- Several items today about the Trump administration’s acceptance from Qatar of a $400 million luxury 747, for Trump’s personal use;
- How Trump shrugs off intelligence briefings; he knows what he knows because he’s smart;
- How the story of a woman who struggled to get a job at NASA was taken down, and then she was fired, because DEI;
- Another take on why the current administration is defunding the investments into technology and innovation that have made America great.
- And so, it’s hard to be unaware that Americans are living in a fading nation.
The latest example of egregious behavior by Trump that most of the MAGA folks don’t care about is the gift by Qatar of a $400 million tricked-out Boeing 747, to serve as Trump’s Air Force One stand-in. Presidents aren’t suppose to get big gifts like this. It’s in the Constitution: the Emoluments Clause. But clearly Trump and MAGA do not care about the Constitution. And the right lawyers can justify anything.
ABC News, 11 May 2025: Trump administration poised to accept ‘palace in the sky’ as a gift for Trump from Qatar: Sources, subtitled “The luxury jumbo jet is to be used as Air Force One, sources told ABC News.”
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 until shortly before he leaves office, at which time ownership of the plane will be transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation, sources familiar with the proposed arrangement told ABC News.
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Slate, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern, 12 May 2025: Donald Trump’s Corruption Reaches New Heights, subtitled “His ‘flying palace’ scheme could not be more brazen.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi—whom Trump also evidently gets to use and keep for life—told ABC news that Trump’s top White House lawyer, David Warrington, had determined this gift is “legally permissible” because it is being directed to the United States Air Force and will then be transferred to Trump’s presidential library foundation. (Bondi herself formerly received $115,000 a month to lobby on behalf of Qatar.) These very real, very serious lawyers also determined that acceptance of the plane does not constitute a bribe because the gift does not hinge on an official act. Bondi provided a legal memorandum addressing all of these issues to the White House counsel’s office last week, after Warrington asked her about the legality of the Pentagon accepting a massive palace in the sky. The memo has not yet been released to the public, quite possibly because its reasoning would fall apart upon even the slightest independent inspection.
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The Bulwark, William Kristol, 12 May 2025: A Garish, Outlandish, Stunningly Corrupt Act, subtitled “Trump wants Qatar to gift him a shiny new Air Force One because he thinks the Emoluments Clause is for suckers.”
I’m old enough to remember when this was a republic. A proud republic. We were proud to be different from the principalities and powers of the old world. We were confident of our superiority to the hereditary aristocracies and monarchies that had dominated political life everywhere on the globe, and that still did in many places.
In those older and simpler days we spoke of and even believed in republican virtue.
… [[ details about emoluments ]] …
How naïve we were back then.
Now, the president of the United States is boasting of receiving as a gift a luxury Boeing 747-8 plane from the Qatari royal family. The plane will be upgraded to serve not as the Air Force One but as his Air Force One, since it will only be available for use by the government of the United States during his time in office. It will then revert to him—well, nominally to his presidential library, but it will of course be totally at his disposal—after he leaves office.
Trump responds to critics about how the plane is “FREE” and “The Dems are World Class Losers!!!”
This is the voice of old-world autocracy. Those who take seriously the constraints and requirements of republican government are fools. Those who care that our republican government not be dependent on foreign states, that our elected leaders not take favors from foreign princes, they are losers.
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Slate, Fred Kaplan, 12 May 2025: The Free Plane Trump Wants to Accept Might Just Be a Trojan Horse, subtitled “The violation of ethical norms isn’t the only jaw-dropping part of this deal.”
Air Force One is equipped with everything that a president needs in the air—all the communications gear, intelligence files, and other top-secret paraphernalia that he or she would have on the ground. And of course, all the aides traveling along would have their phones as well.
One can only wonder how many listening devices and cybertools the Qataris will plant inside that plane before turning it over to the White House.
Recalling the US embassy in Moscow that the Russians offered to build, back in the 1970s, with the same problem.
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JMG, 12 May 2025: MSNBC: Trump Has Long History Of Lying About Planes
Quoting Steve Benen at MSNBC
In Donald Trump’s first term, the president cultivated an unexpectedly amusing list of incidents related to airplanes. I actually maintained a list, documenting a curious array of stories in which the Republican suggested that F-35s are literally invisible, whined about the complexity of piloting, referenced F-52s that didn’t exist outside of video games, complained to members of Congress that the emir of Kuwait’s plane was bigger than his, and (among other things) got caught lying about Japan buying U.S. fighter jets and lying about Finland doing the same thing. In his second term, the news at the intersection of Trump and planes is far less funny.
Trump lives in a fantasy world.
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Conservatives, including Trump, know what they know, and don’t need any new “information.”
MSNBC, Maddow Blog, Steven Benen, 12 May 2025: Trump reportedly shrugs off intelligence briefings he needs, but doesn’t want, subtitled “In his first term, the president blew off intelligence briefings that he needed to govern. The problem is even worse in his second term.”
Beginning with Kash Patel.
It’s worth emphasizing that different presidents have approached these briefings in different ways. George W. Bush received intelligence briefings on a nearly daily basis. Barack Obama received briefings roughly every other day, but he was known to be a voracious reader of the written President’s Daily Brief (often referred to as the PDB). Joe Biden received an in-person briefing once or twice a week, but like Obama, he was also known to read the PDB briefing book.
Trump, meanwhile, reportedly doesn’t read the PDB, and if the Politico report is accurate, he’s receiving in-person briefings roughly once every 10 days.
Broadly speaking, a couple of angles are worth keeping in mind in response to reporting like this. The first is probably obvious: Trump is dealing with serious national security challenges — war in Ukraine, a crisis in the Middle East, China expanding its global influence, domestic security threats, et al. — and the United States is being led by an incurious former television personality who desperately needs — but apparently isn’t getting — valuable information that would lead to better decision-making.
Less obvious, however, is the pattern: The problem isn’t just that Trump is avoiding intelligence he needs; the problem is made worse by the fact that Trump has always avoided intelligence he needs.
During his transition process in 2016, for example, Trump skipped nearly all of his intelligence briefings. Asked why, the Republican told Fox News in December 2016, “Well, I get it when I need it. … I don’t have to be told — you know, I’m, like, a smart person.”
Sigh. Dunning-Kruger. And even so, smart is not well-informed. He’s an idiot.
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More about the current administration’s cruelty (which is the point, said Adam Serwer).
Michael Swanwick posted this on Facebook today, with this comment:
This woman went from extreme poverty–she lived under a bridge for three years–to a job at NASA. They put up a page celebrating her determination to get an education and then a position. Then the administration decided that since she was a black woman, that was DEI, and took down the page. And then they fired her.
Space.com, Josh Dinner, 12 May 2025: NASA celebrated this employee’s story of resilience, then tried to scrub it from the internet. Then fired her., subtitled “It feels like everything that I worked for has been taken down little by little.”
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And one more about the current administration tearing down what has made the US great. (Are they agents of a foreign power intent on taking America down? Or mindless penny-pinchers heedless of anything but short-term consequences?)
Washington Post, opinion by Bina Venkataraman, 12 May 2025: RIP American innovation, subtitled “Why destroy the funding that made the United States a leader in technology and invention?”
Whether they are geeks in garages or eggheads in university labs, American entrepreneurs have built their ideas and fortunes on the back of basic research supported by taxpayers, who then reap the rewards. It’s not an accident of geography or artifact of culture that the United States has bred some of the best inventors of the 20th and 21st century. The hidden engine of the country’s illustrious track record has been the grants given to academic researchers by federal agencies that the U.S. DOGE Service has been decimating and that President Donald Trump proposes to shrink catastrophically in the next budget.
Concluding, many paragraphs later,
There is no plainer betrayal of the MAGA promise to restore the nation’s storied past than to destroy this legacy of invention. What we’re losing is far more important, however, than the pride one felt being part of that America. We’re losing the country’s future.
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It’s by now hard to be unaware that we’re living in a fading nation. And it’s hard to imagine how this might reverse itself.
