Look, I don't even know what to tell you about Donald Trump's $400 million Bribe Plane. There was a point, and I don't think any of us can quite pinpoint the exact day and story of it, beyond which all our national narratives devolved into farce. We landed in the middle of a darkly comic parallel world in which our government offices were all led by People An Elderly Convicted Felon Saw On TV, and in one blurred motion "The Constitution" went from the nation's holy writ to, as soon as one extremely cooked billionaire proposed it, a doormat for a busload of intern-level tech nerds to wipe their feet on.
We had an "emoluments clause" once, and before 10 years ago if you mentioned that very few people would know what the hell you were going on about, because it was such a transparently obvious plank of honest democracy that most people didn't even know the thing had a name.
And then Donald Fking Trump, a seditious conspirator who orchestrated an attempt to overthrow a U.S. election, was convicted on more felony charges than you can afford in eggs, and was caught dead to rights hiding national security documents that he believed were his to hoard or show or sell by mere virtue of his ability to nick them, invented a new "memecoin" that allows anyone in the world to launder money into his greasy pockets, a grift that's already landed him billions in both Rube Dollars and Bribe Dollars, and now apparently he's going to be getting a half-billion dollar customized luxury cringe "air palace" from the Middle Eastern monarchies who have been shoveling money at his family like raw meat to one of their pet tigers, and the peak of this moment, the part that somehow renders all of the rest of it less amazing in comparison, is that by and large very few of Our Goddamned Betters have anything to say about it beyond a sounds concerning or what about the optics.
How many years have we flipped through news cycles in which so-and-so meeting so-and-so "on a tarmac" was evidence of invisible corruption? How many individual New York Times and Washington Post frontpages were devoted to Hunter Biden Doing A Thing—Suspiciously? Does anyone remember "Billy Beer?" The "peanut farm?"
Oh, but now President Crime Spree can admire, wink wink nudge nudge, an ultragaudy foreign monarchy-owned private jet with an interior that's decked out in what can only be described as flying cruise ship or luxury RV chic, have the owning kingdom nod and say this is for you, and it is just a thing that happens.
Where are the Republican champions of public integrity? The drainers of the Washington, D.C. swamps? Where is Senator Check and Congressman Balance? They're nowhere, that's where they are. Each time President Felon announces a new blazingly crooked money-making scheme drawn up in the Oval Office, the men and women who spent their previous electoral careers ominously intoning about dangers of improper email protocol scuttle away from the cameras like roaches fleeing a kitchen light.
So ... what are we supposed to do with this, hmm? What grand pundit takeaway are we supposed to be taking from "it turns out being a crooked ratbastard is the highest and best expression of American values"? Somebody pipe up with something, because all I can think of is we have somehow slipped into another timeline, and then another after that, and now the only defining feature of this new "reality" is that everybody on the plant is stupider than the stupidest of cows but nobody realizes it because of the stupidity.
News of the Bribe Plane came from ABC News, which was soon followed up with a three-bylined piece in The New York Times, and the best we can hope for in most of the coverage are phrases like raises ethical issues as opposed to "is the biggest honking Constitution-violating megabribe any political figure has dared attempt."
In what may be the most valuable gift ever extended to the United States from a foreign government, the Trump administration is preparing to accept a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar – a gift that is to be available for use by President Donald Trump as the new Air Force One until shortly before he leaves office, at which time ownership of the plane will be transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation, sources familiar with the proposed arrangement told ABC News. [...]
Trump had previously toured the plane, which is so opulently configured it is known as "a flying palace," while it was parked at the West Palm Beach International Airport in February.
You have to get past paragraph after paragraph of known-crooked administration crooks insisting that handing a $400M+ luxury jet over not to the United States, but to the United States with the stipulation that Donald Trump Gets To Keep The Goddamn Jet After Leaving Office, before ABC offers up a few driveby quotes from Democrats expressing mild annoyance. But nowhere in either piece do we get the most salient news about the news: that this entire proposal is entirely insane. Absolute bug-eyed insanity, of the same incompetent hyperbozoism that brought us Tariff Roulette and Firing The Nuclear Weapons Guys.
The only reason this has even come up is because Donald Trump is a big petulant babyman. Trump has been frustrated because the current Air Force One is not new enough or luxurious enough for his tastes—the same reason he's been having the Oval Office redecorated with an ever-increasing amount of gold-sprayed hot-glued bric-a-brak. Boeing is working on the new versions, but they won't be ready on Donny Pantload's preferred schedule so Donald has pressured Elon into pressuring Boeing to somehow speed the process up, possibly by bypassing some of that onerous national security nonsense that's involved when you're building a nuclear war-resistant mobile military command center, and Donald is so fking worked up about not being able to ride around in a newer plane that he and Qatar invented this solution of just giving him one of their luxury jets instead of the current Air Force One.
This is fantastically stupid just in premise, and is only a thing because this demented child isn't satisfied with merely escaping prison for he financial crimes, Espionage Act violations and sedition, he wants all of that and a better plane.
The idea of using a foreign-owned jet as hypersecure military command center is fantastically stupid even if this wasn't all about Trump wanting more airplane chandeliers than other dictators have. It's a quaint notion, after we've learned that the near-entirety of Trump's national security and defense appointees have been spewing national secrets not just on Signal, but on an encryption-bypassing Signal clone with backdoors large enough to wheel a 747 into, but international espionage is a very big, omnipresent thing and nations go to great lengths to embed monitoring devices inside each other's governments. The odds that the Qatari Bribe Plane is currently free from such bugs, and not necessarily bugs planted by Qatari forces but bouquets of devices from Israeli, Russian, Chinese, French, and take-your-pick services, is zero; it is a given. This is why Air Force Onesies are built in secure facilities by vetted workers as opposed to the Trump approach of "I Saw It Parked Nearby And Asked His Oil Highness To Gimme."
This entire batshit plan will result in Trump being able to ride a fancy new toy only slightly sooner than if he'd waited for Boeing to deliver the real versions:
A Defense Department official said on Sunday that the Air Force has not yet reached any agreement on a contract to refurbish the Qatari 747 to make the security upgrades and modifications necessary for an AF1, and the Air Force could not legally do so until it actually took ownership of the plane.
Assuming that happens, the official said, it would still take an extended period of time to complete the contract and, more important, to make the actual modifications to match a full Air Force One upgrade.
“We’re talking years, not months,” the Defense Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details about a future Air Force One.
The Problem, dear reader, is that the planes used as Air Force One are military planes first and foremost. They have air defenses. They have lavish communications capabilities. All of this is very complicated stuff, made even more complicated when you have to trace out literal miles of wire to ensure you're not installing the most sophisticated US military tech on top of a Spies-R-Us combination chandelier/transponder, and it will take a long time.
We all know full well, then, what will happen here. Donny Playdate will not want to wait years for his new toy, because he is a big wet manbaby. He will insist that he be able to use the plane whether the military gear is installed or not, and so the military contractors will be instructed to slap together the bare minimum and call it done.
While this slapdashery admittedly has the chance to produce the Funniest Possible Outcome, and wouldn't it be nice to think so, it means that this ex-Qatari bribe palace will be all but useless in its presumed military roles. No future president (again, isn't it nice to imagine such a thing might happen) will set foot in the thing, not unless they're stupider than the stupidest man to ever hold office.
And that's why the moment Trump leaves office, the plane is going to go with him.
Oh right, the part where this is all an extremely transparent bribe from a not-entirely-friendly Middle Eastern monarchy aimed at ingratiating themselves with President Convicted Felon. While initial reporting was cagey on this, we've since had confirmation from multiple outlets that by "transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation," the arrangement is that Donald Trump will personally be able to keep flying on the totally-not-a-bribe-plane for as long as he wants to after leaving office. It's not going to be a museum piece, it's going to be The Criminal's private jet.
That's a very, very, very nice bribe to hand over to a currently sitting president: the promise that Donnie Two Dolls will get a free $400 million luxury jet to tool around on rather than his older but just as gaudy current ride. Former registered Qatari agent Pam Bondi and other administration chuds insist that laundering the jet through the Department of Defense makes it no longer an emolument, because Trump won't actually have the jet laundered for his use until after he again leaves office CHECKMATE LIBS, and if you don't see how "I am writing you a check for half a billion dollars but don't cash it until you're out of office" doesn't count as crooked than you are, without question, a crook.
Unfortunately, the entirety of our political media apparatus is designed to obfuscate such obvious corruption through devices like the Prolonged Shouting Match and Ask A Nazi. And that's precisely how we got here in the first place, and that's why the major newspapers and networks can look at a president being loaned-then-gifted a $400 million flying bribe palace and not be able to come to any solid conclusion as to whether or not this thing specifically prohibited by the Constitution really counts as prohibited. It's hard to say. The crookedest bunch of crooks to ever be assembled by a convicted felon president says it's fine, though.
So you see, this is all just too farcical to even be believed. We've got a dementia-addled mad king who wants to make a foreign-built flying listening device into Air Force One, and he's doing it because he's angry the current Air Force One doesn't have enough gold-painted crap littering the cabin, and outfitting this thing to be faux-"military" only to alter it right back in 3 years so that Trump can toot around in it is going to be gobsmackingly expensive, a lot more expensive than your average fired NOAA scientist or forecaster, but sucks to be us because what Donny Moistpants wants Donny Moistpants gets and if he doesn't get it then people get fired until he does.
Don't pundit-head on me with this, pundits. Don't try to interpret this by plugging in some logic to it that you and I and everyone else knows full well is purely a figment of your own compensating minds. The only story here is that Trump Wants Bribe, Trump Takes Bribe.
What will Qatar get out of it? Oh, I think we all know the answer to that one. They'll get whatever it's in Trump's sweaty power to give.
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