What Trump Should Do With Qatar Plane

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. There’s this controversy about the 747 airplane that Qatar gave to President Donald Trump. And there’s a lot of backstory, subtext to it that we haven’t really pondered.

The Left says that it’s unethical for the Trump Foundation to eventually get possession of it. But let’s just break it down very quickly.

Qatar has this huge 2013 747. It doesn’t seem to want it. It’s been on the market since 2020 and there were no takers. It gave its twin to Turkey, free of charge.

What I’m getting at is a 747 is an obsolete aircraft unless you’re the United States. And we have two, both of them nearly 40 years old. And we’re trying to build two new ones that Boeing is retrofitting.

But if you’re Qatar, the idea that you’re going to use this kind of older plane and get mechanics and the fuel costs, it’s not an economic viable plane. And they were trying to unload it to Turkey, which took it, and to us. Donald Trump is going to have the Air Force take it.

Here’s the other thing that’s important. Sen. Markwayne Mullin from Oklahoma has alleged that these negotiations about receiving the plane actually began during the Biden administration.

I don’t know if that was true. But it would be logical because the two Boeings that Donald Trump had authorized before he left office in 2021 were never really finished. Boeing sort of dragged on and on. The Biden administration didn’t press them. And they may not be done until Donald Trump is out of office.

So, what are we talking about? We’re talking about getting kind of a white elephant airplane from Qatar. It’s very elaborate. If we get it, we’ll probably have to spend the same cost as the Boeing. It would have to be updated with suitable communications, suitable security apparatuses, and refueling capability. Maybe it would be another $500 million to $1 billion to get this.

Will it be done before Donald Trump leaves office? I doubt it. So then it hinges on, well, what is Donald Trump going to do with it after he leaves office? He says his foundation is going to have it.

Remember when former President Ronald Reagan set up his library, his 747 that had been used, subsequently, by Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush and Bill Clinton was given to the Reagan library. And he didn’t use it. It was defunct at that point. And it’s there today as a museum piece.

Do people really think that when Trump leaves office this sort of white elephant 747 that looks like the interior of the Titanic is going to be flying the Trump family around? They already have a 757, this really expensive plane to maintain and to fuel. And it may or may not be retrofitted in time.

So, there’s only one ethical question, and that is, if the Trump Foundation really wants it, I don’t think it’ll be economically viable to use, but they should just announce in advance that it will be a museum piece and all of the controversy will be ended.

I’d like to end, though, on another aspect. The Left is really pressing the Trump family on conflict of interest: the cryptocurrency companies that they’re involved with; Jared Kushner’s dealings with some of the Gulf monarchies; the Trump companies cutting deals in the Middle East with golf courses, hotels, etc.

It would be very wise—because Trump is at a critical point in his administration where he cannot bleed anything—to have an informal ethics adviser, in my opinion. And just to reassure this predatory media—not that you have to cater them or not that you have to listen to them—but just someone in the administration, an ethics czar, that advises all of the Trump family and associates to make a firewall between them and presidential assistance.

And this is especially important because one of the reasons that Donald Trump was elected, he made a very convincing case that the Biden consortium was absolutely corrupt: the Burisma money to Hunter Biden; the laptop text that incriminated the entire family; the bogus checks that said “loan repayment”; the inexplicable three homes of former President Joe Biden; the $35 million that came from places as diverse as Ukraine, Romania, and China.

Given all that and how it hurt Biden, it would be wise for Donald Trump to make sure that the plane—which, again, is a white elephant—stays as a museum piece in his foundation when it’s turned over from the U.S. Air Force, if that’s going to happen, to the Trump Foundation.

And secondly, have someone in the White House just advise everybody that if they’re going to do business, it has to be separate from and distinct from the foreign policy initiatives of the administration.

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