You may be livin’ in your own private Idaho, or your name may be Duncan Idaho, but in all events, you won’t have to worry about the Qataris or their jets for neighbors because J.D. Vance just told the world that it was all a “fake story.” Well, okay, J.D., who faked it then? Pete Hegseth? Because we all have the receipts, every news outlet, Substack page and blog that does politics. So what happened?
A minor MAGA Republican uproar last week over news that the U.S. would host Qatari pilots at a U.S. military base in Idaho was not caused by the Pentagon’s misleading phrasing for the facility but, rather, a “misreporting” on the facts, according to Vice President Vance.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday that the U.S. would be “signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatar Emiri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Airbase in Idaho” a location that is set to host a contingent of Qatari F-15 fighter jets and pilots.
The news quickly sparked a backlash from several prominent figures in the GOP’s MAGA base, who blasted the Trump administration for allowing what seemed to be, according to Hegseth’s phrasing, a Qatari military base on U.S. soil. Qatar’s media attaché to the U.S. later clarified a stand-alone Qatari air base will not exist, but that the country had made a 10-year commitment to build and maintain a dedicated training facility within an existing U.S. air base.
Speaking during on “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News, Vance called the furor a “fake story.”
“This is largely a fake story,” Vance said. “We continue to have, with countries that we work with, we have relationships where sometimes their pilots work on our bases, sometimes that we train together, sometimes we work together in other ways. The reporting that somehow there’s going to be a Qatari base on United States soil, that’s just not true.”
He added: “We’re not going to let a foreign country have an actual base on American soil. So there’s a bit of misreporting on that, as there often is.”
Misreporting by the Secretary of Defense, or Secretary of War or whatever Pete’s calling himself these days. Remember that just on Friday, two days ago, “at the Pentagon alongside Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the Qatari defense minister, Hegseth said the agreement to house Qatari pilots in Idaho showcases the strength of the partnership between Doha and Washington.” Or did we have a mass hallucination, you, me everybody?
As usual, this is one of those stories when the “why” is the only thing newsworthy, we know the rest. Something profound happened over the weekend and Vance’s excuse is very weak tea.
