‘Flying Grift’: Luxury Jet Controversy Follows Trump to Qatar
This gift will not be — as Trump claims — truly free
The furor over his acceptance of a luxury jet continued to dog Donald Trump, even as he touched down in the country giving him the massive gift.
Debate over Trump’s decision to accept a Boeing 747 aircraft valued at more than $400 million wouldn’t subside even as Trump himself landed in Qatar, the royal family of which are the ones who offered to gift the jet which Trump wants to use as the new Air Force One and hold onto for personal use after his second term ends in four years.
The jet is fueling questions, ranging from ethics and corruption, to national security and the true cost of the gift.
Trump landed in Qatar, following a visit to Saudi Arabia.
But back home, the luxury jet continued to dominate the headlines.
The fact that Trump is accepting the aircraft openly does not mean that it’s not fragrant corruption, according to Rep Jamie Raskin (D-Md), an outspoken critic of Trump.
“But just because you’re robbing a bank in broad daylight doesn’t mean you’re not robbing a bank. And he’s clearly robbing a bank,” Raskin said of Trump. “Look, we’ve got to use this as the teaching seminar for all of America about how utterly unconstitutional this arrangement is. And for some reason now, this flying grift — or Con Air Force One, as some people are calling it — has caught the public eye and the public imagination. And it’s really broken through.
“People understand that the president of the United States, without the consent of Congress, cannot be collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in gifts from foreign states or governments,” Raskin added. “The Framers drew a very bright line on that. The exception is if you go to Congress and you ask for Congress’ consent to do it.”
Trump was caught in comments aboard the existing Air Force One grumbling that the US aircraft looks puny next to the aircraft used by Middle Eastern rulers.
“And when you land and you see Saudi Arabia, and you see [United Arab Emirates], and you see Qatar, and you see all these — they have these brand new Boeing 747s mostly,” Trump said. “And you see ours next to it. This is like a totally different plane. It’s much smaller, it’s much less impressive — as impressive as it is. We are the United States of America — I believe we should have the most impressive plane.”
But, as happy as Trump seems to be to be getting this new luxury plane, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out that it’s an aging aircraft deemed no longer worthy of the Qatari leadership.
“It’s a 13-year-old 747, no longer good enough for the emir of Qatar, where no one dares object to the dictator giving the plane to the author of the Muslim ban in the first week of the first Trump presidency,” he said during his Thursday evening program.
Neither is the cost of accepting the jet truly nothing, as Trump claims, O’Donnell said.
“In Donald Trump’s social media posting tonight, he insisted that the 747 is free. 'FREE' in capital letters. But that is another one of those Trump lies in capital letters,” O’Donnell said. “When someone gives you a gift that you then have to spend several hundred million dollars to make usable — or $1 billion or $2 billion to make usable —that is not free.
“Every one of those billions of dollars it will take to make that plane a usable Air Force One will come from American taxpayers.”
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