Air Force One, Courtesy of Qatar: Constitutional and Cost-Saving

The modern American left is allergic to legality when it does not serve their narrative. Case in point: the apoplexy over President Donald J. Trump’s acceptance of a $1 billion Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar. This aircraft, originally outfitted as a "flying palace," has been offered as a gift to the United States government for temporary use as an interim Air Force One, with the condition that it later be donated to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation. Pundits clutch their pearls, invoking the Emoluments Clause, bribery statutes, and vague notions of impropriety. But their argument is not only unsound, it is unserious.

The aircraft is not a gift to Trump personally, and therein lies the constitutional linchpin. The Department of the Air Force will accept the plane, retrofit it for presidential use, and once the newly delayed Boeing VC-25B is finally delivered, sometime near the end of Trump’s second term, the aircraft will be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation, and eventually to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), as mandated by the Presidential Libraries Act.

This transaction is not a violation of law, it is an expression of prudence. Boeing’s chronic inability to deliver the new Air Force One aircraft, initially contracted in 2018, has left the president dependent on aging 747-200s from the early 1990s. Trump could have burdened the American taxpayer with an emergency purchase of a stopgap jet, but he chose the more fiscally responsible route: accept a gift on behalf of the American people.

The legality is rooted in clear statutory and constitutional footing. First, 10 U.S.C. §2601 authorizes the Secretary of Defense to accept gifts, including personal property, provided they are not designated for a specific individual. In fact, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth postponed his scheduled diplomatic trip to Israel this week in order to remain available to accept the gift during President Trump’s visit to Qatar. The jet, in this case, is being given to the Air Force, not to Trump. There is no private enrichment.

Second, the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act (5 U.S.C. §7342) provides congressional consent for public officials to accept gifts on behalf of the United States, so long as those gifts are not retained for personal use. The aircraft, during its operational life, will be used exclusively for official government purposes. Afterward, it becomes part of a presidential library, an educational institution run in conjunction with NARA. The chain of custody is public from start to finish.

Critics invoke the Emoluments Clause of Article I, Section 9, as if it were a magic incantation. But the clause prohibits personal acceptance of gifts from foreign states without congressional consent. When the gift is accepted by the US government and used in the public interest, it falls outside the clause’s scope. Legal scholars across ideological lines, including Jonathan Adler and past opinions from the Office of Legal Counsel, affirm this interpretation.

Bribery laws are equally inapplicable. The federal bribery statute, 18 U.S.C. §201, requires a quid pro quo, a thing of value exchanged for an official act. But the Qatar donation contains no such bargain. There is no evidence, even from the fevered imagination of Trump’s critics, that any official act was offered in return. It is a goodwill gesture, legally vetted and structurally sound.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House Counsel David Warrington have issued legal opinions affirming that the arrangement is permissible. Bondi’s memo emphasizes that the jet is not a personal gift and that its transfer to a future presidential library, which will itself become government property, further insulates the transaction from constitutional concern. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth concurred after a thorough legal analysis.

The historical precedents are also worth noting. In 2001, the Air Force transferred the decommissioned Boeing 707 known as SAM 27000 to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. That aircraft had served as Air Force One under multiple presidents. It was turned into a museum exhibit, open to the public, and maintained through a private endowment. The Trump library will follow the same procedure. That Reagan’s plane was American-built and Trump’s is a foreign gift is irrelevant. Once accepted by the Air Force, the Qatar 747 becomes government property, indistinguishable in legal status from any other.

If anything, this gesture is a net benefit to the United States. Taxpayers save hundreds of millions, the president has a safe and modern aircraft to use, and in time, the public gains a historic artifact displayed for educational purposes. Only those politically motivated to hate Trump could object.

It is precisely this kind of clear-headed stewardship that Americans voted for in 2024. Trump didn’t cave to bureaucratic inertia or Boeing’s delays. He acted. He found a solution. And he did so within the full bounds of law and constitutional propriety.

Let the Democrats and their media allies fume. The law is not on their side, and neither is the logic. Trump accepted a plane not for himself but for the country. And when he is done using it to serve the nation, it will be handed over, as all such gifts should be, to the American people.

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