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Eager to accept a luxury airliner from the government of Qatar, President Donald Trump is testing the limits of Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Usually eager to behave like the servile puppies that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) once described with scorn (before becoming one himself), at least a handful of GOP elected officials seem worried that this “gift” is too obviously an unconstitutional bribe and a threat to national security.
So far none of those Republicans has uttered even the slightest objection to Trump’s incessant cryptocurrency grifting, where he and his family have booked billions of dollars of investments, fees and other revenue from known and unknown parties, including the government of the United Arab Emirates. None of them has asked a single question about the Trump Organization’s dozen or more deals with corporations connected to foreign governments and sovereign wealth funds. And none has raised any concern about the ridiculous $40 million paid by Amazon to Melania Trump for a mind-numbing “documentary” about her life.
But the super-luxury Qatari airliner set off alarms on the right, although critics have mostly confined themselves to remarks about potential security issues. Substituting a jet built by a foreign government for Air Force One — an aircraft whose defensive and communications mechanisms are of paramount importance — seems like a risky proposition on its face. Qatar’s fantastically rich ruling family is a longtime ally of Iran, which made it a pariah in the Gulf region, as well as a longtime financier of al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and other enemies of the United States.
During his first term, when Trump’s favored despots in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates mounted an economic and diplomatic blockade of Qatar, Trump took their side. “The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level,” Trump said at a 2017 press conference. “Do we take the easy road, or do we finally take a hard but necessary action? We have to stop the funding of terrorism.”
What Trump will in fact do, as he always does, is take the bribe and defy anyone to stop him. He did the same thing when the Saudis and others seeking presidential influence paid millions of dollars to the Trump International Hotel. That too was a brazen violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause — specifically designed by the founders to prevent a crooked president from accepting payments by foreign potentates — but Trump simply waited until the Supreme Court let him off the hook. (Was anyone surprised when the right-wing justices, who routinely ignore the ethical strictures binding other judges, would wave away Trump’s transgressions?)
Trump appears irritated by the murmurs of disapproval about the Qatari airliner, which he evidently hopes will be “transferred” from the Defense Department to his presidential library foundation for his private use when he finally leaves the White House. He insists that the U.S. is getting a wonderful present that will save taxpayer money, and that only “losers” and “Crooked Democrats” would turn it down.
The truth is less uplifting. Although Trump is tired of waiting for Boeing to deliver a new set of Air Force One jets, the taxpayers will not only pay for those contracts but will have to pay additional tens of millions or more to retrofit the Qatar jet if it is accepted for presidential use. In other words, there are no cost savings here, only a monumental reward to Trump in exchange for unknown favors to the Qatari royals.
Despite the muttering among members of his own caucus, House Speaker Mike Johnson shows no appetite for investigating the Qatar scandal — despite his zeal for endless investigations of the Biden family, the Clintons and a host of other partisan targets. Nor will Attorney General Pam Bondi, who once lobbied for Qatar, or FBI Director Kash Patel, who took money from Qatar, even glance in the direction of this corrupt bargain.
But this is a scandal that won’t simply disappear from view, like so many of Trump’s misdeeds. If he ends up taking this gift, then each and every flight will be a reminder of the corruption that is the hallmark of his regime. He might be better off dropping the whole notion, as he did after an attempt to host a G7 summit at his Doral resort in Florida — with the prospect of millions in personal profit — raised a swamp-like stink around him and his family. He whined about abandoning that grift but let it go before a congressional probe could begin.
Let’s hope Senate and House Democrats are serious in threatening an investigation of this scam. Its withdrawal would notch an important victory for public ethics and democratic values.
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