'A for-sale sign': Experts rip Trump for putting new grifting 'on full display'

17 May

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media as he flies back to Washington from West Palm Beach aboard Air Force One, U.S., May 4, 2025.

Many Democrats are highly critical of a gift that President Donald Trump is accepting from the government of Qatar: a $400 million jet for the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Kentucky), in an interview with NOTUS, insisted that there is nothing wrong with Trump accepting the jet. But Trump's Democratic critics maintain that it was wildly inappropriate for Trump to accept such a gift from Qatar's government.

Democrats aren't the only ones who wish Trump would decline the gift.

"Former White House lawyers, diplomatic protocol officers and foreign affairs experts have told the Guardian that Donald Trump’s receipt of overseas gifts and targeted investments are 'unprecedented,' as the White House remakes U.S. foreign policy under a pay-for-access code that eclipses past administrations with characteristic Trumpian excess," Roth explains in an article published on May 17. "The openness to foreign largesse was on full display this week as the U.S. president was feted in the Gulf states during his first major diplomatic trip abroad this term, inking deals he claimed were worth trillions of dollars and pumping local leaders for investments as he says he remakes U.S. foreign policy to prioritize 'America first' — putting aside concerns of human rights or international law for the bottom line of American businesses and taxpayers."

One of the conservatives The Guardian interviewed was Richard Painter, who served as a White House ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush.

Painter told The Guardian, 'When we’re negotiating with other countries, the concern is that our negotiating position will change if someone does a favor or delivers a gift to the president of the United States — whether it’s trying to resolve the Russia-Ukraine war, or the Middle East or anything else. You know, the impression is given that the position of the United States can be swayed and even bought."

Norm Eisen, who was a White House "ethics czar" under former President Barack Obama and served as U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic, is critical of the gift as well.

Eisen told The Guardian, "Trump has put a for-sale sign out front of the White House. Of course, you're going to see Qatar and UAE as like a bidding war. Qatar says: 'I'll give you a $400m plane,' and the UAE says: 'Hold my beer, I'll give your crypto company $2bn.'"

Read the full Guardian article at this link.

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