One of the cornerstones of Donald Trump‘s book The Art of the Deal is about maximizing your leverage to emerge victorious in negotiations. The simple principle he lays out is to use what you have to make the person you’re dealing with do what you want, letting you turn the situation to your benefit.
Now Trump has clearly forgotten his own advice. The administration is currently caught up in the jaw-dropping Qatari jet fiasco, in which the Qatari royal family is giving a $400 million “sky palace” private jet to Donald Trump as a gift. This jet will become the new Air Force One, letting Trump argue he’s saving the country money. That’s somewhat undercut by the admission that the jet will only be Air Force One while he’s president, after which it will become his own private jet.
For once, Trump’s allies and enemies are in agreement that this is beneath the US presidency. As such, Trump’s now firmly on the defensive, arguing that nobody would turn down a “free plane”:
Trump on Qatar Jet: I could be a stupid person and say we don't want a free plane… I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer pic.twitter.com/Kxd9uhmpKh
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 12, 2025
But it’s not a “free plane”. Let’s not mince words, this is a bribe. Nobody hands over a $400 million jet as a gift without expecting a lot in return, and as per The Art of the Deal, this gives the Qatari royal family enormous leverage over Trump. It’s also explicitly illegal, not that this means much nowadays.
Precisely how this plane bribe will bear fruit remains to be seen, though we suspect lucrative government contracts will be awarded to Qatari-owned companies and high-ranking Qataris will find it suspiciously easy to get green cards, among many other acts of corruption.
Any genuinely patriotic American should feel sick at the president casually selling off the nation’s dignity in exchange for an airplane. Everyone with eyes can see that this “gift” comes with strings attached and gives a foreign nation leverage over the presidency, which is precisely why this kind of thing is very clearly against the law.
We doubt that the Trump who oversaw The Art of the Deal would have let someone gain such a huge advantage over him in negotiations. But, let’s face it, the Trump that wrote that book is long gone and we have the bumbling, barely coherent and increasingly confused shell of that man sitting in the Oval Office.
Published: May 13, 2025 05:26 am