Trump left nation 'crippled' after accepting their 'absurdly corrupt' gift

President Donald Trump arrives aboard the new Qatari-gifted Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, July 9, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

The Middle Eastern nation that gave President Donald Trump an "absurdly corrupt" gift has not gotten anything close to what it paid for, with a new piece for The Atlantic laying out how his actions have since left it "crippled."

Among the most alarming acts of blatant corruption from Trump's second term has been his acceptance of a luxury jet from Qatar, with the plan to refashion it as a new Air Force One model that he will be able to keep after leaving office. In spite of the widespread outrage over the situation and the pushback in Congress, Trump forged ahead, even as the plane has proven ill-equipped for the actual task of serving as Air Force One.

Writing for The Atlantic on Tuesday, Shane Harris broke down the myriad ways in which the deal has backfired on Qatar, starting with an almost unprecedented level of bad press that it generated.

"It’s not easy to buy good press, though the Qataris have tried. But it also takes real effort to generate the kind of bad press the plane brought to a country whose name many Americans probably can’t pronounce correctly (it’s kah-tar)," Harris wrote. "The bipartisan outrage in Washington was incandescent. The plane was a flying emolument, an obvious constitutional violation. 'Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our Country,' Trump wrote on Truth Social. But what Trump couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see is that only a fool would view the plane as anything other than a massive bribe, especially given that Trump said publicly that he planned to have it transferred to his presidential library once he leaves office."

Harris further described Qatar as a nation perfectly willing to "just buy their national security, along with global influence and even a cosmopolitan culture," as well as to "play every side" geopolitically, even as "many of their partners resent them for it." In the case of Trump's plane, however, their "investment" in playing to Trump's greed and ego has not paid off for them in the slightest.

"But recently, Qatar’s leaders haven’t gotten what they paid for. In February, the United States attacked Iran with practically no warning to the Qataris, despite the fact that they host a major U.S. military base," Harris detailed. "Then Iran attacked Qatar, badly damaging the country’s natural-gas facilities, the main source of its wealth. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, the only route available to Qatar to export its natural gas, which must be liquefied for transport and is complex to deliver. The country’s neighbors can move oil over land and are planning to build new pipelines now that Iran controls the waterway. But Qatar is stuck, uniquely afflicted by the misadventures of the guy who took their airplane."

He added: "In Trump, the Qataris had met a man who could not be bought. He could be paid, and expected to be. But the security the Qataris hoped for turned out to be a protection racket. A man who doesn’t remember yesterday never asks Are we friends? He only wants to know, What have you done for me lately?"

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