Donald Trump is trying desperately to defend receiving a $400 million luxury jet as a gift from Qatar.
In an angry post on Truth Social Sunday night, Trump claimed that he’d done nothing wrong by agreeing to take a Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the Qatari royal family to replace Air Force One.
“So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane,” Trump wrote.
“Anybody can do that! The Dems are World Class Losers!!!” he added.
Sources familiar with the plans told ABC News that Trump’s supposedly “very public and transparent transaction” was expected to be announced this week. One source told NBC News that talks about gifting Trump that specific plane had been in the works for “quite some time,” and that when the formal offer materialized, the president “happily accepted.”
The jet will be gifted from Qatar’s Defense Ministry to the U.S. Department of Defense, where it will be outfitted with security and communications equipment to military standard. The plane, which will then be worth an estimated $400 million, will be transferred to Trump’s Presidential Library Foundation in 2029, sources told ABC News.
Since news of the gift was first reported, Democrats have been quick to criticize Trump’s brazen corruption. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote in a post on X that the gift was “not just bribery, it’s premium foreign influence with extra legroom.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who previously worked as a lobbyist to the government of Qatar, provided a legal memo on the legality of the gift to White House Counsel David Warrington, according to ABC News. The two determined that the gift was “legally permissible,” and that it did not violate laws against bribery or the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause, which forbids U.S. government officials accepting gifts “from any King, Prince or foreign State.”
It’s not clear that the deal has actually gone through. Ali Al-Ansari, Qatar’s media attaché to the U.S., said in a statement to Politico that the transfer was “currently under consideration.”
Trump is scheduled to visit Qatar this week. His family business intends to build a Trump-branded golf course in the Gulf nation, as part of a $5.5 billion development project there.
The post Trump Melts Down Over Damning Report on Qatar Giving Him a Private Jet appeared first on New Republic.
