Why the Air Force One Bribe Matters

It's yet another Trump precedent that future presidents will exploit. And the media should stop calling it a "gift."

I wasn’t going to write about the bribe-to-be. I wasn’t going to write about Qatar’s attempt to weasel more military support from the United States by offering President Trump a luxury Boeing 747. I wasn’t going to write about how Trump compared accepting a $400 million Vanity Air service for life to a “gimme” golf putt.

I had even decided not to write about the obscene and shameless hypocrisy of Republicans who scandalized President Clinton in the 1990s for rewarding Democratic donors with Lincoln Bedroom sleepovers. Qataris aren’t American donors. Qataris are, in the words of Trump himself, “funders of terrorism.”

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the attempted bribe is more than a distraction from Trump’s greater misdeeds: Punishing political enemies, stifling journalistic freedoms, worshipping authoritarians, demonizing public servants, neutering Congress, defying federal judges, and pushing lawmakers to slash federal programs to the poorest Americans while cutting taxes to the wealthiest Americans.

The Qatar bribery scheme deserves every headline it gets because of what it represents: Trump’s corrupt, deceitful nature — and beyond that — the precedent he’s setting for future presidents.

Because if — as the GOP what-about caucus wants us to believe — past Democratic scandals forgive Trump’s unprecedented corruption, one can only imagine the banana republic that will follow our 47th president. He’s giving all future Oval Office occupants licenses to steal.

Trump is traveling the Middle East right now, not just as our president but as a business development fluffer for Trump enterprises, which is run by his kids for his personal profit. Back home, he’s established a meme coin scheme allowing donors to secretly buy access and influence to the president through personal donations.

You know what finally got me off my butt to write about the Qatar bribery scheme? Trump’s bizarre and brazen justification, which he wrapped in a golfing allegory.

AP photo

“When they give you a putt, you say, ‘Thank you very much.’ You pick up your ball, and you walk to the next hole. A lot of people are stupid,” Trump opined. “They say, ‘No, no, I insist on putting it.’ Then they putt it, they miss it, and their partner gets angry at them.”

Get it? Only stupid people play by the rules in life.

Screw the Golden Rule. Trump says he lives by the Sam Sneed Rule, his bow to the legendary golfer who may or may not have joked about “picking up” putts. As criticism mounted this week over the attempted bribe, even jarring the moral compass of some of Trump’s biggest toadies, the president shrugged it off.

“They’re giving us a free jet,” he said. “I could say, ‘No, no, no, don’t give us, I want to pay you a billion, or $400 million,’ or whatever it is. Or, I could say, ‘Thank you very much.’”

It doesn’t even occur to Trump that he could say, “No thanks. I’m not for sale.”

---

A note to journalists: Stop calling it a “gift.”

It’s an attempted bribe, unless Trump has already committed to giving Qatar something in exchange for the 747, in which case it would be a full-on bribe.

To call it a gift, you would have to believe that a terrorist-supporting petrostate in desperate need of U.S. military support would give an American president a $400 million plane out of the goodness of its heart. Just for kicks. Because they had one lying around and couldn’t think of a better thing to do with it.

No, Qatar want something from Trump, and they are plying the most pliable president in U.S. history with a private 747 he can fly for the rest of his life via the Trump Presidential Library. It’s meant to be a bribe. Call it what it is.

---