Name: Is Donald Trump allowed to accept $400m luxury plane as a gift? | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-05-15T02:53:24.000Z
Duration: 7 min 46 s
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Well, President Trump's visit to Qatar follows his decision to accept what he has called a free, very expensive aeroplane from Qatar's royal family.

It has been criticised by Democrats in the United States and even some Republicans as well, who say there is no such thing as a free plane.

And it will cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to refit it.

So let's talk a bit about that controversy and also what Donald Trump's trying to do in the Middle East with Naomi Lim, who's White House reporter for The Washington Examiner.

Thank you very much indeed for being with us once again.

What would tell us a bit more about this row over the plane, what it's all about, and what have people been saying?

So this plane, a $400 million Boeing 747, has been promised to President Trump from the Qatari royal family.

And this is a huge deal because it's the most expensive presidential gift in history.

And what Democrats and, as you rightly mentioned, some Republicans are concerned about is that nothing in this world comes for free.

And so there are already complaints about the way that Trump is conducting diplomacy, particularly in the Middle East, because there are so many intricacies surrounding his personal finances and his company, the Trump organisation that is now currently run by his sons, how they're all interconnected.

And this is just one more piece in that puzzle.

Now, in his defence, what Trump actually says in his defence is that, you know, it's going to be a temporary fix.

The problem domestically is that Boeing promised him a plane that won't be ready now until 2027.

And he wants something that he can fly around the world in right now.

And so he's saying that it's a temporary Air Force One.

But as you said, it would have to be retrofitted with all of the gadgets to be swept for potential bugs and things like that.

And then it would be donated to his presidential library.

So he's saying it's not technically a gift to him.

It's technically a gift to the Defence Department and the US people before it goes to the presidential library, which, you know, he says he won't use.

But, you know, that could change in the future.

And so this is the big thing as he touches down in Qatar today.

And arguably, it's something that's overshadowed this trip that's been really important to him as his first major foreign foray, other than the Pope's funeral last month.

He doesn't seem to care, though, does he, Donald Trump?

I mean, one Republican senator, Ryan Paul from Kentucky, said, I just think it's not worth the appearance of impropriety.

But President Trump presumably knew about all about that appearance, but doesn't seem to doesn't seem to bother him too much.

I mean, this is classic Trump response, his strategy to respond to any kind of controversy, and that's to dig in further.

We saw him posting into the We Hours local time about defending this choice, which the Qataris actually say is still up in the air.

They haven't said it's still on the news.

And he was sort of saying, you know, I would be stupid not to accept this deal.

And it's a very similar to how he defended his tax, his lack of releasing his tax reforms or his tax, sorry, his tax taxes, because he would say that, you know, I would be silly to try and pay more in my taxes, my personal taxes than, you know, it was necessary.

And so this is something that we've seen.

But, you know, to that end about Republican criticism, I think it's been really interesting to see the type of people that are complaining about it.

For example, Laura Luma, who is an incredibly online conservative activist, and she is sort of saying, you know, why would we accept a donation from someone like the Qataris who have ties potentially with financing terrorism, as your previous guest mentioned, the Muslim Brotherhood.

And so that's something that people are, you know, worried about.

But as I mentioned before, I mean, I don't think anything will stop this.

When Trump has an idea in his head, sometimes it goes ahead, regardless of the optics.

What about the optics, since you mentioned them, of this whole visit to the Gulf states?

He's been to Saudi Arabia, he's now in Qatar, as we've mentioned.

What do you how do you assess the significance of this visit?

And what is Donald Trump trying to achieve, do you think, with this trip?

Well, what I thought it was really interesting is that his first presidential trip when he was first elected president eight years ago was to the same region.

And so I think that it really sort of emphasizes the importance of the region to him, as you sort of said, politically, diplomatically, as well as sort of business commercially.

And I think this is a way to do that, particularly after President Joe Biden's administration made the point to deprioritize the Middle East in favor of Asia.

And so I think that's something that is is being made of here, something that he's said one of his aims is to come home with one trillion dollars worth of investment.

Now, that's a number that the government, the White House likes to ban it around.

When you look at sort of the details of the proposals that are coming out, you know, particularly, I think Saudi Arabia wants to put in six hundred billion dollars, and they've already sort of said they're going to spend one hundred and forty two billion dollars on defense spending with the US, which is double their budget.

And so we have to be careful with these big promises, what that actually means.

I think the other thing that's really interesting about this trip is the distance that Trump has put between himself and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, because this is usually if he goes to the Gulf states, he'll also try and make a trip to Israel.

He's not doing that amid the Hamas, the war with Hamas.

And the other thing that I think that will be really interesting is not only you mentioned also the Syrian president.

Does this sit down with him the first time a U.S. leader has met with someone in the official Syrian government for 25 years?

Also, it was most recently on the U.S. terrorism watch list.

And the other thing that I'm watching is sort of developments with all the other negotiations that are going around in this region.

For example, there were the fourth round of talks about an Iran, a new Iran nuclear deal in Oman, as well as Thursday's meeting in Qatar with potentially the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky.

And so I think those are the things that are the things to watch on this four day trip.

And you mentioned his meeting with the interim president of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharar, who was, as you said, did have an American bounty on his head until very recently.

This is a sort of classic Donald Trump again, isn't it?

He likes a bold move and to meet him, then to lift sanctions on Syria, albeit at the request of the Saudis and the Turkish government, I think.

But anyway, these are bold diplomatic brushstrokes, aren't they?

Yeah, and I do think it was sort of a way to undercut this idea that, I mean, I wrote a story earlier this week saying, you know, there's more of an emphasis on business deals rather than diplomacy.

And this is a point or a development that counters that.

And I think it is a really big deal, as you sort of said.

Again, it shows the closeness of Trump's relationship with the Saudi crown prince.

As you said, it sort of came at the request of him.

There are sort of, you know, sort of other sort of things within this idea of lifting the sanctions.

You know, this idea that he wants Syria to normalize relations with Israel.

He wants to really make them crack down on terrorists that are in their in their territory, as well as sort of try and counter ISIS.

So these things are sort of part of his larger Middle East vision, which is about commerce as well as sort of getting rid of extremism.

That's what they said going into this meeting.

And I think we're sort of seeing that coming out of it as well.

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Is Donald Trump allowed to accept $400m luxury plane as a gift? | BBC News

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