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A Garish, Outlandish, Stunningly Corrupt Act
Trump wants Qatar to gift him a shiny new Air Force One because he thinks the Emoluments Clause is for suckers.
www.thebulwark.com
Beware Princes Bearing Gifts
by William KristolI’m old enough to remember when this was a republic. A proud republic. We were proud to be different from the principalities and powers of the old world. We were confident of our superiority to the hereditary aristocracies and monarchies that had dominated political life everywhere on the globe, and that still did in many places.
In those older and simpler days we spoke of and even believed in republican virtue. And so we nodded along to passages like this, from Federalist No. 39:
We old republicans tended to take this “honorable determination” for granted. We also took for granted some of the provisions of the Constitution that followed from this principle. They seemed a little old-fashioned and quaint, but still meaningful—such as Article I, Section 9, Clause 8.
How naïve we were back then.
Now, the president of the United States is boasting of receiving as a gift a luxury Boeing 747-8 plane from the Qatari royal family. The plane will be upgraded to serve not as the Air Force One but as his Air Force One, since it will only be available for use by the government of the United States during his time in office. It will then revert to him—well, nominally to his presidential library, but it will of course be totally at his disposal—after he leaves office.
This sure seems like a “present” or “emolument” to a person holding “an office of trust” from “a King, Prince, or foreign state.”
But not to worry. Attorney General Pam Bondi—once a registered lobbyist for Qatar, as it happens—has concluded that the transaction is permissible under U.S. law and the Constitution.
How nice that the Trump administration still pretends to maintain some façade of respect for the Constitution even as it flouts it.
But Trump can’t really conceal his contempt for the old republican ways. Last night, he posted this on social media:
This is the voice of old-world autocracy. Those who take seriously the constraints and requirements of republican government are fools. Those who care that our republican government not be dependent on foreign states, that our elected leaders not take favors from foreign princes, they are losers.
Leave aside all the questions about Qatar’s ties with Iran and Hamas. Leave aside that Qatar, on the other hand, has been designated a major non-NATO ally, and that Qatar hosts the largest U.S. military installation in the Middle East.
This isn’t about Qatar. It’s about us.
