NOTE: Are taxpayers footing the bill for a Trump "bribe"?

A foreign country gave the President a "free" jet. Taxpayers will bear the cost.

In case you missed it, the luxury jet gifted to the United States by Qatar is back in the headlines. The aircraft (reportedly valued at $400 million) was touted a few months ago as a diplomatic olive branch, donated to support official travel for the Commander-in-Chief. How generous of Qatar! What a foreign policy achievement for President Trump!

Any half-conscious observer, however, thought this looked like a bribe. And yet the Pentagon is re-affirming this month that it was purely a gift to the United States (no quid-pro-quo), even as The New York Times reports that the Defense Department secretly transferred close to $1 billion of your tax dollars to retrofit the so-called gift to meet Trump’s specifications. We’ll get to that in a moment.

But first, let’s review the Trump administration’s insistence that there’s nothing unethical about all of this. On the surface, a foreign country donated something to America. President Trump accepted on behalf of America. Senior officials at the Pentagon and the Justice Department have signed off on it. It wasn’t like Trump said “yes” all by himself. (I love this last part, which is a bit like declaring a Picasso is mine because the museum security guard gave me a thumbs-up.)

The details are what matters here. Everyone knows that Donald Trump loves jets. He brags about his jets often, even though he’s famously cheap (he effectively asked his own supporters to help pay for upgrades to his personal plane in 2022). In particular, he’s been public about wanting to upgrade Air Force One.

Within weeks of taking office again, he signaled he was looking for a new jet. “We may go and buy a plane,” Trump told reporters in February of this year, adding that he’d then need to “convert it.” He would not want an Airbus plane, he said, only a Boeing one. Then he put another idea out into the world, for anyone who might happen to be listening: “I could buy one from another country perhaps or get one from another country.” (emphasis added)

Then something incredible happened. A few weeks later, the nation of Qatar discovered that it had an extra Boeing 747-8 luxury jet on its hands. What timing! They offered it to Trump, who readily accepted. Although the jet was dubbed a “flying palace” for its lavish upgrades, experts said it would take a few years to convert to presidential standards. After that, the deal reportedly would involve transferring the jet to the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library, no later than January 1, 2029.

The Boeing 747-8 from Qatar to the United States. Photo credit: Al Drago for The New York Times

The administration wants you to believe this is a win for America. But what, exactly, did we win? A plane we can’t use for years? One that will serve the American people by flying President Trump across our skies for a fleeting moment before being handed over to former President Trump and his library for permanent display and, as most everyone expects, continued private use?

What a gift it is. Imagine waking up on Christmas morning and being shown your presents under the tree. Then you’re told the toys will be locked in a vault for three years while they are fixed, briefly loaned to you so that you can watch another kid play with them, repossessed, and then given to that other kid, forever. This is the unshakeable logic of Trump administration diplomacy.

That brings me to the heart of the matter: what is a bribe? Convention holds that a bribe is a gift or favor given with the expectation of influence in return. The Trump team insists the airplane is not. But in this case, Qatar gifted a custom jumbo jet to the United States, knowing full well that: (1) it would soon be used by Donald Trump; (2) it would later become part of his post-presidency legacy; and (3) it would curry goodwill with a president known for transactional foreign conduct. Whether this constitutes a bribe or not depends largely on what Qatar gets in return, but we may never know the answer — as the administration will surely tell us (unconvincingly) that any favorable treatment it gives to Qatar in the future has nothing to do with the generous gifts the President has received from them.

The logic isn’t complicated. If you’re a small, strategically important Gulf nation, and you want to stay on Trump’s good side and get preferential treatment, you don’t just send dates and thank-you notes. After he says very publicly, I need a new airplane, you send him a new airplane. If you want extra-special treatment, you provide a lavish, gold-leafed, future-museum centerpiece. I don’t even blame the Qataris for making a material gesture to the President.

Until recently, the worst part of this story was the absurdity of it all. Americans get a plane we can’t use. Then once it’s brought up to standards, we let the President fly in it for a bit. Then it disappears into the annals of Trumpworld indefinitely. For taxpayers, that’s the deal in a nutshell. But this week the details got worse.

It turns out, we’re also paying for massive upgrades. To be specific, reports suggest American taxpayers face a nearly $1 billion-dollar price tag to enhance the plane. The Pentagon has already started the process with a secret cash transfer. That’s right. Any Pentagon official who reveals the details of what’s being spent or done to enhance Trump’s jet could reportedly face criminal charges. Possibly life in prison.

Let’s pause there. I want you to picture something else. Imagine if Barack Obama had accepted a $400 million gift from a foreign power, took $1 billion from taxpayers to upgrade it for himself without Congressional approval, ordered that the whole thing be treated as a state secret, and then kept it after leaving office. What would happen? Republicans would stage emergency hearings. Fox News would deploy countdown clocks. There would be a line of octogenarian lawmakers outside DOJ demanding indictments and lighting their out-of-style neckties on fire in protest. But because it’s Donald Trump, we get a collective shrug from my former Party.

Sadly, this isn’t new. In the first term, Trump officials like me were on the receiving end of requests to move money in sketchy ways that would benefit the President’s interests but possibly violate spending laws or basic ethics. We’d say no. Then the lawyers were forced to hold the line, repeatedly, because he’d keep asking. What’s new is that people aren’t saying “no” anymore. According to reports, the President’s loyal lieutenants at DOD and DOJ are bending over backwards to say “yes.”

Which brings me to a final word on “grift.” Trump has long accused his critics of cashing in on their opposition to him. I’ve heard it myself. A few months ago, when Trump signed an Executive Order accusing me of “treason,” he claimed I’d spoken out against him “for the purposes of personal enrichment.” Oh, how I wish. Because of my sustained criticism of the man, I lost two jobs, a business, personal savings, and years of safety for my family.

“That’s terrible,” people say, “but at least you kept the money from your book, right?”

“If only!” I declare, revealing that I donated the majority of the proceeds from my anonymous Warning about Trump to charity.

“What a fool you are!” they respond. Perhaps they are right. I am, evidently, unskilled at the art of the deal.

Trump’s obsession with grifters is telling. Some might call it a projection. How so? Because the President of the United States appears at least partly self-conscious that he himself is cashing in on his official position. He is doing what he condemns. Almost every day he leverages his office in some way for personal benefit. And he hopes that by pointing fingers first, he’ll discredit anyone pointing back.

So let’s keep pointing, and do so clearly: this jet is not a gift to America or even a gift to the presidency. This jet is a gilded favor for one man — who expects to leave office with more than he entered — and who is apparently taking a billion dollars from all of us to sweeten the deal.

I don’t envy future investigators and historians. When they sift through the ruins of our republic to understand how it collapsed into kleptocracy, they’ll be tempted to focus on the trials and the insurrections and the tweets. Oh, the tweets. But if they want the truth, they would do themselves a favor by sticking to an old axiom: follow the money.