Column: Will the Qatar gift to Trump fly?

May 15, 2025 12:19 AM PT

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The real value of President Trump’s acceptance of a $400 million “palace in the sky” — a super luxe Boeing 747-8 grift, er, gift, from the oil-rich Qatari royal family — could be in what it reveals to his fellow Americans about his unprecedented, global grab for wealth and its trappings.

After all, most Americans struggle to grasp the Trump family’s open leveraging of presidential clout, especially when it comes to the complex world of cryptocurrency. Various deals have made Trump a “crypto billionaire,” in the Wall Street Journal’s phrase, in a matter of months. Americans’ eyes also glaze over at the complicated, lucrative branding deals with foreign investors eager to slap the Trump name on hotels, residential towers and resort golf courses, especially in the Middle East, thereby gaining an in with the world’s most powerful person.

“Golden Age … for Trumps” was the headline last week in Axios, aptly turning Trump’s inaugural promise, “a golden age for America,” on its head.

Now, finally, Trump is making it easy for everyone to fathom his corruption. Who can’t smell the stink of taking a tricked-out jet from a foreign government keen to curry U.S. favor, and in particular Qatar, which Trump decried in his first term for its financing of terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah?

Even Republicans untied their tongues to question this Trumpian transaction, along with MAGA celeb-loyalists Ben Shapiro and Laura Loomer. “If this were Biden, we would be furious,” Nikki Haley correctly wrote on social media. Critics from across the spectrum rushed to name the plane: Swamp Force One, Grift Force One, Hamas Force One.

And who can’t see the hypocrisy of this purportedly populist president, who only recently suggested that American girls sacrifice dolls for his tariffs, grousing on Tuesday to Sean Hannity aboard Air Force One about how shabby his “much smaller and less impressive” presidential plane looks alongside the shiny new 747s of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the three petro-states he’s visiting this week.

“He is infuriated that he begins his second term flying around in the same aging planes that once transported President George H.W. Bush” in the early 1990s, the New York Times reported in February. Boo-hoo.

The backlash over Qatar’s promised largesse plainly has riled a president who’s surrounded with sycophants, enablers and a compliant Republican Congress in this second term, and isn’t accustomed to being second-guessed. For days after ABC News broke the airplane story on Sunday, Trump assailed his “stupid” critics. “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 wrote on social media from Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.

“You’d have to be stupid to believe that a $400 million plane, offered by a foreign government, is ‘free,’ ” former Obama advisor David Axelrod countered on X.

Exactly. Besides, the Qatari jet would actually cost hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars after it was scoured for bugs and transformed it into an airborne command center capable of withstanding missile attacks and nuclear blast fallout. I’m skeptical he’ll ever take possession.

But let the plane pile-on continue — Trump deserves it — if this simple scandal helps Americans focus on how fully he’s exploiting the presidency for self-enrichment. In his first term, Trump and his family were relatively careful to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest involving foreign investments. (“Relatively” is doing a lot of work there.)

No more.

Even Trump’s Mideast trip is all business — the country’s and as importantly, his own — despite the turmoil in Gaza and Yemen. In his previous term, Trump’s first state visit also was to the region; since then, the sovereign-wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar have seeded Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s investment firm with a reported $4.8 billion.

Ahead of the trip, Eric Trump, who runs the Trump Organization, did advance work of a sort: He hopscotched the countries his father would soon visit promoting the family crypto and real estate ventures. In Dubai he was center stage for the announcement that a firm backed by Abu Dhabi would finance a deal using $2 billion in digital coins from the Trumps’ cryptocurrency business, reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for the family. More such deals are underway.

In Qatar, Eric Trump watched as a government official signed the paperwork for a Trump-branded golf course and luxury villa complex, to be built by a Saudi firm. It’s one of several such projects in the region. Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr. was leapfrogging among Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria, prospecting with paid speeches about the “Trump Business Vision 2025” and visiting foreign officials and politicians.

The family formed its cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial, just before the election and it’s already a global force, with foreigners galore investing in it in bids for the president’s favor. As the company’s “Chief Crypto Advocate,” Trump regularly urges people to buy up its digital tokens; next week, he’ll dine at one of his golf courses with the 220 top buyers of his $Trump memecoin. Meanwhile, as president, he’s using his official powers to spur the industry. He’s has signed executive orders promoting crypto, appointed a crypto-friendly chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and shuttered the government’s crypto crimes task force.

No less than the Wall Street Journal editorial board fretted back in January that Trump, by blurring crypto profiteering and the presidency, was “inviting trouble with what looks like remarkably poor judgment.” Absolutely. And that trouble — legal, political and ethical — could be a heck of a lot worse than the furor over a $400-million jet fit for a king.

@jackiekcalmes