Why the Qatar jet gift controversy hits home
Presidents and their planes
The first airplane specially built to fly a president was the “Sacred Cow,” a Douglas VC-54C Skymaster that took President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Yalta conference in early February 1945.
The next one, a Douglas VC-118 introduced in 1947, was named “Independence,” after President Harry S. Truman’s Missouri hometown.
In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower was flying back to Washington on his plane after giving a speech in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Lockheed VC-121A, informally named “Columbine II,” was using its usual radio call sign — Air Force 8610 — while air traffic controllers were also fielding calls from a commercial flight with the same number, Eastern Airlines 8610.
Determined to avoid any future confusion, the president’s pilot, Col. William Draper, “called a meeting to always identify the flight carrying the president: It would be Air Force One,” according to Lowen Baumgarten.
And so it remains.
Air Force One, now a Boeing 747-200, continues to be a sacred cow, a 231-foot-long symbol of American power and authority, a traveling White House that has figured in many historic moments for more than 70 years.
So it’s not surprising that many politicians and pundits, even conservative ones, are roasting President Donald Trump for his willingness to accept a new Air Force One as a gift from the government of Qatar. (On Wednesday, May 21, the Pentagon said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accepted the plane from Qatar.)
This is not a present that can be stashed away in a Mar-a-Lago storeroom, it will be visible throughout Trump’s presidency as he travels the nation and world, a constant reminder of the ethical controversy over its origin. It amounts to more of a self-evident ethical embarrassment than selling naming rights on the Washington Monument.
Presidents and their preferences
Like the Oval Office, a president’s plane is a workspace he can help design and decorate. Some presidents had the ability to help configure a new generation of the aircraft; others have merely set policies or practices governing how their planes are used.
FDR’s Sacred Cow came with an elevator to enable the wheelchair-bound president to board. He only used the plane once, flying from Malta to Yalta for his conference with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and British prime minister Winston Churchill. (FDR died two months after Yalta.)
Truman “and his advisers had the front of his plane…painted to resemble the head of an eagle,” wrote Kenneth T. Walsh in his invaluable book, Air Force One.
Walsh adds:
Truman felt so uninhibited aboard the plane that he indulged his penchant for earthiness and practical jokes. He once told his pilot, Myers, that whenever he flew to Independence, he was to be notified as soon as the plane reached Ohio. This was the home state of Republican senator Robert A. Taft, his political nemesis. When the plane crossed into Ohio, the president would get up from his seat and use the bathroom in the rear of the aircraft, then order Myers over the intercom to release the waste into the air. It was Harry's way of demeaning Taft.
In 1959, Air Force One entered the jet era, with the arrival of a Boeing 707 used in the final months of Eisenhower’s presidency and the beginning of John F. Kennedy’s tenure.
As Walsh notes, it was a newer model of the 707 that was the venue for the traumatic November 22, 1963 swearing in of President Lyndon B. Johnson, hours after the Kennedy assassination in Dallas. LBJ took the oath of office alongside Jackie Kennedy, wearing a pink suit stained with her husband’s blood.
In the following years, LBJ would be a temperamental figure on Air Force One, throwing a tantrum when the supply of root beer was exhausted or his scotch and soda wasn’t mixed properly. Walsh wrote that Johnson “installed a special seat, which his aides called ‘the throne,’ that he could raise at the push of a button so he could ascend to a higher, more regal elevation than everyone else.
Wake and a stumble
When Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974 due to the Watergate scandal, “his final flight on Air Force One to San Clemente, California, the next day, August 9…was a bizarre wake,” wrote Walsh.
President Gerald Ford deep-sixed Nixon’s “Spirit of ‘76” name for the aircraft, changing it back to Air Force One. In 1975, Ford stumbled to one knee when descending the plane’s stairs in the rain in Salzburg, Austria. Widespread coverage of the fall led to Chevy Chase’s impersonations of Ford as a chronic bumbler on Saturday Night Live.
The next president, Jimmy Carter, proved true to his abstemious image by cutting back on such Air Force mementos as matchbooks and coffee mugs and insisting on carrying some of his own luggage aboard.
President Ronald Reagan viewed Air Force One differently.
The former Hollywood actor, Walsh wrote, “understood the airplane's power as a symbol and he used it as a backdrop whenever he could, just as other presidents had done. But Reagan perfected some new techniques. One was the ‘Walk,’ a carefully choreographed, dignified march from his limousine or helicopter up the stairs and into the magnificent blue-and-white 707. Aides were not allowed near him lest they get into the camera frame. This was a moment for the commander in chief, alone, to stride purposefully into his plane—all for TV.”
New model
In 1984, Reagan ordered two new presidential planes, in a major step up from the 707 (which now resides at the Reagan library in California).
The spacious new 747s would cost more than $500 million and wouldn’t be delivered on time. They arrived during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, who thereby gained the perk of being able to freshen up with a shower and a massage on board. His successor, President Bill Clinton, tried to add another luxury; he had the trendy Los Angeles hairdresser Christophe style his hair as the plane sat on the tarmac, possibly delaying some commercial flights and causing a media furor. Clinton went on to log 1,409,090 miles on Air Force One as he indulged his love for presidential travel.
When al Qaeda terrorists flew two commercial planes into New York’s World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush’s team desperately struggled to determine the scale of the attacks.
That day, Air Force One became a wartime command center, as the crew diverted the plane away from returning from Florida to Washington and instead landed at air force bases in Louisiana and Nebraska while Bush’s aides weighed whether it would be safe to fly to the nation’s capital.
Old planes
The two aircraft available for use today as Air Force One are the ones delivered to the first President Bush. His first flight was September 6, 1990 on a plane with the tail number 28000. The second one, number 29000, was deployed March 26, 1991, according to Walsh.
They are 747-200s, 231-foot, 10-inch-long planes that can accommodate up to 366 people, depending on the way the aircraft is configured.
The latest model of the Boeing jumbo jet is the 747-800, which is almost 20 feet longer and can carry another 100 people and another 150,000 pounds of weight. That’s the model that Boeing is building for the Air Force under a $3.9 billion contract dating back to Trump’s first term, but those two planes won’t be ready until 2027 at the earliest.
And that’s also the model that Qatar is offering as a gift. Trump says he would use it during his presidency, and it will ultimately reside at his presidential library.
As the New York Times noted, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calls the gift “so corrupt that even Putin would give a double take.”
Republicans are critical too. “Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said he did not ‘think it’s a good idea’ to accept the plane, adding that there was an ‘appearance of impropriety.’ Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, raised national security concerns about the Qatari jet, noting the gulf nation’s backing of Hamas and Hezbollah.”
Practical problems
There are also practical reasons to doubt the wisdom of accepting the gift. As Defense News reported, “Past Air Force Ones have … been built with redundancies to ensure critical systems can continue operating if something fails, [aviation expert Richard] Aboulafia said, as well as survive and keep operating during a nuclear war.”
“Upgrading a 747 from scratch with those capabilities could take into the 2030s, Aboulafia said, and cost ‘billions and billions’ of dollars.”
The Qatari jet, dubbed a “palace in the sky,” is 13 years old. It was fitted out for use by Qatari leaders and has been listed for sale since 2020.
It “boasts two full bathrooms, nine lavatories, a main bedroom and guest bedroom, multiple lounges, a private office, and cream and tan-colored leather seating on both decks, according to photos of the interior provided by the Swiss aviation company AMAC Aerospace,” the Washington Post noted.
“Flight records show that the Qatari jet was moved five weeks ago to San Antonio International Airport, suggesting that preparations for improvements might already be underway.”
In a Truth Social post, Trump has said, “Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our country” and “The Boeing 747 is being given to the United States Air Force/Department of Defense, NOT TO ME! It is a gift from a Nation, Qatar, that we have successfully defended for many years.”
Ethics issues
Three lawyers who served as ethics counsel to recent presidents disagree.
Norman Eisen, Virginia Canter and Richard W. Painter wrote in the New York Times, “Mr. Trump would be personally benefiting from the use of the plane while in office and could continue to do so after he leaves office. Functionally, this is a gift to him, notwithstanding the rationalizations offered by administration lawyers.”
“The foreign emoluments clause of the Constitution forbids the president from accepting a present or emolument — a benefit, or anything of value — from a foreign government without permission from Congress.”
The Qatar jet controversy is playing out amid the backdrop of efforts by Trump’s children to strike business deals around the world, which critics say, takes advantage of their father’s unique power over politics and economics. Their response is frequently to cite Hunter Biden’s international business activities.
If the Qatar gift moves ahead though, Hunter Biden’s scandals will be a fading memory by the time the new Air Force One takes flight.
Learned a lot here, Rich, as always but on the outside chance President Trump is a subscriber question wisdom of mentioning Truman's practice of hitting the head and then carpet bombing Ohio in order to annoy Robert Taft. Note to Joe Biden in Delaware: Don't look up.
As usual, a phenomenal job of research, Rich.