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Donald Trump is negotiating to accept a $400 million gift from the foreign government. The president became irritated as he waited to replace the Air Force One replacement, which started with Boeing in 2024, and now they expect in 2027, ABC News reported yesterday that Katar, a U.S. ally, a U.S. ally, intends to give him a plane.
Most surprisingly, Trump is doing this publicly. One secret of his impunity so far is that rather than trying to hide his wrongdoing, that's what amateurs like Nixon and Harding do - he calculated that if he didn't pretend, he could escape them. It worked when he called for foreign interference in the U.S. election, when he refused to evacuate the company in his first term, and when he tried to subvert the 2020 presidential election. Now he dares to stop him, Congress and the Americans, or declare Graft legal, at least for him.
The aircraft that emphasizes the distortion will ultimately not belong to the U.S. government, but Trump: it will reportedly “transfer it to the time of January 1, 2029 to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation, and any fees related to its transfer will be paid by the U.S. Air Force.” In short, a foreign government may provide the U.S. president with $400 million in personal gifts. It's not a bad thing when Trump asks American children to make dolls and pencils. (Federal law allows officials to accept the following amount of personal gifts, currently set at $480. This is 0.0001% of the aircraft's estimated value.)
A spokesman for the Katari administration said the final deal was considered is unclear, but Trump confirmed the arrangements for the truth society. "The Department of Defense is therefore getting free gifts from 747 aircraft to replace the 40-year-old Air Force One, temporarily through a very open and transparent deal, thus disturbing the bending Democrats they insist on paying for the aircraft," he wrote.
Accepting aircraft from foreign countries, even allies, raises many questions about national security. Who can ensure the safety of the plane? Who will check every inch of the plane to make sure there are no loopholes? (According to Boeing, the standard 747 has 171 miles of cabling.) Assuming the aircraft is totally operable, not a sure thing, because Wall Street Journal Reported in an early iteration of this story. All of this will worry the White House, except as I wrote, Trump does not care about national security. "Trump is the only thing he is interested in," John Bolton, a former national security adviser, told me earlier this year.
If there is no free lunch or something like that, there is definitely no free plane. The Qataris probably won't give a plane like Trump from their inner kindness and generosity. There is a simple term: bribery. The fact that we don't know what Qatar might want from Trump hasn't changed. In fact, this is arguably more terrifying, as Trump can tend to any number of policy options to benefit Doha. The Supreme Court has made prosecuting politicians increasingly difficult in a series of recent rulings, but that doesn’t prevent the rest of us from using ordinary language.
In this case, there is also a specific term: Foreign music. The constitution is not a very long document, but it specifically prohibits office holders from taking gifts from foreign powers. Trump realized during his first term that the ban was almost impossible to enforce. He accepted many foreign Melo's wills, including in his Washington, D.C., where the hotel appeared in business, but the court rejected the lawsuit filed by Democratic lawmakers, concluding that they did not appeal to Sue. (The first Trump administration also failed to keep a proper gift log, some went missing at the end of their tenure.)
The first Trump term was a small holiday, but it was just a warm-up for the second semester. In 2021, Trump described Bitcoin as a "scam." Now, he has decided to join the scam, earning at least nearly $1 billion in crypto projects on paper, Bloomberg reported. The president is using his office publicly to make profits. At the auction ending today, buyers of his personal cryptocurrency can win the opportunity to visit the White House. It seems like it’s not bad enough, and the arrangement also attracts bidders who think the winner’s chances of getting Trump will provide you with a good opportunity to influence U.S. policy.
His family business recently struck a multibillion-dollar deal in the region ahead of Trump’s own Middle East harassment this week. His son has reached or announced an agreement with Dubai, Saudi Arabia, as well as - Qatar known to Wadia. Maybe even if Trump makes son Eric's trip to the Middle East right back his. Jared Kushner is reportedly Trump's son-in-law, a former administration official and informal adviser to Middle East diplomacy, despite his commercial interests in the region.
During his first presidential campaign, Trump showed off his wealth to prevent corruption. He claimed that he could not be bought because he was independent and wealthy. Indeed, he boasted that he had always been the one who bought it. Instead, his high personal net worth only increased his ambitions for corruption. The former Republican president believed that the government was simply the greatest opportunity to indoctrinate himself.
The court may have effectively prevented prosecutors from regulating official corruption, but what is the examination of his power if the U.S. Congress is willing to allow foreign governments to give the president $400 million in personal gifts? What is the point of having a constitution or Congress? The plane may be free for Trump, but the Americans' fees may be very steep.
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