I'm intrigued to see how US President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bindi get out of this one.
Trump is keen to accept the innocent "present" of a $400 million jumbo jet from the Qatari government, a veritable "palace in the sky", by all accounts. The way he tells it, "only a FOOL would not accept this gift", telling an ABC journalist she should be "embarrassed" to even question it.
The optics, of course, are horrible, but Trump doesn't care about optics. A more pressing problem is, it's immoral and illegal. Now, neither of those things have ever worried Trump before either, but occasionally the legal part has come back to bite him. A quick look at the US Constitution makes it pretty clear. Article 1, Section 9 Clause 8 states:
"No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any Present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or Foreign State." [my stress]
Some of the MAGA crowd are comparing it to the gift of the Statue of Liberty by France in 1886 - Trump, of course, reposted those tweets - but that gift was indeed approved by Congress.
And that "palace in the sky"? It's a modified Boeing 747-8 (yes, an American plane), built in 2012, so not even close to being new. Apparently, the Qatari government has been trying to sell it for years, at least since 2020, to no avail. Plus, it would cost an absolute fortune to customize to meet the requirements to serve as Air Force One.
Who should be embarrassed now? Who's the FOOL now?
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