Will all the airborne lavatories be gold-plated — or just the presidential ones?
That will surely be one of the items the interior designers will tick off on their punch list as they try to retrofit a randomly luxurious Boeing 747-8, a gift from the hereditary monarchy of Qatar, into Air Force One.
And what Americans will yet again be ticking off on our own punch lists is the fact of yet another extreme ethical outrage on the part of President Donald Trump.
Proper presidents can barely accept a fountain pen from a foreign ruler without acknowledging that to do the right thing they must donate the gift to the Smithsonian or National Archives.
Trump has a different, more merely material way of looking at the world and its things. By his moral compass, taking a $400 million jet plane from a Middle Eastern natural gas potentate is a natural thing for a president of the United States of America to do.
“Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our country,” he wrote on social media.
Problem is, the gift would not exactly be to our country. Reportedly, after Trump used this gift to fly around, it would become the property of his foundation and presidential library, and presumably therefore available for him to fly around in during his post-presidency as well.
At some point in the next couple of years, a new Air Force One, under construction but long-delayed by Boeing, will be delivered to the federal government. One of the reasons it’s long-delayed is that building a presidential plane is a really complicated undertaking. It’s a matter of incorporating the world’s highest level of communications securities, cockpit redundancies, defensive armor and, yes, offensive weapons into an airplane.
That’s actually a lot easier to do when the plane is purpose-built, but it still takes time.
Whereas, a luxury jet built without those refinements would have to be retrofitted for secure communications and presidential safety. And, you know, you might also spend some time searching every nook and cranny for the electronic bugs that, say, a foreign ruler, or the allies of a foreign ruler, might think to secret away before the gifting ceremony … just because.
Trump told Fox News he had to take the gift because other countries have far superior planes to the current Air Force One: “We’re the United States of America and I believe we should have the most impressive plane,” he said. “Some people say you shouldn’t accept gifts for the country, my attitude is: ‘Why wouldn’t I accept a gift? We’re giving to everyone else.’”
That last bit provides a clue to Trump’s unethical ethics here. The acceptance of such an extravagant gift fits into his belief that the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world has been taken advantage of by other countries, and that this is merely partial payback.
Nowhere in that belief system, apparently, is the simple understanding that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Or 747-8.
“This is not just naked corruption, it’s the kind of thing that even Putin would give a double take,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor.
Trump in turn said “The Dems are World Class Losers!!!” by objecting to his taking, well, foreign emoluments in violation of The Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
But don’t take a Democrat’s word for it. Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. Ted Cruz both laid into the plan because of the security risks and the costs of scrubbing the plane for foreign surveillance.
We don’t take any pleasure in ribbing the president for taking a luxurious gift from an emir. It’s more of a sadness, really, that he could in good conscience even consider it.
