So, how are you planning on celebrating the nation’s 250th birthday? Have you been yearning, hoping against hope that President Donald Trump will get his luxury bribe jet from Qatar up and running by the Fourth of July? You are in luck!
The Air Force, which apparently doesn’t have enough to do these days despite being in a war and all, is racing to meet the July 4 deadline for Trump to fly around in his fancy new plane. You will not be surprised to learn that they were trying to make it by June 14 so Trump could get a present on his birthday.
In some ways, that wouldn’t be so bad. This plane is so very obviously not for the American people and so very obviously only for Trump. Does a president flying around in a plane that a foreign government gave him as an open and obvious bribe scream “freedom” to you?
Does having your taxpayer dollars go toward fixing up the bribe plane just so Trump can take it with him when he leaves office make you feel like a Real American Patriot?
Speaking of … how much did you pay for this? No one knows! The cost is secret!
It might be $400 million, it might be $1 billion, which is a comically big range. But according to Trump, spending millions of taxpayer dollars to turn the flying bribe palace into Air Force One is actually a way to save tax dollars.
It’s not clear how we’re saving anything when we know that Trump already diverted $934 million from money dedicated to modernizing nuclear missiles into an unidentified and classified project that everyone knows is the plane.
On top of the bribe plane renovations, we’ve already sent more than $4 billion in taxpayer dollars to Boeing for the two planes which had already been purchased to serve as Air Force One, but that wasn’t happening quickly enough for Trump, hence the bribe plane.
Because this is the Trump administration, there’s a neat little additional bit of corruption here. Despite having a contract with Boeing and despite the plane from Qatar being a Boeing model, Boeing did not land the gig to fix up Trump’s new ride just how he likes it. Instead, that honor went to L3Harris.
What’s L3Harris? Glad you asked! It’s a defense contractor that the Pentagon has invested $1 billion in, because that is a thing the government routinely does these days. L3Harris gets that $1 billion bump so it can make a bunch of missiles, at which point the United States would … sell the L3Harris stock it has and magically get all our taxpayer money back? Honestly, that part isn’t super clear.
L3Harris also got some sweet Golden Dome money to help build Trump’s scientifically unsound missile defense system. Just to get in good with the only person who matters, the company has already thrown up a splash page lavishing praise on Trump’s fascism: “READY TO PROTECT THE HOMELAND. To fulfill President Trump’s vision for homeland defense, the Department of War needs advanced, multi-domain missile warning and defense solutions. From left-of-launch to hit-to-kill, L3Harris stands ready to deliver critical capabilities now to detect, track, intercept and neutralize evolved missile threats.”
We’re also paying for a LOT of paint jobs. Trump is turning the plane into Mar-a-Lago, with gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, along with deep red and navy blue. Yes, he’s painting Air Force One so it looks like the private jet that he called Trump Force One, because he’s a pathetic dork. Melania’s plane is also getting a refresh, as are other planes used by actual high-level officials.
Related | Only Trump is allowed to be bribed by Qatar, apparently
Besides the cost, want to know what else is secret? The legal justification for accepting this bribe. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote a little memo saying it’s all hunky-dory, but no you can’t see it. When the Freedom of the Press Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the memo, they were told that it would take 620 days to answer. For one memo.
It’s maddening to see conservatives still pretend that there’s no quid pro quo here, just a pure $400 million gift to Trump based on the goodness of Qatar’s heart, even though it swiftly led to Trump creating a defense pact with Qatar that functionally offers the same protections and obligations as NATO. We’ve agreed to “regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States.”
Nice work, Qatar! And all it took was one tiny little bribe of a plane.
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