Loose lips sink ships. It looks like Pete Hegseth might not be the only one who loses expensive airplanes. Karoline Leavitt was asked today to “clarify once and for all the Qatari jet, the sale or the gift, because the Kaori government is asking the US to clarify that the jet’s pending transfer was initiated by the Trump administration,” by a reporter at a press briefing. Here was her response.
So is this something that the White House is going to do The the amount of questions we’ve received, and we’ve been incredibly clear, and I have answered this.
The president has answered this. The Department of Defense has answered this. This is a government to government gift transfer from the Qataris. To the Department of Defense, to the United States Air Force, it is now in their hands. And for further details on where that stands, I would defer you to the Department of Defense and the United States Air Force.
I have nothing more for you on that.
The plane was originally a gift from Qatar to Trump. That made it the subject of speculation, because the emoluments clause dictates that “gifts” of far far less value have been deemed to be invalid. However, if this gift is NOT to the president — and you read what Leavitt just said, it belongs to the government — well then that takes care of the issue of an emoluments clause violation.
However, if Trumpty Dumpty thought that he was getting a $400 million airplane and all indications are that that is precisely what he thought, then Leavitt just put him in one hell of a situation. So what happened here? Maybe we should go ask Oddjob Steven Cheung who he thinks the airplane belongs to.
Speaking of whom, Steven Cheung had yet another run in with Michael Wolff, one of Trump’s numerous biographers. Wolff is claiming that Trump keeps Cheung out of the spotlight because he’s fat and Trump only wants to be represented by young blonde women. Which makes total sense.
“There’s a sort of tragic feel about [Cheung] because he’s so heavy,” said Wolff. He added that Trump feels he has to be “hidden away” and that the much more visible role of press secretary “has to be a young woman,” like Karoline Leavitt, or like a majority of his press secretaries in his first term.
Due to these physical issues, Wolff continued, Cheung was “always collapsing somewhere” as he worked on Trump’s 2024 campaign; Wolff claimed to have personally witnessed an incident at Union Station where Cheung had “to be carried out.”
Cheung, who did communications for UFC before getting involved with Trump’s campaigns and administration, denied all of these claims, saying in a statement, “Michael Wolff clearly suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome and begged like a dog for an interview for his failed book. The only thing being carried out is his dignity after [he] continues to embarrass and beclown himself in a fleeting attempt to gain relevancy.”
Oh for the days when a press secretary simply took questions from the press and there wasn’t non stop sturm und drang in the White House. It’s only been four months and it feels like four years already. God give us the strength to get through to the midterms. That is the prize to keep your eyes on. 500-some days until November, 2026.
But in the meantime, it will be interesting to see if Qatar withdraws the offer of the plane, in which case Trump will pop a vessel. Or, maybe Qatar will deliver — and then there will be an investigation as to who indeed the plane belongs to, the United States government or Trump as an individual — and then we’re back to the emoluments clause.
If you feel like a rat that can’t find your way out of a maze, that’s because you are.
Last I heard, the plane was already here and parked in San Antonio, TX even before it was publicly decided to accept it. I also think an Air Force spokesperson said something about the Air Force either already starting on it or already had the plans drawn up. It would be pretty hard for Qatar to take it back at this point.
It’s been sitting in San Antonia since early March, well before any news broke about Qatar gifting it Trump. The last I checked (last week I think) it’s just been sitting there. What we really need to know is whether people at Boeing assigned to the project of building the two new 747s for Presidential use have been reassigned to the task of determining how to gut and refit the Qatari jet. Also whether DOD is quietly trying to acquire the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of systems that would be needed.
not to be nasty, OK, to be nasty because the guy deserves it, not oddjob who was actually a powerful dude but more like the original version of the st Louis University mascot called the biliken. my dad had a sweat shirt, which would have been from his time at the school in the early 50s, with the image of someone who was distinctly dumpy and severely Mongoloid.
sorry, that obviously belongs with a different story.
for this article, I read something somewhere (sorry, I’ve had one small drink in the last two and a half months but my memory is still crap) that trump was impatient with how much time it was taking with the new presidential planes so he had people looking for a 747 for sale. they found one and the white house opened negotiations (no one involved was bright enough to realize a used plane would have to be refitted to serve as af1 and that would take a while). at any rate, it was the Qatari plane so the question is, is it a gift or a is it being purchased? as far as I know it’s mainly trump and the white house making noise about it being a gift and thus free (total crap) thus saving the taxpayers money.
So the mighty USAF feels the need to refit an old expensive-to-run 747 rather than have a fleet of brand new state-of-all-arts Air Force Ones for the future president? Gimme a break.
trump, not the af
So, settle the argument by making this bauble a gift to Trump, with no refurbishment plans at Taxpayer expense. Deliver it to Trump with its fuel tanks filled with concrete, making it valueless, thus making the Emoluments issue moot. He can then sit in it in his Mar-a-Lago front yard to his heart’s content, possibly make a few bucks by selling tours.