Qatar welcomes President Donald Trump with opulence
President Donald Trump touched down in Doha, Qatar to a more-than-warm welcome of fighter jets, Cybertrucks, and dancers.
WASHINGTON ― Criticism of President Donald Trump’s plan to accept a “palace in the sky” Boeing 47-8 plane from the Qatar royal family isn’t just coming from Democrats and the president’s other usual critics.
MAGA loyalist Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who has a close relationship with Trump, and conservative commentator Ben Shaprio have publicly opposed the move, in addition to several Republican members of Congress who typically have Trump’s back.
“I trust Qatar like I trust a rest-stop bathroom,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana, said in a May 14 interview on Fox News. “With those guys, trust in God, but tie up your camel.”
Trump has welcomed a foreign gift he says he would be “stupid” not to accept: a $400 million jet from the Qatari government, decked out in chic interior lounge furnishings, that he wants to make the temporary Air Force One while Boeing completes two new Air Force One jets, with an expected 2027 completion time. It would be the ever largest foreign gift to a U.S. president.
But it could become more difficult for Trump to keep digging in with a MAGA base not thrilled about his idea.
“I love President Trump. I would take a bullet for him,” Loomer said in a May 11 post on X. “But, I have to call a spade a spade. We cannot accept a $400 million ‘gift’ from jihadists in suits.”
Loomer has increasingly become a more influential force in Trump’s orbit, having helped push Trump’s firing of multiple national security officials in April after showing Trump research demonstrating their past disloyalty to the president.
Loomer pointed to Qatar’s ties with the militant groups Hamas and Hezbelloh.
“This is really going to be such a stain on the admin if this is true,” she said. “I’m so disappointed.”
Shapiro, host of “The Ben Shapiro” radio show co-founder of The Daily Wire, said accepting the plane from Qatar does not represent “America first,” which Trump has made his foreign policy catchphrase.
“Taking sacks of goodies from people who support Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Jazeera, all the rest ‒ that’s not America first,” Shapiro said on his podcast this week. “It just isn’t America first in any conceivable way.”
Shapiro added: “I think if we switch the names to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, we’d all be freaking out on the right.”
Trump visited Qatar on May 14 and met with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani as part of a four-day swing to the Middle East, the president’s first overseas trip of his second term.
Democrats, other Trump critics and many ethics experts argue accepting the plane could violate the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which bars any U.S. official from accepting “any present” of “any kind whatsoever, from any King, Prince, or foreign state.” The White House has countered that the plane is a gift to the U.S. Air Force, not Trump personally − even though it would ultimately go to Trump’s future presidential library and he would retain use of it after leaving office.
“Functionally, this is a gift to him, notwithstanding the rationalizations offered by administration lawyers,” Norman Eisen, Virginia Canter and Richard W. Painter, who serve as ethics counsels in the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama White Houses, wrote in a New York Times op-ed.
Republican friends of Trump aren’t making the same constitutional argument, instead focusing their disagreements with security concerns.
“My concern is his safety,” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Florida, a close Trump ally, told Fox News. “Qatar supports Hamas. The Hamas leaders live in Qatar, so my concern is the safety of the president. How are we going to know that the plane is safe?”
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, said the U.S. government should be buying planes from the United States.
“I think we ought to have a big, beautiful jet, but I’d like it to be made in the United States of America,” Hawley said in an interview on CNN. “The U.S. government ought to be buying all of our stuff in the United States of America. That’s the route I would go.”
Trump has complained that Boeing has been too slow to complete a new Air Force One after his first administration in 2018 awarded the company a $3.9 billion contract to build two new Air Force One jets. His idea is to transfer the Qatari plane to his future presidential library after Boeing completes the new planes.
But if converted to Air Force One, the Qatari plane’s inside would have to be entirely stripped, scrubbed for surveillance technology for security reasons and effectively rebuilt, Republicans lawmakers on committees that oversee the nation’s armed services and intelligence agencies told the Wall Street Journal.
Pushback from Republicans over Trump’s jet plans hasn’t been universal.
“I think the media is making a much bigger deal out of this than it needs to be,” Rep. Mark Alford, R-Missouri, told CNN. “This will go through the ethical checks and the legal checks to make sure everything’s in order before it happens.
“Look,” he added, “President Trump is frustrated that he’s flying around in the 40-year-old plane. He’s wanted a new Air Force One.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, said it isn’t his “lane” to weigh in on the matter.
“My understanding is that it’s not a personal gift to the president, it’s a gift to the United States,” Johnson said to reporters May 14. “Other nations give us gifts all the time. But I’m going to leave it to the administration. They know much more about the details, OK? It’s not my lane.”
Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.