President Donald Trump is preparing to accept a repurposed luxury jet from Qatar, a nation he once correctly referred to as the world’s leading “funder of terrorism” and “radical ideology,” to replace an aging Air Force One. Qatar, the president says, will bequeath him the palatial jet “free of charge.”
Well, there’s no such thing as a free plane. A typical no-frills Boeing 747-800 costs somewhere around $400 million. If this one weren’t so luxurious, the president wouldn’t want it.
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Besides, in every imaginable way, the symbolism is terrible.
The leader of the wealthiest, freest, and most powerful nation shouldn’t be taking luxurious gifts from anyone, much less a third-rate Islamist petrostate that funds anti-Americanism, terrorism, and Islamism around the world. Do you really want the president being flown around in a gift provided by a nation where one can receive a 10-year jail sentence for proselytizing Christianity or where men can have four wives?
Yes, Boeing was commissioned by the government in 2018 to build a new Air Force One, and yet it won’t be ready until 2029 — and perhaps not even then. Boeing has become a rent-seeking husk of its former self, living on federal largess and drowning in union-led inefficiencies. But that’s no excuse for allowing Qatar to try to buy favor with the U.S. government.
The media love to portray Qatar as a bundle of contradictions. On one hand, the “kingdom,” with fewer citizens than Anaheim, has been fostering closer relations with the West. On the other hand, its leader, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, continues to prop up violent Islamists across the globe.
This all makes complete sense if you think of the sheikhdom as one might the Mafia. It’s in the protection racket.
Qatar has emerged as a leading mediator of hostage releases between Islamist groups and the West because it facilitates the ability of terrorists to take hostages in the first place. Since it invents nothing, designs nothing, and builds nothing (its workforce is 95% foreign), the only thing it can do is buy influence.
Qatar has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Hamas’s cause. Doha is where those vile Palestinian terrorist leaders, worth a collective $11 billion, sit in five-star luxury suites while Palestinian children in Gaza are sacrificed as fodder. Let’s remember that Hamas needs to survive for Qatar to remain relevant as a negotiator. If it wanted to pressure Palestinians to release hostages (and their bodies), it could have done it any time after Oct. 7, 2023. Yet nearly every Qatari-brokered Gaza ceasefire or hostage deal either involves Israel releasing large groups of terrorists to replenish the enemy or allows Hamas to regroup. Every deal Qatar pushes facilitates more war.
Gaza is not unique. Other groups that have received “gifts” from Qatar include the Muslim Brotherhood, al Qaeda-affiliated groups in Libya and Iraq, and the al Nusra Front in Syria. Qataris are champions of one-time al Qaeda jihadi leader Hayat Tahrir al Sham, whose groups have targeted Christian minorities.
Qatar also aids Hezbollah, which was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans. Qataris were the first to establish a Taliban Embassy and then negotiated the disastrous deal that left 13 American servicemen murdered at Abbey Gate at Kabul airport.
Qatar, of course, funds the leading Islamist propaganda network in the world, Al Jazeera, which is banned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Jordan. Even so, for years, major American media outlets have given platforms to former Al Jazeera voices.
All that paranoia about Jewish and Israeli influence spread by Qatar, however, is projection. The kingdom has captured large swaths of American higher education, spending nearly $6 billion on 61 American schools since 2007. That not only includes once-elite schools such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cornell, and Georgetown but also schools such as Texas A&M and Virginia Commonwealth University. It’s no surprise that Hamas apologists run rampant in classrooms and college grounds these days.
Qatar pumps untold millions into law firms, PR firms, media, and think tanks. The Brookings Institution is the largest think tank in Washington and a pipeline for experts and establishment journalists. Brookings took $14.8 million from Qatar, the “single biggest foreign donor,” and then opened an office in Doha. Saleem Ali, a former visiting fellow at Brookings, told the New York Times that “he had been told during his job interview that he could not take positions critical of the Qatar government” in his work. Brookings President John Allen resigned after the FBI opened an investigation into possible illegal lobbying for Qatar (no charges were filed).
Two pro-Trump activists, Barry Bennett and Doug Watts, recently cut deals with prosecutors over undisclosed lobbying for Qatar. Then, of course, there is former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who was sentenced to 11 years in prison after being bribed by Qatar.
Maybe the sheiks should have just gifted him a plane.
In 2017, Trump correctly called Qatar a “funder of terrorism” and “radical ideology” when he was backing Saudi Arabia’s blockade on the pro-Iranian regime. Qatar dropped millions lobbying Trump influencers. We have no clue how many of them are on the payroll right now.
It doesn’t help that Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, billionaire Steve Witkoff, has close ties to Qatari business interests. Nor does it help that Trump’s family business is heavily invested in Qatar. The relationship gives off a corrupt perception.
What are the legal implications of the president accepting a gift from a theocratic foreign state? It is, after all, unlikely that any American president has ever been offered such an extravagant gift. Attorney General Pam Bondi says it is “legally permissible” for the donation of the aircraft to be conditioned on transferring its ownership to Trump’s presidential library before the end of his term. Oh, Bondi was pulling in $110,000 a month as a Qatari lobbyist before joining the administration.
So, whatever Trump’s intentions, Qatar is sending the plane to buy the president’s favor, or to make it look like it. It’s not worth it.