Qatar's gift to Trump.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Quick hits.

1. The consumer price index (CPI) rose 2.3% in April from the year prior, lower than economists’ estimates. Core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, increased 2.8% year-over-year and 0.2% from the previous month. (The numbers)
2. The Treasury Department reported that customs duties totaled $16.3 billion in April as President Donald Trump’s tariffs began to take effect. The total was 86% higher than the duties collected in March. (The report)
3. President Trump offered to join prospective peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey on Thursday as part of his visit to the Middle East. (The offer)
4. President Trump plans to name Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as acting Librarian of Congress after dismissing Dr. Carla Hayden from the role last week. (The announcement)
5. 59 members of South Africa’s Afrikaner minority arrived in the United States and will be granted refugee status by the Trump administration, which claims they are victims of racial discrimination by the South African government. (The arrival)

Today's topic.

Qatar’s Air Force One gift. On Sunday, ABC News reported that the Trump administration was preparing to accept a Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet as a gift from Qatar’s royal family. Under the arrangement, President Donald Trump would use the plane as the new Air Force One until shortly before he leaves office, at which point it will be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library foundation. The report comes as the president embarks on a trip to the Middle East — the first major foreign trip of his second term — though White House officials said Trump would not be presented or gifted with the plane while in Qatar. 

Back up: In President Trump’s first term, he awarded Boeing a $3.9 billion contract to deliver new planes to replace the pair of 747s that have been used as Air Force One since President George H.W. Bush’s administration. However, the project has fallen years behind schedule and billions over budget, and Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration about the delays. Qatar has offered a 747-8 luxuriously furnished for use by the Qatari royal family, though it emphasizes that the details of the transfer are still “under consideration.”

Trump acknowledged the gift in a Truth Social post on Sunday, and told reporters on Monday, “I think it's a great gesture from Qatar. I appreciate it very much… I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer.” 

The potential gift has raised legal and ethical concerns. If accepted, the plane would be one of the most valuable gifts ever extended to the United States from a foreign government, leading some lawmakers to argue that it amounts to a bribe. On Sunday, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) sent a letter to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the acting Department of Defense inspector general, and the Office of Government Ethics requesting a probe into the gift. “The American people are witnessing, in real time, what can only be described as a ‘flying grift,’” Torres wrote.

“Any gift given by a foreign government is always accepted in full compliance with all applicable laws," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Furthermore, Attorney General Pam Bondi and the White House counsel's office have reportedly concluded that accepting the plane would not violate bribery laws as long as it is turned over to the Trump library at the end of the president’s term.

President Trump will be in Qatar this week as part of his Middle East tour; Qatar considers his visit a diplomatic success, as the country has long sought to curry favor with U.S. lawmakers. Trump will also visit Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and he reportedly told advisers he is seeking over $1 trillion in U.S. investments from Gulf states.

Today, we’ll share views from the left and right on the potential gift from Qatar, followed by my take.

What the left is saying.

• The left argues the gift exemplifies the open corruption of Trump’s administration.
• Some say Trump must navigate complex regional politics in his Middle East trip.
• Others say Qatar’s gift highlights the loopholes in the presidential library system.

In The Nation, Chris Lehmann criticized “the sky-high corruption of Donald Trump.”

Trump’s “newly announced deal with the Qatari royal family to deliver him a new Air Force One jet worth $400 million marks a breathtaking new level of presidential corruption. Indeed, the transaction, which has been hastily packaged as a ‘gift’ from the Qatari government to the Pentagon, is a textbook illustration of the imperial corruption that the founders targeted in drafting the Emoluments Clause, which forbids the president from using his office for personal enrichment,” Lehmann said. “The Qatari payoff also defies Trump’s bogus image as the heroic savior of American industry, as he’s gone out of his way to engineer a disastrous global trade war in order to preside over a ‘golden age’ in US manufacturing.”

“During Trump’s first term, Democratic congressional leaders failed to bring emoluments charges in their impeachment actions against the president. That’s why national security advisers were reduced to weighing in on a civil suit against Trump for his many emoluments violations,” Lehmann wrote. “The same core dynamic holds true today—there’s nothing stopping Democrats from stressing the ways in which Trump’s corruption is integral to how he rules and to his transformation of the federal government into a transactional mob syndicate… Instead, Congress’s functional silence on emoluments has further enabled the posture of MAGA impunity in Trump’s second term.”

The Economist wrote about Trump “striv[ing] for the ultimate deal” in the Middle East.

“When Donald Trump visited Riyadh in 2017, his trip was more spectacle than substance. There was a ceremonial sword dance, a gold medal and a bizarre moment when he laid hands on a glowing orb. But a proposed $110bn arms deal with the Saudis largely failed to materialise,” the author said. “This time, three Gulf states will vie to put on the most lavish spectacle. Mr Trump will arrive in Saudi Arabia on May 13th, the first stop in a four-day tour that will also take him to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).”

“But there is a chance this trip will deliver some substance as well. In public, the focus will be on business deals. Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, has already proposed $600bn in trade and investment over the next four years. That is an implausibly high figure, but it reflects an understanding of what makes Mr Trump tick,” the author wrote. “Mr Trump will head home on May 16th with his investment deals, and perhaps his new plane. Big breakthroughs on Gaza, Iran and Syria may be more elusive. But his visit to the Gulf may nonetheless signal a shift in America’s approach to the region—one in which its interests are no longer so closely aligned with those of Israel.”

In The Washington Post, Jacob T. Levy said “Qatar’s gift to Trump reveals a loophole big enough to fly a jumbo jet through.”

“Governments may give gifts as souvenirs or tokens of courtesy, but any of greater than minimal value must be turned over to the National Archives when the president leaves office. So how can the royal family of Qatar give Trump a $400 million ‘flying palace’ of a plane, one that will act as Air Force One during his presidency but remain his afterward? The answer lies in a problem that predates Trump: the presidential library system,” Levy wrote. “These somewhat misnamed institutions — they do house presidential records and archives, but they also act as hagiographic museums, almost shrines — are established through private donations, from anyone, in any amount.”

“As with donations to a presidential inaugural committee, gifts to the library fund fall between the cracks of campaign finance regulations and rules governing ethics in office. As he has already done with inaugural committees, Trump seems likely to expand a known problem with library foundations into a crisis,” Levy said. “Future presidents might not have global real estate empires through which emoluments can flow. But those who want to tempt those presidents into corrupt misgovernment will still be able to pervert their incentives through gifts to inaugural committees and presidential libraries.”

What the right is saying.

• The right is mixed on the gift, with many saying that the real scandal is Boeing’s failure to deliver the planes on schedule.
• Some say Trump is poised to make major strides towards peace in the Middle East on his trip.
• Others criticize Qatar’s gift as an overt bribe.  

In Hot Air, David Strom wrote about “the scandal buried in the Air Force One story.”

“The scandal buried in the Qatar/Air Force One story that is easy to understand is about Boeing, which apparently is unable to deliver on its 2018 contract to deliver two refurbished 747s by 2024. Their current timeline suggests that they MAY be able to deliver them 11 years late in 2035. 2035. The last time Boeing delivered modified 747s under the first Bush administration it took about 3 years from start to finish, not 17 years,” Strom said. “What do they think they are building? A space capsule or something? Come to think of it, Boeing can't do that either.”

“L3Harris, the same company Boeing has contracted to install the ‘complicated wiring’ in their Air Force One replacements, is going to modify the former Qatari jet sometime this fall, doing in months what Boeing says it can't do in over a decade,” Strom wrote. “Granted, Boeing's task is somewhat more complicated than L3Harris’. I assume they will be installing more than communications gear into their replacement versions. But modifying two 747s, unless they are replacing the engines with perpetual motion machines, shouldn't take as long as designing and building a modern fighter aircraft from start to finish.”

The New York Post editorial board suggested “Trump’s Mideast trip should bring US wins — both economic and strategic.”

“President Trump this week heads to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates for a trip that should be productive on both the economic and (more quietly) geostrategic fronts… The Middle East is now a major fulcrum between the West and China — with the Arab powers inevitably leaning our way not just because of historic ties, but because the United States remains the region’s best ally against aggression from Xi Jinping’s pals in Iran,” the board said. “At the very least, expect public shows of support for Trump’s stated hope for a deal on Iran’s nuclear program — and for his warnings that if Tehran can’t offer sufficient hard guarantees on that front, Washington will settle the issue in other ways.”

“While the continued Gaza war makes the Arabs more reluctant to close on diplomatic deals, they appreciate Israel’s actions in Lebanon — vastly reducing Iran’s influence — and Syria, where they worry about Turkey’s bid to expand its influence south,” the board wrote. “President Joe Biden’s Mideast blundering upset all America’s friends in the region as he sought to appease Iran and push the hopelessly outdated ‘two-state solution’ on Israel, even as he utterly misplayed the Saudis with impotent moralistic lecturing… Trump’s trip now is crucial not only to repairing relations, but to rallying all our allies to face down Iran and side more closely with the West against the Beijing-Moscow axis.”

The Free Press editors criticized “Trump’s disgraceful ‘palace in the sky.’”

“It feels like a lifetime ago when the Republican Party was in high dudgeon over President Joe Biden’s son Hunter. He had reportedly monetized his family name to drum up business in China and Ukraine, and for his own paintings… The Hunter Biden affair really was a scandal. But these days, it seems like small potatoes,” the editors said. “Look no further than the latest ‘gift’ from the Qatari government… This ‘palace in the sky,’ offered to the president by the country that hosts the Muslim Brotherhood, will first be used as Air Force One. Then it will transfer to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation for ownership… In other words: It will be a personal gift to the president worth $400 million.”

“The Qatari plane is not an exception but the rule for the second Trump administration so far. Both foreign friends and foes are now treating this as a pay-to-play presidency. Why else would Iran dangle a potential trillion-dollar economic opening in the early stages of nuclear talks,” the board asked. “This is precisely the kind of self-dealing in the executive branch that Congress is supposed to check and balance, according to our Constitution. But the Republican Party, so outraged over Hunter Biden’s corruption, has been mute. And the Democrats, for the most part, have been too busy screaming about every other Trump tweet and policy action to focus on the scandal in plain sight.”

My take.

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• It’s easy to be distracted from the main point of this story: Trump is effectively accepting a personal gift from Qatar.
• This fits into a disturbing pattern with Trump.
• It was Biden’s fault that we talked about his possible corruption, and it’s Trump’s fault we’re talking about his.

I’ve always appreciated how the partisan brain can force you to change the subject from the story that is actually in front of you to the story you want to talk about. 

The partisan brain wants to redirect your attention to Boeing’s failure to produce a new Air Force One on a reasonable timeline, or to Trump’s grand plan to negotiate deals across the Middle East, or even to the nuances of how this Qatari plane was built in the U.S. by Boeing. But if you don’t listen to the partisan brain, you’ll be able to focus on the matter at hand.

Take Batya Ungar-Sargon, for example, who has been a staunch defender of Trump for the last four months yet described Qatar’s Air Force One offer as a stomach-turning bribe. Ungar-Sargon is refusing to be distracted: Trump is planning to take a $400 million gift from a foreign country, and then he's not going to leave it with the U.S. government when his term ends. That is the story, whether we like it or not. 

Trump, naturally, sees things differently. He is arguing that the plane is “not a gift to me, but to the Department of Defense,” and as such isn’t an illegal bribe. The obvious question, then, is why not just leave the plane in the hands of the next administration? If that were the plan, we’d be having an entirely different conversation about diplomacy. Instead, Trump says “the plane will go to my presidential library,” implying it will be under the supervision of some kind of government entity. But that isn’t what that means. Once the plane is donated to his presidential library, Trump can likely use it as a private citizen. 

The president, of course, insists he won’t do that, invoking the Reagan Library’s display of a retired Air Force One airplane (which, by the way, was retired 12 years after Reagan’s term and served as Air Force One from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush). So it’s up to us to consider the future: When Trump leaves office, do you think he will donate one of the most highly modified, expensive, secure planes ever made, leaving it at his presidential library to gather dust and sit on display just a few years after being built, or do you think he’ll keep using it for himself and his family? 

It’s anyone’s guess, really. 

Could we just step back for a moment and contextualize the way this story is being covered? During the Biden administration, we wrote about the Hunter Biden laptop story over a dozen times. At the center of that story were questions about the then-vice president’s son working at a Ukrainian energy company for an obscene salary, and his attempts to arrange foreign business deals while his dad was in office. At the time, it was popular to say something like “the appearance of impropriety is just as dangerous as the impropriety itself.” Biden supporters criticized us for giving the story so much coverage, and I used to say — almost like a mantra — don’t be mad at me, be mad at him. 

I’ll tell Trump supporters the same thing, except we’re not talking about the president’s son angling for vague “deals” as a private citizen (though we could be, as Trump’s sons are literally traveling through the Middle East pursuing deals for the Trump organization right now). We’re talking about a sitting president himself accepting a $400 million gift from a country in the Middle East just as he heads to the region to negotiate foreign policy deals. 

Some have framed Qatar as a terrorist state paying off Trump the same way they pay off Hamas, and yes, Qatar has funded Hamas terrorism — but that characterization doesn’t really tell the whole story. During Trump’s first term, and then under Biden, Qatar began making meaningful strides on combating extremism — so much so that the United States designated them as a major non-NATO ally in 2022. 

Qatar will be key to any peace deal between Israel and Hamas, or any of the region’s warring factions. I think Trump’s instinct to strengthen ties with them is correct — but this is the wrong way to do it. Qatar is, quite brazenly, buying influence with the president as a person — not the presidency as an institution — overtly creating a corruptible relationship, and Trump is walking right into it.

Worse yet, selling influence has become a pattern for Trump. President Trump has dedicated a good deal of bandwidth early in his second term to making corruption, gift-giving, and bribery harder to prosecute. That is not a partisan talking point — it’s the simple truth. He is delegitimizing the very concept of white-collar crime, as Axios put it. 

For example:

He has all but shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, paused enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, fired two Democrats from the Federal Trade Commission, and dropped or halted enforcement actions against over 100 corporations accused of misconduct. He has pardoned Rod Blagojevich and commuted Carlos Watson’s sentence, while his Justice Department dropped the case against Eric Adams — three politicians who were either found guilty of fraud or were likely to be. There is now an entire cottage industry where you can pay expensive lawyers to get Trump to pardon you (which also happened in his first term). Meanwhile, the president has disbanded the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team and at the same time is standing up and profiting from the Trump family’s own memecoin (which he is selling for access to the office). Here’s just one example of how those pieces fit together: Crypto mogul Justin Sun bought $75 million worth of cryptocurrency from a Trump-backed crypto venture, then the SEC serendipitously paused his fraud and market manipulation case. A coincidence, I’m sure.

When you focus on the basic facts of the Qatari gift story, that’s the context it fits into. You may be wondering, “is this legal?”, and the answer is, well, not really. The constitution explicitly prohibits the president from accepting personal gifts, but Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi has concluded the gift is legal. She has not explained how she came to this conclusion, though it probably involves using the presidential library system as a loophole. Bondi, by the way, lobbied on behalf of Qatar as a foreign agent before joining the Trump administration (Qatar paid her $115,000 per month). All of this, mind you, comes just weeks after the Trump Organization struck a deal to build a $5.5 billion golf club in Qatar.

At a time with so many issues facing our country, these are the initiatives and deals Trump seems focused on. As president, he sees opportunity for himself, and then views laws and norms as barriers to getting what he wants rather than what they are, which are non-negotiable (laws) and necessary (norms) constraints on his power. He then comfortably pushes right through them, all while calling the rest of us stupid for not understanding how much sense this all makes. Of course he should take a free plane, what are you, thick? Of course his cryptocurrency is making money, he’s a businessman. Of course we should stop enforcing these laws, just look at how they’ve hurt all his successful friends!

We have words for all of this: “open corruption,” “grift,” “compromised,” or “illegal,” just to name a few. We should use them. It’s obscene, really, and it’s (so far) one of the defining stories of Trump 2.0. I said it when Biden was in office, and I’ll say it again now: It’s not my fault for describing the things happening right in front of my face. Don’t be mad at me, be mad at him. 

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Your questions, answered.

Q: As a huge fan of Tangle — what, why and how you do what you do — I find myself struggling to find a source of news structured similarly for the “rest” of the news, all things outside of politics. I’m curious what you think of Straight Arrow News?

— Todd from Portland, OR

Tangle: We really like all the news sources that have a similar mission as ours and tackle it from different angles. The bias raters like AllSides and Ad Fontes, the news aggregators like Ground News and Freespoke, and even our more direct competitors like The Flip Side — l’chaim and best of luck to all of them.

For those unfamiliar, Straight Arrow News is a privately owned media outlet that aims to deliver the news without bias and highlights stories that traditional media might be missing. We applaud them for trying to remove bias from factual news reporting. In fact, a good friend of mine (hi, Ian!) works for Straight Arrow News and is a Tangle reader himself. If I’m skeptical of anything about their model, it’s that writing in completely neutral and “nonpartisan” terms is actually difficult to the point of being impossible. The bias just has a way of seeping in. Our philosophy is that we can give our best swing at neutral reporting (like we do in our “Today’s story” section) if we also lean into people’s opinions and elevate a diversity of perspectives. 

That being said, I love what Straight Arrow News is doing, I think they are worth following, and I don’t see many “neutral” news outfits doing it as well as they do. I don’t envy the goal they’ve set for themselves, but I’m certain we need more news organizations like them.

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Under the radar.

On Sunday, House Republicans released their plan to meet their savings targets to offset the cost of extending President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. The plan includes approximately $880 billion in spending cuts, primarily to Medicaid. A preliminary estimate from the Congressional Budget Office found the proposals would reduce the number of people with health care by 8.6 million over the decade. Republicans argue that the cuts would address “waste, fraud, and abuse” in the Medicaid system through new work and eligibility requirements. Democrats, however, say the changes would undermine the U.S. public health infrastructure and make health insurance more costly. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has set a Memorial Day deadline to pass the spending and tax cuts bill, and Republicans are holding a series of public hearings on parts of the bill this week. The Associated Press has the story.

Numbers.

• 1939. The year that President Franklin D. Roosevelt founded the presidential library system. 
• $480 or more. The threshold for the value of a gift from a foreign government to an executive branch official at which the gift must be disclosed.
• 35. The approximate age, in years, of the two modified Boeing 747 planes currently serving as Air Force One. 
• 2022. The original year Boeing planned to deliver the new Air Force One.
• 2027. Boeing’s new target for delivering the planes, according to an Air Force official.
• 52% and 39%. The percentage of Americans who said they were concerned and not concerned, respectively, about President Donald Trump’s potential conflicts of interest, according to a February 2025 Economist/YouGov poll.
• 28%. The percentage of Americans who consider Qatar to be an “ally” or “friendly,” according to an October 2023 Economist/YouGov poll.
• 26%. The percentage of Americans who consider Qatar to be an “enemy” or “unfriendly.”

The extras.

• One year ago today we wrote about the indefinite delay in Trump’s classified documents case.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the ad in our free newsletter for the free financial newsletter The Daily Upside.
• Nothing to do with politics: Another fever dream of a website: theuselessweb.site.
• Yesterday’s survey: 2,010 readers answered our survey on Isaac’s take on Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s arrest with 78% in agreement. “Sounds like Baraka got a PR win, like he wanted, and Trump's crowd got to ‘own a lib,’ like they wanted... but did it do any good for the nation? Will there be any repercussions beyond a further ramping up of partisanship?” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

In early February, two hikers made a surprising discovery in the foothills of the Krkonose Mountains in the Czech Republic. Poking out of a stone wall, they found an aluminum can containing 598 gold coins — then, just a few feet away, they uncovered a buried metal box hiding another trove of gold items, bringing the estimated value of the discovery to roughly $680,000. The Museum of Eastern Bohemia now has possession of the stash and is working to solve the mystery of where the treasure came from. The New York Times has the story.

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