Trump Just Thanked Qatar for His $400M Airplane | Opinion

Last week, the United States voted for a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the Israeli strike on Doha, Qatar, where Hamas negotiators are housed. President Donald Trump joined in the condemnation personally, hailing Qatar as a “close Ally of the United States, that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker Peace.”

Under Trump, the United States has never voted against Israel before in the Security Council. After the death of over 20,000 Palestinian children in Gaza, Trump instructed our representative at the United Nations to veto a resolution calling for a ceasefire and expressing for Gaza, “grave concern over the catastrophic humanitarian situation, including the risk of famine.”

Yet, there was Trump supporting a resolution calling for Israel to respect “sovereignty and territorial integrity”—at least for Qatar. What’s different about attacking Qatar? During the Gaza War, Israel has bombed Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, and Tunisia without Trump uttering a peep about “territorial integrity.” Thousands were killed and wounded from these attacks in Lebanon alone. Five people were killed in Doha.

Is it because Qatar is our ally? Ukraine is a U.S. ally. Eighty thousand Ukrainians have been killed and over 400,000 have been wounded following the 2022 Russian invasion of that country, yet Donald Trump has embraced Vladimir Putin, the man responsible for it. Trump invited Putin to visit the United States, applauded him as he walked from his airplane, and essentially gave him a green light to continue the slaughter. Denmark and Panama are U.S. allies. Yet, Trump has threatened to use force to seize Greenland from Denmark and the Panama Canal from Panama.

So, what are Trump’s real reasons? How about 400 million of them? For Trump, all things are transactional. So, now he is showing gratitude for an unprecedented gift from Qatar this past spring. In case you’ve forgotten, it’s a $400 million plane. In case you have deluded yourself, it wasn’t a gift to the United States. He gets to keep it and the roughly $1 billion in taxpayer-funded improvements to it after he stops being president.

The plane explains the vote. Qatar has done a good job bribing Trump. He went from accusing Qatar of supporting terrorism to praising that country as a courageous friend striving for peace.

There doesn’t seem to be any exception to the Trump bribe-a-thon. According to a recent study published in The New Yorker, millions have been paid to Trump directly and indirectly by American media companies, foreign governments, American business executives, and people doing business with the U.S. government. According to the study, paying for access to him at Mar-a-Lago alone has brought Trump some $125 million. The estimate shows that the family private-equity fund has added another $320 million, most of it from managing money contributed to oil-rich Persian Gulf monarchies, including Qatar. Real estate deals in the Gulf added some additional $100 million. And the list goes on: Over $1 billion from crypto related ventures, millions from Jeff Bezos for a Melania Trump documentary, and on and on, until the calculations amount to some $3.4 billion of personal profit off the presidency.

Now you know why Trump loves foreign oil producers so much that he is willing to throttle American companies in the clean energy business. He has millions of reasons. And nothing is sacred. Anti-immigrant mania helped propel Trump to the presidency, but Trump has already tried to put thousands of illegal immigrants out of bounds for ICE agents.

Surprise! Near the top of the list were workers in the hospitality industry. You know, those people who work at Trump properties like Mar-a-Lago, Bedminster, Doral, and the Trump hotels in New York, Chicago, and Las Vegas.

Yes, Trump said the raids would resume and a few did—a raid on a hotel owned by a former Trump business rival for instance. But raids on Vegas hotels? No dice.

Washington may have been a swamp before Trump, but now it’s a cesspool with an active volcano underneath it. Who’s getting hurt? Those of us too poor to bribe. Those of us too weak to resist. Those of us who want a better country, not a bitter one. Those of us trying to explain these wicked things to our children.

Thomas G. Moukawsher is a former Connecticut complex litigation judge and a former co-chair of the American Bar Association Committee on Employee Benefits. He is the author of the book, The Common Flaw: Needless Complexity in the Courts and 50 Ways to Reduce It.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.