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Senate GOP Blocks Schumer Bill After Pentagon Accepts Qatari Jet for Trump
"It's a bribe. It's a national security threat," the Senate minority leader said. "But Republicans stood with Trump and blocked my bill."
May 21, 2025
Just hours after the Pentagon formally accepted a luxury jet for U.S. President Donald Trump from Qatar, Senate Republicans thwarted Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's attempt to pass by unanimous consent legislation intended to prevent a foreign plane from serving as Air Force One.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) blocked Schumer's (D-N.Y.) Presidential Airlift Security Act, which the Democratic leader had announced on Tuesday—along with vowing to continue a "hold on all political Department of Justice nominees until we get more answers about this clearly unethical deal."
The jet is "the largest foreign gift to an American president in modern history, one Donald Trump says will go to his presidential library after his term," Schumer said on the Senate floor Wednesday. "This gift is outrageous. Donald Trump will berate companies to ' eat his tariffs' and tell parents to pay more for groceries, but is accepting a luxury plane he can use as Air Force One."
"This gift screams national security risk. It is bribery in broad daylight. Donald Trump is thumbing his nose at Republicans and practically daring them to stop him. Well, today, the Senate can," he said, just before Marshall blocked the bill's passage. "Donald Trump accepting this gift reeks of corruption and naked self-enrichment, and Republicans should stand up and support my bill, defend national security, and protect Americans."
The legislation would have prohibited "even a single taxpayer dollar from being used by the Department of Defense to procure, modify, retrofit, or maintain any foreign aircraft for the purposes of transporting a U.S. president," the senator said.
Schumer's remarks followed the chief Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, confirming receipt of the plane in a Wednesday statement.
"The secretary of defense has accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar in accordance with all federal rules and regulations," Parnell said. "The Department of Defense will work to ensure proper security measures and functional-mission requirements are considered for an aircraft used to transport the president of the United States."
Asked about the Pentagon's statement by NBC News' Peter Alexander at the White House on Wednesday, Trump said: "You oughta get out of here. What does this have to do with the Qatari jet? They're giving the United States Air Force a jet, OK, and it's a great thing."
The gifted jet—valued at $ 200-400 million—has sparked widespread concerns, with critics calling Trump "grifter-in-chief" and condemning his plan to use taxpayer dollars to modify the plane so that it can serve as Air Force One, then transfer it to his library upon leaving office, as "indefensible," "incredibly illegal," and "comically corrupt."
According toThe New York Times:
Qatar's prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, publicly said on Monday for the first time that his government had approved turning over the plane as a gift, rejecting the idea of it being an attempt to influence the president.
"I don't know why people, they are thinking," he said, before continuing: "This is considered as a bribery or considered as, something that Qatar wants to buy and influence with this administration. I don't see any, honestly, a valid reason for that."
He added: "We are a country that would like to have strong partnership and strong friendship, and anything that we provide to any country, it's provided out of respect for this partnership and it's a two-way relationship. It's mutually beneficial for Qatar and for the United States."
"It's a bribe. It's a national security threat," Schumer said on social media Wednesday evening. "But Republicans stood with Trump and blocked my bill. THAT'S NOT AMERICA FIRST."
Meanwhile, in the Republican-controlled lower chamber of Congress, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) expanded his probe into the Qatari plane, demanding answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, by June 4.
"Please provide all documents and communications related to the $400 million ultraluxury airplane, including any communications, agreements, or draft agreements with the state of Qatar, L3Harris, and the Palm Beach Airport as soon as possible," Raskin also wrote. "The information and documents you provide will help us determine whether the $400 million ultraluxury 'gift,' already suffering from insurmountable ethical, constitutional, and logistical problems, is the result of a campaign of illegal extortion by this administration."
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Trump’s Qatari Plane Deal Is Naked Corruption
The gift is just the most visible part of a new ethos of self-dealing, with lines between public purpose and private enrichment not just blurred but erased.
May 17, 2025
Eight years ago, the lobby of the Trump International Hotel in Washington became the symbol of influence peddling. Tourists giddily mingled with lobbyists and campaign donors. The cheapest cocktail went for $24. How quaint.
This term, Donald Trump Jr. announced that he is opening a private, members-only club in Georgetown called Executive Branch. Members of the Trump administration, CEOs, and tech executives are among those who have signed up. The membership fee is currently $500,000.
That is the context for the controversy now erupting over Qatar’s gift of a roughly $400 million airplane for use as the new Air Force One, a 747 that would be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library when he leaves office, potentially making it available for his personal use (although he denies he would use it). It’s outlandish on its own terms. And it is just the most visible part of a new ethos of self-dealing, with lines between public purpose and private enrichment not just blurred but erased.
Out of today’s scandals come tomorrow’s reforms.
Days before his return to office, Trump launched his own cryptocurrency token, $TRUMP, which immediately enriched him by an estimated billions of dollars (although the coin’s worth has since dropped). Since crypto is a purely speculative vehicle, this gave “investors” a chance to send funds straight to Trump, without disclosure or pretense. Sure enough, the United Arab Emirates, another country where he visited this week, gave him... sorry, “invested” $2 billion.
Trump’s family enterprise already owns a crypto mining company, World Liberty Financial, which benefits from his shift from skeptic to deregulator.
Then there are the transactions that all seem to end up with the first family being paid—starting with the $28 million paid by Amazon to First Lady Melania Trump for a documentary.
Now, let’s not romanticize a past golden age of government ethics. The White House saw the Crédit Mobilier scandal of the 1870s and Teapot Dome in the 1920s. Lyndon Johnson used the Federal Communications Commission to give preferential treatment to radio stations he owned. In more recent decades, presidents of both parties conducted a grueling schedule of nearly nonstop campaign fundraising. (My old boss Bill Clinton certainly got grief when party donors slept in the Lincoln Bedroom.) Hunter Biden was accused of peddling influence for personal gain before his father pardoned him on the way out of office.
What’s different here is that the funds are flowing not to a political party or campaign but to the officeholder as an individual. The transaction is direct, naked.
The founders were very concerned about an individual using the power of the presidency to enrich themselves and their family members. They focused sharply on the risks of corruption and were well aware of the myriad ways the system could be abused. And they were especially worried that foreign governments could influence American presidents.
At the Constitutional Convention, Gouverneur Morris feared the possibility of the president receiving foreign bribes: “One would think the King of England well secured against bribery. Yet Charles II was bribed by Louis XIV.” The founders wrote anti-corruption protections into our Constitution.
Article I of the Constitution forbids any officeholder from accepting any gift or title from any “King, Prince, or foreign State” without congressional consent. It’s called the Foreign Emoluments Clause. At the Virginia ratifying convention for the Constitution, Edmund Randolph made clear how viscerally the framers recoiled from the possibility of foreign funds. He described “an accident, which actually happened, [which] operated in producing the restriction. A box was presented to our ambassador by the king of our allies. It was thought proper, in order to exclude corruption and foreign influence, to prohibit any one in office from receiving or holding any emoluments from foreign states.”
Trump said, “I would be a stupid person” to turn down the $400 million plane. But remember that the Emoluments Clause is in the part of the Constitution making clear Congress’s power—it’s not up to the president to decide.
In his first term, Maryland and the District of Columbia sued, alleging that Trump illegally profited from foreign and domestic officials who visited his hotel. We agreed. That case got tied up in court, and in 2021, the Supreme Court ultimately dismissed it since Trump was no longer president.
So what lessons can we learn from this, and what ironclad rules could prevent future presidents from profiting so brazenly from office?
To start, Congress should make clear it does not approve of this massive foreign gift to our president. More comprehensively, Congress could pass legislation to fully enforce the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause and remove the procedural hurdles that derailed lawsuits in Trump’s first term.
Then it would be time to recognize that we have relied on common sense or self-restraint from previous chief executives. The Brennan Center’s task force of Republican and Democratic former senior officials recommended that presidents be required to put their businesses and assets into a blind trust, a proposal that is part of the Protecting Our Democracy Act that fell to a filibuster in 2022.
Even those protections may be inadequate. Neither the founders nor later generations of lawmakers profited from meme coins.
Out of today’s scandals come tomorrow’s reforms. For now, all of our astonished outrage is a good start.
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Grifter-in-Chief Trump and the Grift That Keeps on Grifting
In case you haven't noticed, the bribes Trump is taking are getting bigger and bigger.
May 12, 2025
Trump is overplaying his hand.
Not just by usurping the powers of Congress and ignoring Supreme Court rulings. Not just abducting people who are legally in the United States but have put their name to opinion pieces Trump doesn’t like and trucking them off to “detention” facilities. Not just using the Justice Department for personal vengeance. Not just unilaterally deciding how much tariff tax American consumers will have to pay on almost everything they buy.
Polls show all these are tanking Trump’s popularity.
But one thing almost all Americans are firmly against — even many loyal Trumpers — us bribery. And Trump is taking bigger and bigger bribes.
It was reported over the weekend that he’s accepting a luxury Boeing 747-8 plane worth at least $400 million from the Qatari royal family, for use during his presidency and for his personal use afterward.
Trump just can’t resist. He’s been salivating over the plane for months. It’s bigger and newer than Air Force One — and so opulently configured that it’s known as “a flying palace.” (No report on whether it contains a golden toilet.)
Apparently he’s been talking about the plane for months. In February, he toured it while it was parked at Palm Beach International Airport.
He’s tried to redecorate the White House into a palace but that’s not nearly as satisfying as flying around the world in one, especially once he’s left the White House (assuming he will).
Attorney General Pam Bondi said it’s perfectly legal for him to accept such a bribe, er, gift.
Hello?
The U.S. Constitution clearly forbids officers of the United States from taking gifts from foreign governments. It’s called the “emoluments clause.” (See Article I, Section 9.)
Anyone viewing Bondi as a neutral judge of what’s legal and what’s not when it comes to Trump can’t be trusted to be a neutral judge of Bondi. Recall that she represented Trump in a criminal proceeding. Presumably he appointed her attorney general because he knew she’d do and say anything he wanted.
Oh, and she used to lobby for Qatar.
So, what does Qatar get in return for the $400 million plane? What’s the quid for the quo?
This week Trump takes the first overseas trip of his second presidency. He’ll land in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, followed by a visit to Qatar, and then to the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E).
That’s a big boost for Qatar right there.
Trump also just did what Qatar has been wanting done for years — announcing that the Persian Gulf (as it’s been known since at least 550 B.C.) will henceforth be known as the Arabian Gulf.
Trump’s company has just announced a new golf resort in Qatar, reportedly partnering with a company owned by the royal family.
Qatar is also pushing the Trump regime to lift sanctions on Syria.
The payback could be any number of things. The only certainty is that you and I and other Americans won’t necessarily benefit.
This week’s trip to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E. is as much a personal business trip for Trump and his family businesses as a diplomatic trip.
Eric Trump, who officially runs the family business, has just announced plans for a Trump-branded hotel and tower in Dubai, part of the U.A.E.
The Trump family’s developments in the Middle East depend on a Saudi-based real estate company with close ties to the Saudi government. Saudi Arabia has a long list of pressing matters before the United States, including requests to buy F-35 fighter jets and gain access to nuclear power technology.
Trump’s family crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, announced that its so-called “stablecoin” — with Trump’s likeness all over it — will be used by the U.A.E. to make a $2 billion business deal with Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world. The deal will generate hundreds of millions of dollars more for the Trump family.
I had assumed that Trump’s undoing would be his unquenchable thirst for power. It may yet be, but I’m beginning to think his insatiable greed will do him in. America’s Grifter-in-Chief knows no bounds.
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