The Grift Plane Has Landed!
Checking in on Trump’s big beautiful bribe plane!
Welp, the US government has officially taken receipt of that Qatari 2012 Boeing 747-8 luxury jetliner. But don’t call it a $400 million bribe, it was more like a shakedown. And the plane is actually worth less than half of that, and is going to cost taxpayers potentially billions more than that to make it safe before Donald Trump can use it. Assuming that can even happen within four years. WHAT A DEAL!
Ever have a friend buy a used car as a “project,” and it immediately went into the shop and he eventually had to donate to 1-800-CARS4KIDS because he could never get the damn thing running? Yeah. The plane has to be stripped down to the screws. And the model is not made any more, so if you need to repair it, you might be best off buying another one to use for spare parts, Yugo-style.
And, turns out it’s not much of a gift either, in the way of being freely given: Trump appears to have plotted and manipulated the Qataris into giving it to him.
Trump already has two new Air Force Ones being made at home, Boeing 747-200Bs that are already being built, and taxpayers have already paid $3.9 billion for, plus Boeing has eaten another $2.5 billion in cost overruns. But making them is taking too long, and Trump wants his plane NOOOWWWW! And he wants a bigger plane! WAH!
So he had his envoy to the Middle East/cryptogrift partner Steve Witkoff put together from Boeing a list of their customers who might have planes big and beautiful enough to suit Trump’s taste, and Qatar’s plane was on the list of eight potential rides. Qatar had even already listed the plane for sale four years ago, because it is an aging spare in their fleet of more than a dozen planes that they’re paying to store and maintain. And look at the size of that thing! It’s got four engines and is massively expensive to operate, at least $25,000 an hour.
But he must always have the biggest and gaudiest, that is his brand! So following Trump’s direction, CNN reported, the Pentagon called up to Qatar and said they wanted to buy the plane, or lease it. And the Qataris even flew it to Florida, at their own expense, so Trump could kick the tires and run his Vienna sausage fingers across its “exquisite wood veneers.”
But, before a deal for payment could be worked out, Trump started saying something to the Qataris along the lines of wouldn’t it be nice if you gave me this as a gift? And before they could answer, he ran off to Truth Social and everywhere crowing that he was now getting the plane as a “GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE,” and said he “would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer. I mean, I could be a stupid person, say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’ But it was, I thought it was a great gesture,” which certainly heavily pressured the Qataris to “donate” the plane instead of publicly correcting him.
He even claimed the plane was a “reward” from them for some kind of “job well done.”
But, what about the planes at home? Boeing got a contract for two new presidential planes in 2017, and is supposed to deliver them in 2027. Indeed, a ridiculously long time! But building them does take time, in part because workers are supposed to have to have top-secret security clearance to work on the project, though that is a requirement Boeing recently loosened, and in part because they’re such complex aircraft, with communications and defensive systems that make it like a flying Oval Office and reinforced fortress in one.
Retrofitting the new/used Qatari jet will cost at least as much as building a whole new plane, and take about as much time too. Possibly more, because it is bigger and fatter, like a flying pig. But the Defense Department has selected a different, smaller defense contractor than Boeing, L3Harris, to work on the Qatari plane, and Trump thinks that he’s going to somehow get it before the other planes that are already in the process of being built, LOL.
You can have it fast, cheap, or good, pick one!
Is the plane a violation of the Emoluments Clause? Ha ha, what’s that? Scott Bessent says it is more like when France gave the US the Statue of Liberty.
“The French gave us the Statue of Liberty. The British gave us the Resolute Desk. I’m not sure they asked for anything in advance.”
Yes, a fat expensive plane does seem a like a symbol for our nation’s values right now. Bye bye, poor, tired, hungry, weak, etc., you are going to El Salvador or Djibouti, while the president flies off to golf at his new $5.5 billion Qatari beachside golf course!
And, Republicans insist, because it’s not a gift to Trump personally, after his term is over it’ll go to sit in the driveway of his presidential library. Or maybe it’ll belong to the Air Force? Even Marco Rubio doesn’t know.
“It’s not your understanding that the plane ultimately will belong to Trump or to the president’s library?” Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy asked the guy whose job it is to manage and carry out US foreign policy.
“My understanding of it, basically, has been, from the very beginning, that this is a plane that was identified after talking to Boeing about what other planes around the world would fit the bill that are out there, that could be used now,” Rubio said. Shouldn’t the secretary of State understand that you can’t just pick up some plane at the plane store and use it now?
“I'm not involved at that level of it. What I've heard is that that plane will replace Air Force One, which is an Air Force plane.”
Uh, shouldn’t you be involved, though, as US foreign policy guy?
But wherever it ends up going, it will definitely be taxpayers’ problem forever!
It’s all a huge embarrassment for Trump, at least insofar as he has the capacity for shame. A Harvard poll found that 62 percent of Americans think it’s an “ethical concern.” And South African President Cyril Ramaphosa even dragged him about it yesterday.
RAMAPHOSA: I am sorry I don't have a plane to give you.
TRUMP: I wish you did. I'd take it. If your country offered the US Air Force a plane, I would take it.
RAMAPHOSA: OK.
But taking Qatar’s lucre is nothing new. They have been a Trump family sugardaddy for a long time, ever since the Kushners got tight with them.
Flashback to April, 2017, Charles Kushner — new ambassador to France that Cory Booker voted for! — approached the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, cup in hand, asking them to invest in his son’s deeply underwater, cursed building at 666 Fifth Avenue, and they said no. Big mistake!
Just a few weeks later, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates happened to organize a blockade of their smaller neighbor, which Trump claimed was his idea. He took to the Rose Garden, ranting about the nation that until then had been our strategic ally: “The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level.” Qatar has been a longtime supporter of Hamas, which is something Benjamin Netanyahu supported, in hopes that they would be a more agreeable (to him) influence than the Palestinian Authority (or something). Qatar was left to desperately try to reach Trump and make its case via public tweets.
But then Qatar seemed to somehow learn to speak Trump’s love language, and we all know what THAT is: they bailed out Jared Kushner and his money-pit devil building at 666 Fifth Avenue. From your Wonkette in 2017:
[W]e can't say for sure that Jared Kushner upended US policy toward a strategic ally to punish it for giving his family business the stiff-arm. But we can't help but notice that after Kushner's family got $184 million from Qatari-backed Apollo Capital in November 2017, and the Qataris decided not to give the Mueller team allegedly incriminating info on Jared's ties to the UAE, the US posture toward Qatar swung back.
And then the minute Trump left office, Qatar invested a large sum in Jared’s “investment fund” that does not do very much investing.
So, now Trump has worked out his plan for peace between all the gulf states, by way of all of them giving him and his family gifts. But will he mediate the next time Qatar and Saudi Arabia and the UAE get in a disagreement, when they are all giving his family big bribes?
Guess we will find out!
[CNN / NPR / Rolling Stone / WSJ]
I say let Trump use the his new 'plane now. Screw the security stuff.
Ethics aside, and they absolutely should be a concern, the bigger problem is the expense. The press (hahahaha *sob*) has been failing to explain to the public that this is going to cost them a billion dollars and if it ever IS ready it will be after Trump is gone. Hopefully to his grave. But at least from office.
It’s a boondoggle. And it needs to be called out as a boondoggle.