I noted a few days ago how many of the news stories of the day are knock-on effects of earlier episodes of Trump’s cupidity or grandiosity. Airport Food Truck-Gate goes back to the wildly corrupt and unconstitutional personal gift of a plane; the Reflecting Pool prosecutions go back to his whim and rushed decision to make the bottom of the Reflecting Pool blue and then the way in which he was embarrassed when his no-bid contractors messed it up. I want to return to one aspect of the plane story.
Yes, it’s corrupt, silly, stupid, etc. But Trump got the gift from the royal family of Qatar. Qatar isn’t any gulf state. It’s not UAE or Saudi or Kuwait. Qatar’s regional brand, their niche in the complex geopolitics of the Gulf, is that they’re close to both sides. They host a U.S. military base. They have decent relations with the U.S. They also have close relations with Iran. They were until recently the host of Hamas.
I want to be clear. I’m not saying the Iranian government fiddled with the new Air Force One. I’m saying that these are the kinds of things spy agencies and counter-intelligence agencies think about. And sometimes deal with. I think I can guarantee you that if you were to go to the people who run the unit that runs Air Force One and said, “Hey, we’re going to get a new plane. It’s owned by the Qatari Royal Family and it’s super luxe and Qatar says we can have it,” you’d get a very negative response. Air Force One is a mobile White House. It’s a security fortress. All manner of the most sensitive communications take place within it. The U.S. is always going to want to have that plane constructed from the ground up in and by the United States and to add all the extra communications and defensive weaponry and logistics on its own.
The idea that you’d accept a gift like that from any foreign government is iffy — from Qatar, with its close relations with Iran, it’s simply nuts. I mean, did anyone just see The Odyssey? Compromised gifts, gifts with hidden contents. This is not a new story and it’s in the theaters now. And yet that’s what happened. Then it was retrofitted in a rush because the president absolutely wanted his new plane right away.
In any case, again, not that this happened or is likely. But it’s a real vulnerability on top of a million others. It’s not some conspiracy theory or crazy thing.
