had in 2018 issued a $10 million bounty for the taking of Ahmed al Sharaa, a jihadist whose militia was allied with al Qaeda, now redeemed for
At left, Syria's new president, Ahmed al Sharaa.

leading the overthrow of the Assad regime in December. “Young, attractive guy, very strong past, fighter”, is the president’s changed view. Turns out it was less foreign policy than a business deal. “He told me he wants a Trump Tower in Damascus”.

But it is the proposed gift of Qatar ruling monarch‘s Boeing 747-8 “Palace in the Sky” that won the headlines. The world’s most luxuriously appointed aircraft is 13 years old but in its new state would cost roughly $400 million. Decked out in leather, gold, and burlwood accents, it has three lounges, two bedrooms, a private office, five galleys, and nine bathrooms, some even with showers, and at least one with a bidet.

Trump cannot stand not to have it and filled the Internet with posts arguing why he should.

”Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our Country.”

He said to Fox News's Sean Hannity, on board Air Force One on the Mid-East trip,

“The plane that you’re on right now is almost 40 years old. When you land and you see Saudi Arabia, and you see UAE, and you see Qatar, and you see all this, and they have these brand new Boeing 747s mostly, and you see ours next to it, this is like a totally different plane.”

The plane would be taken in by the Defense Department to be used as an Air Force One, but would be transferred to the Trump Library when he leaves office, if he leaves office, at which point he would own it, free to use it personally. The president tweeted:

”The Boeing 747 is being given to the United States Air Force/Department of Defense, NOT TO ME!”

”No one contradicts Donald Trump better then Donald Trump” quipped MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, when no sooner had he written that, did he say to Sean Hannity...

“Some people say ‘Oh, you shouldn’t accept gifts’ for the country. My attitude is, why wouldn’t I accept a gift? We’re giving to everyone else. Why wouldn’t I accept a gift?”

Attorney General Pam Bondi was quick to oblige, determining along with the Justice Department’s office of the White House Counsel that the library could legally be given the plane. She had not bothered to recuse herself from this decision for having herself been a lobbyist for the dictator Emir of Qatar. And so was FBI Director Kash Patel. And EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. And even Trump’s Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles. All these officials at the top of our government on the payroll of Qatar. (Can this get any more sordid?). Bondi was paid $115,000 a month. She said before Congress that was for the staff in her company as well. What were they doing for Qatar that was worth $115,000 a month?

Bondi used for precedent that the Air Force One in the service of President Ronald Reagan was transferred to his library. But, contrary to Mr. Trump’s eager intent, Reagan never used it for flight again. (Missing from all of this is, why does a plane belong in a library?)

Accepting the plane is of course illegal, but like Trump, she has no intention of following the Constitution which says in Section 9 of Article I that no officer…

“shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Mr. Trump has no such scruples. Maryland’s Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, issued a report that tallied $8 million Trump had taken in from foreign governments during his first term, a pittance compared to the current haul. In another instance of the Supreme Court dragging out cases to Trump’s benefit, in January 2021 they dropped an emoluments lawsuit over his profiting from foreign dignitaries booking rooms and spending lavishly at Trump’s hotel in D.C., astonishingly saying the case was moot for Trump no longer being in office.

It won’t happen because it can’t happen. To install all the technology and security needed for Air Force One, the plane would have to be stripped to its rivets, tearing out all the luxury that has Trump salivating, reduced to just a shell. It must be outfitted with secure communications facilities to enable to president to connect with the world and the military at all times, electronics to thwart eavesdropping, cyber attacks, spoofing, jamming — which is why it must be so thoroughly stripped. Intelligence agencies from around the world will try to get at that plane to hide bugging devices, otherwise. One of the reasons the new Air Force Ones at Boeing are well behind schedule is that everyone working on the planes must have security clearance.

And finally, all that luxe has to be reinstalled, just as it was, because that’s the whole point for Trump. He’ll want to wash his “beautiful hair” in those showers, gaze upon the gold leaf, stroke the burlwood.

”So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE…so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane.”

No, it will be far from free. Various estimates figure the overall cost to be a few hundred millions of dollars and will take as long as Boeing getting their job done, now that this kerfuffle has probably roused them from their torpor.

Even some Republicans have diffidently voiced concern. Senate Majority Leader John Thune couched the gift as a “hypothetical”, but assures us of “plenty of scrutiny” should it became an actual.

“Obviously, people don’t just give you things without expecting something in return”. Alaska’s Senator. Lisa Murkowski said the same.Right-wing podcaster Ben Shapiro chastised Trump:

“Like, please define ‘America First’ in a way that says you should take sacks of cash from the Qatari royals. It just isn’t ‘America First’ in any conceivable way.”

Robert Weissman, a co-president of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization, was equally cutting:

“Even in a presidency defined by grift, this move is shocking, It makes clear that U.S. foreign policy under Donald Trump is up for sale.”

On the left, Congressman Raskin reached back to our beginnings:

“Donald Trump doesn’t know a lot about the founders, but the founders knew a lot about him and his type, and they were afraid that you’d get someone as president who’d be willing, essentially, to sell the interests of the country out to specific foreign governments who would do business with him.”

As for the plane, George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer Richard Painter lamented:

“It’s humiliating — humiliating for the United States to have Qatar provide the plane for the president of the United States.”

The host of MSNBC’s “The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell” gets the last word:

“The president of the United States, who just last week was telling American kids how many toys they could have for Christmas, is now humiliating himself with those Middle Eastern dictators by showing them just how much he covets their toys.”