When You're a Jet, You're a Jet
...you're a jet all the way, from your first cigarette to...Donald Trump's airplane hangar.
WEST SIDE STORY, which is also what I call the time I drank too much Malort, fell asleep in Riverside Park, and woke up with a hernia (his name is Carl). Welcome to the Thursday Jackal.
This is coming to you on Thursday because I am going to the mountains this weekend and will not have time to work on a Jackal this evening. I will cover the oral arguments in the birthright citizenship case next week. You can read my previous Jackal on the case here.
Why is your intro so weird?
PILLS, BABY. But in case you didn’t hear about the big story this week, Donald Trump is getting a new Air Force One,1 and I’m not talking about a singular sneaker. The Qatari government is gifting us a new, giant, luxury plane worth 400 million dollars solely out of the goodness of their hearts. Here is ABC News with the original report:
In what may be the most valuable gift ever extended to the United States from a foreign government, the Trump administration is preparing to accept a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar…a gift that is to be available for use by President Donald Trump as the new Air Force One. […] Trump had previously toured the plane, which is so opulently configured it is known as "a flying palace," while it was parked at the West Palm Beach International Airport in February.
So, off the bat you have to guess that accepting a plane from Qatar - a state-sponsor of terrorism - is a nightmare from a national security perspective. Sure, we are going to sweep the plane for bugs and things like that, but outfitting it as Air Force One is going to take time and…money. Trump has defended his decision to accept the plane because it would be “stupid” not to accept a free gift. The problem is that - aside from all the obvious stuff - this isn’t free. It’s going to cost us a lot of money:
Converting a Qatari-owned 747 jet into a new Air Force One for President Donald Trump would involve installing multiple top-secret systems, cost over $1 billion and take years to complete, three aviation experts told NBC News. They said that accepting the 13-year-old jet would likely cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars over time, noting that refurbishing the commercial plane would exceed its current value of $400 million.
Yikes. But here is the biggest yikes: Trump gets to keep the plane after he leaves office. Seriously. I was around for Trump’s first term, where foreign dignitaries regularly made their way to Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C., and spent tons of money there in the hopes of ingratiating themselves to the President. It was such obvious corruption that the Trump Organization sold the hotel rather than deal with more investigations into it.2
Add into that Jared Kushner’s billion-dollar deal with Saudi Arabia and Trump’s current corruption with his crypto coin, and you have a story about insane corruption that is so blatant, it makes the one that Republicans made up about Joe Biden for years seem tame by comparison.
It doesn’t matter, because Republicans don’t care.
There has actually been a lot of pushback on Trump’s acceptance of the jet, even from Republicans. Not only have Republicans in Congress said stuff, but GOP commentators like Ben Shapiro and Laura Loomer have said this is outright corruption. Democrats already see an opportunity:
James Carville is calling on Democrats to go on the offensive over what he calls the “corruption” surrounding the second term of President Donald Trump.
Speaking with NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo on Monday, the veteran political strategist said the Democratic Party must hold Trump accountable for accepting a luxury jet from Qatar, and essentially auctioning off access to himself via his own cryptocurrency.
“He’s taking a $400 million jet for lifetime use from a foreign government. He’s selling places at a White House dinner for people that buy his memecoin, which goes right into his pocket,” Carville said.
“And that’s what the tragedy is. That’s what the Democrats need to do, they need to jump on this corruption and never get off of it.”
I appreciate all of this, but I do think people are missing the really jarring part of this story. Yes, Trump accepting a plane from the Qataris is insane on its face, but it’s the substance underneath that is the most alarming to me.
I am writing this on Wednesday evening, and it is coming to you Thursday evening. It is totally possible that by the time you are reading this, Trump will have canceled the order for the plane. In fact, I think Trump will eventually get there since the politics of this are really ugly for him. While the general public is struggling to afford groceries and (his) higher prices, he is getting a new plane?
But it’s Trump acceptance of the deal in the first place that reveals so much. Trump’s fundamental inclination is towards corruption. It is in his blood. He accepted the plane because he is corrupt at his core. Over at the left-wing padded room BlueSky, a New York Times reporter suggested that the word “corruption” can only be used when there is definitive proof of the acceptance of a bribe:
As you can see, he got ratioed pretty quickly, mostly because the reasoning is heavily flawed. Buckle up, because we’re doing another movie reference.
According to Eric, in the clip below the actions of Steve Coogan’s character technically aren’t corrupt because Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell do not accept the bribe. It’s only potential corruption:
Corruption isn’t super complicated. It does not always have to be written down (if the criminals are smart, they are not taking notes on a criminal conspiracy) or properly defined. Sometimes it is merely proposing something that could clearly be described as a bribe!
Trump’s willingness to accept the jet sends messages to other people in his Administration. His attorney general, Pam Bondi (just by chance), sold her investments in Trump’s media company right before it tanked in the stock market. Seems pretty bad, but the more interesting question to me is why did she feel like it was O.K. to do it?
Why did Donald Trump, Jr., feel like it was O.K. to invest in a small company in Florida, which has now been awarded very favorable contracts with the Federal government, greatly increasing its value? Why does the Trump Administration now want to punish Business Insider, who initially published the story?
Do the underlings of the mafia boss only engage in illegal activity when the boss orders them to, or do they do it on their own because they know that their boss doesn’t care about the law? The Trump Administration is going to be corrupt because everyone in it already knows Trump is corrupt, and doesn’t care about the law. He will accept the jets until people make enough noise and then he reneges. But there will always be another jet or another crypto coin. It is his acceptance of the corrupt deal that is the problem. Don’t forget that when GOP members of Congress praise him after he (eventually) turns down the jet.
I’ll leave you with this: I have heard a refrain about Trump since 2016, which is that he cannot be corrupted because he is already so rich. Why does he need more money, after all? “You cannot bribe a billionaire, which is why we need more billionaires in power,” is the general argument. Leaving aside the actual questions about Trump’s wealth,3 this quote from G.K. Chesterton has always stuck with me:
You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt.
See you next week.
The alternate title for this Jackal was, “Err Force One.”
It is now a Waldorf-Astoria.
A reminder that Trump is almost $2 billion in debt which is a national security issue on its own and MIGHT EXPLAIN WHY HE IS ACCEPTING FREE JETS FROM QATAR OMG.