As Air Force One glided into Doha today, it was easy to imagine President Donald Trump having a case of jet envy.
Hamad International Airport, in Qatar’s capital, is sometimes home to the $400 million “palace in the sky,” a luxury liner that Trump is eyeing. Qatar’s royal family plans to give the plane to Trump as a temporary replacement for the aging Air Force One and then to his future presidential library after he leaves office. The Qatari aircraft was in Texas, not Doha, during the tarmac welcome ceremony that Trump received on the second stop of his Middle East trip. But questions about the gift’s security and ethics have shadowed the entire week.
Trump has privately defended accepting the Qatari plane as a replacement for the current Air Force One, which dates to 1990. He has told aides and advisers that it is “humiliating” for the president of the United States to fly in an outdated plane and that foreign leaders will laugh at him if he shows up at summits in the older aircraft, a White House official and an outside adviser told us, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. The outside adviser said that Trump has also mused about continuing to use the Qatari plane after he departs the White House.
But in a rare moment of defiance, some of the loudest cries of protest about the possible gift are coming from some of Trump’s staunchest allies. “I think if we switched the names to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, we’d all be freaking out on the right,” Ben Shapiro, a Daily Wire co-founder, said on his podcast. “President Trump promised to drain the swamp. This is not, in fact, draining the swamp.”
Even in Washington, a capital now numbed to scandals that were once unthinkable, the idea of accepting the jet is jaw-dropping. Trump’s second administration is yet again displaying a disregard for norms and for traditional legal and political guardrails around elected office—this time at a truly gargantuan scale. Trump’s team has said it believes that the gift would be legal because it would be donated to the Department of Defense (and then to the presidential library). But federal law prohibits government workers from accepting a gift larger than $20 at any one time from any person. Retired General Stanley McChrystal, who once commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told us that he couldn’t “accept a lunch at the Capital Grille.” Former federal employees shared similar reactions on social media.
“Those of us who served in the military couldn’t accept a cup of coffee and a doughnut at a contractor site because of the appearance of impropriety,” retired Air Force Colonel Moe Davis, who also worked as a military prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay, wrote on X. “Now Trump is taking a 747 airplane from the government of Qatar for his personal use … grift and corruption run amuck.”
Air Force One is the most famous aircraft in the world, an instantly recognizable symbol of American power. More than that, it’s a White House in the sky, one outfitted with enough top-of-the-line security and communications equipment to run the government if needed. Famously, it harbored President George W. Bush for hours after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, keeping him protected until he could safely return to Washington. Technically, any plane a president boards gets the iconic Air Force One call sign. But when most people think of the plane, they picture the highly modified Boeing 747-200B aircraft, with its Kennedy-era light-blue, gold, and white color scheme. (There are actually two identical versions of the plane, one of which is usually used for additional staff on long foreign trips. A smaller version is also used domestically for airports with short runways.)
Permitting a foreign government to supply the signature American aircraft strikes many people as not just unpatriotic, but also an outrageous security risk. Although U.S. relations with Qatar have improved, especially as Doha has emerged as a crucial mediator in the Israel-Hamas war, the Gulf country has previously supported terror groups. In order to be swept for listening devices and brought up to American-military standards, the Qatari aircraft would likely have to be disassembled, inspected, and then rebuilt, a painstaking process that would take years and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Boeing was supposed to deliver a replacement for Air Force One last year, but significant delays have cost the plane maker billions on the project. The White House estimated last month that a new plane might not be ready until 2029; Boeing recently said that its goal is 2027.
For some in MAGA world, Trump’s decision to accept a plane from a Gulf state is the antithesis of his “America First” foreign policy. It also clashes with his economic agenda to return manufacturing jobs and projects to the United States. Laura Loomer, whose influence with Trump helped lead to a recent purge at the National Security Council, has blasted the idea, posting on X, “This is really going to be such a stain on the admin if this is true. And I say that as someone who would take a bullet for Trump. I’m so disappointed.” Mark Levin, another influential conservative voice, replied, “Ditto.”
Trump’s eagerness to accept such a lavish gift from a Middle Eastern power has put congressional Republicans in the awkward-but-familiar position of defending a move that they would denounce were it made by a Democratic president. Some have criticized the idea—gently. “I certainly have concerns,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas told CNBC. Saying he was “not a fan of Qatar,” Cruz warned that the plane would pose “significant espionage and surveillance problems.” Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, also panned the offer, telling Politico that “it would be like the United States moving into the Qatari embassy.”
Others have shown more willingness than usual to break with Trump. Borrowing the president’s description of his economic policy, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri told reporters that “it would be better if Air Force One were a big, beautiful jet made in the United States of America.” Senator Rick Scott of Florida was more blunt, telling The Hill: “I’m not flying on a Qatari plane. They support Hamas.” And Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming burst into laughter when asked by reporters in a Capitol corridor if accepting the jet would be a good idea.
Yet GOP leaders have shown no indication that they plan to launch anything resembling the aggressive, lengthy investigations they conducted into the foreign entanglements of Hunter Biden or, in an earlier era, Hillary Clinton. Speaker Mike Johnson tried to draw a distinction between what he characterized as the secretive dealings of “the Biden crime family” and Trump’s seemingly more transparent dealmaking. “Whatever President Trump is doing is out in the open,” Johnson told reporters this morning. “They’re not trying to conceal anything.”
The speaker made little pretense of disguising the fact that a Republican-controlled Congress is unlikely to probe a Republican president, no matter how questionable their actions. Whereas GOP leaders framed their investigations into the Bidens and the Clintons as the solemn responsibility of the legislative branch, Johnson’s remarks today treated Congress’s oversight role as almost an afterthought. “I’ve got to be concerned with running the House of Representatives, and that’s what I do,” he said. “Congress has oversight responsibility, but I think, so far as I know, the ethics are all being followed.”
The Senate’s top Democrat, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, declared that he would place a hold on all of the president’s Department of Justice nominees until the possible transaction is scrutinized.
Trump seems to see no problems with accepting the gift. He called a reporter a “stupid person” for questioning its appropriateness, adding, “I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer.” And in a Truth Social post sent at 2:50 a.m. local time in Saudi Arabia today, before his arrival in Doha, he wrote, “Why should our military, and therefore our taxpayers, be forced to pay hundreds of millions of Dollars when they can get it for FREE.” He added, “Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our Country.”
When I asked the White House for further comment, a spokesperson pointed me to the president’s post. Trump has been frustrated with the current Air Force One for years and had thought that the new version—which was commissioned during his first term in office—would be ready for his second.
For years, the large majority of Republicans have chosen to ignore Trump’s efforts to capitalize on the presidency to enrich himself and his family. Despite his promises, the president never did release his tax returns or totally divest himself from his business in his first term (his two eldest sons simply took over the day-to-day operations). Trump ignored the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which prohibits elected officials from accepting gifts from foreign states, sparking multiple lawsuits. Perhaps his most egregious example of pay-to-play was the Trump International Hotel, in the towering old post-office building just a few blocks from the White House. When a foreign delegation came to visit Washington, a fine way to curry favor with the chief executive was to rent a block of rooms at the hotel. And taxpayer dollars flowed into the Trump family’s coffers every time he spent a weekend at one of his own resorts, where he required staff and Secret Service agents to stay there.
The Trump International Hotel was sold during Trump’s four years out of office, but the president’s efforts to profit have become only more blatant. His business has made a move into cryptocurrency with a pair of “meme coins” and an exchange called World Liberty Financial, which issues its own token, just as Trump is in a position to back crypto-friendly legislation. One of the meme coins, $TRUMP, concluded an auction this week for a dinner with Trump and a private tour of the White House. And American Bitcoin, a crypto-mining firm backed by the Trump sons, will soon go public, meaning that investors at home and abroad will be able to pour money into the company.
Trump’s aides have focused on striking business deals while the president is in the Middle East this week—the White House announced $1.2 trillion in agreements with Qatar today, including a deal for the Arab state to buy $96 billion in Boeing jets—while also quietly trying to make headway on an Iran nuclear deal and a cease-fire in Gaza. But the trip has again cast a spotlight on the Trump family’s business ties to lands not covered by his “America First” rhetoric. Trump arrived in Qatar two weeks after his son Eric Trump inked a deal to develop a $5.5 billion golf club just north of Doha. The Trump Organization has also secured new deals in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the other stops on the president’s trip.
“If he can get himself a plane, he’ll be laughing his way to the bank,” Anthony Scaramucci, the former Trump official turned Trump critic, told us. “But I think it’s just out there as a red herring to distract from the even bigger things that he’s doing for himself.”
The post The MAGA-World Rift Over Trump’s Qatari Jet appeared first on The Atlantic.
