The motorcade of President Donald Trump is parked subsequent to an virtually 13-year-old Qatari Boeing 747 on the tarmac of Palm Seashore Worldwide airport on February 15, 2025.
(Roberto Schmidt / AFP)
If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is round to listen to it, does it make a sound?
If a president accepts a half-a-billion-dollar bribe in broad daylight and nobody in his celebration objects, is it nonetheless corrupt?
The reply to each questions is “sure.” If there’s any such factor as goal fact, then the acceptance by the president of the USA of the Qatari supply of a “palace within the sky” Boeing 747—not just for use as his Air Power One however then, post-presidency, for his and his household’s private use—is staggeringly corrupt. That many of the GOP responded with deafening silence doesn’t imply there’s no “cha-ching” someplace within the distance. Trump wrote on his social media platform Fact Social that the aircraft was a “GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE” and that it was solely the “Crooked Democrats” who needed America to should pay “TOP DOLLAR.” Solely a “silly particular person” would flip down a present, he added.
Notice the traditional demagogic twist: In Trump’s thoughts, the Democrats are corrupt for pushing again towards bribery and a transparent violation of the emoluments clause, whereas Trump himself is driving in on a white horse—or somewhat, flying in on a white aircraft—to rescue a decayed Republic.
In actuality, after all, there’s no such factor as a free lunch—or a free $500 million aircraft. Trump, who has spent the previous a number of days within the Center East shoring up enterprise offers, is now in hock to the Qatari royal household. A CNN investigation lately discovered that Trump household enterprise ties to the center east have greater than tripled since Trump’s first tenure in workplace, with a swirl of deal-making round luxurious actual property developments, golf programs, and cryptocurrency, together with a Trump-branded golf course in—surprise, surprise—Qatar, with investors including the country’s sovereign wealth fund. That is as traditional a quid professional quo as something in US historical past. You’ll be able to virtually see the Qatari authorities officers girding themselves to scratch the Orange Man’s again.
Throughout Trump 1.0, the Home of Representatives impeached Trump—for the primary time—for showing to ask political favors of Ukraine’s chief in change for navy help. Scott Pruit, the ethically challenged EPA secretary, was in the end forced to resign below a cloud of investigations surrounding his relationships with lobbyists.
Present Situation
Throughout Trump 2.0, whereas some GOP senators have distanced themselves from the Qatari deal, many have twisted themselves in knots to justify the unjustifiable. As long as there are GOP majorities in each homes of Congress, there’ll virtually definitely be no severe motion taken towards this open-air corruption.
True, reliably Trumpist senators like Rick Scott, Josh Hawley, and Ted Cruz have criticized the gift—however none of them would critically think about censuring or, if the Home impeached him, convicting the president. And this model of the Home wouldn’t impeach the president in 1,000,000 years. In spite of everything, they stood by silently when he turned the White Home garden right into a backdrop for a Tesla gross sales pitch. They didn’t elevate a finger whereas Elon Musk carried on his self-dealing in his capability as DOGE commandante-cum-world’s-richest-man. And so they appeared the opposite means when Trump introduced he would grant private entry to the most important buyers in his meme coin rip-off.
In reality, many GOP politicians have fortunately adopted Trump down this specific rabbit gap. Tommy Tuberville, the Alabama Trumpophile who could in the end go down in historical past because the stupidest of all US Senators, opined that “free is sweet. You realize, we don’t have some huge cash proper now to purchase issues like that.” Sure, that’s proper—based on Tuberville, the US authorities, which spends $7 trillion per yr, and which presides over a $30 trillion financial system, can’t actually afford a single airplane for its commander in chief, and has to go hat in hand to allies to scrounge up a free trip. His colleague Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin mentioned he had “zero problem” with the present. In the meantime, Home leaders have stayed silent. When requested his opinion, Speaker Johnson informed reporters he had no comment.
Sarcastically, hard-right Laura Loomer has turn into one of many few to come back out combating towards the deal, calling it a “stain” on the Trump presidency. And within the hierarchy of the right-wing commentariat, as Howard Kurz put it on Fox News’s Media Buzz, “For those who’ve misplaced Loomer, you’re dropping the argument.”
MAGA has all the time been extra a cult than a real drain-the-swamp political motion. It’s all the time claimed to be about restoring integrity to a damaged political system, but it has persistently made its peace with probably the most nakedly corrupt actions of America’s grifter in chief.
This time round could also be totally different. Whereas the GOP-led Congress will do nothing past letting out a number of tut-tuts, on-the-ground influencers appear to be lastly roused to anger by this specific instance of the con.
If Laura Loomer, of all individuals, can acknowledge this for the corruption it’s, how on earth can the GOP’s congressional leaders merely sit again and watch the clown present collect steam?
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