Latest news with #quidproquo
The Guardian
13-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Trump 2.0 takes quid pro quo fears to new heights with $400m flying grift
Fox & Friends, the show beamed into millions of rightwing Americans' homes every morning, is not generally considered to be the place where Donald Trump faces the tough questions. The '& Friends' in the show's title gives that away. But on Monday morning, the show's co-host Brian Kilmeade put the billion-dollar question to the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. News had just broken that Trump had decided to accept a gift of a $400m luxury jumbo jet from the government of Qatar, a petro-state which the president once denounced as a 'funder of terrorism'. 'Do you worry that, if they give us something like this, they want something in return?' Kilmeade asked. Leavitt swatted the question away, saying that the Qataris knew that Trump 'only works with the interests of the American public in mind'. Despite her protestations, the heart of the matter is now out there for all to contemplate: what about the quid pro quo? The avoidance of quid pro quo – of favours granted in return for something, or to put it colloquially, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours – has been a bedrock of American governance, especially in foreign policy, for decades. It even informed Trump's first presidency when the Trump Organization, his family business, forewent all foreign deals for the duration. Now he's back in the Oval Office, all such guardrails separating personal from public gain appear to have been discarded. Since Trump's second presidential victory in November, the Trump Organization, under the management of his third child Eric, has seen an explosion of activity in the Gulf region. Plans have proliferated for Trump towers and golf resorts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It would take a bold commentator to suggest that the president's visit beginning on Tuesday to those same fabulously rich oil nations is purely coincidental. Of all the transactions in the pipeline, the most brazen is the proposed gift of a $400m 'palace in the sky' from the Qatari government. It is hard to imagine a clearer violation of the emoluments clause of the constitution which bars federal officials, including the president, from accepting high-value gifts without congressional approval. The Republican senator from Kentucky Rand Paul summed it up. 'It's not like a ride on the plane,' he said. 'We are talking about the entire $400m plane.' Trump's approach in his second term towards such inconveniences as ethical codes and the rule of law has been to dismiss from the leadership of key federal agencies seasoned public servants committed to the US constitution and replace them with loyalists committed to his Make America great again (Maga) mantra. From Trump's perspective, that may look like an easy fix. But for anyone concerned about quid pro quo it has merely compounded the problem. According to ABC News, Pam Bondi, Trump's US attorney general and the country's top law enforcement officer, carried out a legal analysis of the Qatar plane gift that concluded it would be 'legally permissible'. That's all very well. But what about the fact that in the run-up to the 2022 soccer World Cup, Bondi worked as a lobbyist for the Qatari government, receiving from it a handsome $115,000 every month? Quid pro quo over the gift of the Boeing 747-8 jetliner from that same Qatari government is further complicated by the intricate nexus of business deals that Eric Trump is creating at lightning speed through the Gulf region. The first foreign deal secured by the Trump Organization since Trump's return to the Oval Office in January is in Qatar. The deal is for the construction of a luxury resort and 18-hole golf course outside the Qatari capital, Doha. It will be known as the Trump International Golf Club & Villas. The scheme will be developed by a Qatari company, Qatari Diar, which happens to be owned by the Qatari government. The real estate business was set up by Qatar's sovereign wealth fund and has a government minister chairing its board. That would appear to be a breach of Trump's second-term promise – already so much weaker than the ethical pledges he made in Trump presidency 1.0 – that the family business would pursue no deals involving foreign governments. The Trump Organization insists the partnership was arranged with a Saudi firm, Dar Global, and not the Qatari company. But that only raises a further issue: Dar Global has close ties with the Saudi royal family. Were that not enough, there's also the crypto factor. Trump's venture into the crypto currency business is another whole can of worms, with so many ethical conundrums attached to it that it would keep a conflict of interest investigator busy for years. Suffice to say that the Trump family is betting big on cryptocurrency at the same time that the president is using his executive powers to boost the fledging digital payment system as well as remove regulatory restraints standing in its way. Where are the Trump family's biggest crypto deals located? In the Gulf states. A fund run by the royal family of UAE recently invested $2bn in a crypto exchange. The fund channeled the money through a new cryptocurrency known as stablecoin that tracks the US dollar. The stablecoin was issued by a cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial. It is owned by the Trump family. The front page of World Liberty Financial's website invites visitors to 'meet our team, the passionate minds shaping the future of finance'. Under a beaming photograph of the 47th president are the words: 'Donald J Trump, chief crypto advocate'.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Leavitt Says Trump Immune to Bribes Despite $400M Jumbo Jet Gift
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is not worried that President Donald Trump could be enticed to give Qatar something in return after its $400 million 'flying palace' gift. Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade pressed Leavitt on concerns that the massive Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet Qatar gifted the president amounted to a quid pro quo. 'Do you worry that if they give us something like this, they want something in return?' Kilmeade asked. 'Absolutely not,' Leavitt said. 'Because they know President Trump and they know he only works with the interests of the American public in mind.' The Department of Justice insisted on Sunday that the $400 million jet did not violate the Constitution's Emoluments Clause, which prohibits government officials from accepting foreign gifts without congressional approval, and Leavitt claimed on Monday the plane's 'donation' was 'done in full compliance with the law.' Still, the news spurred anger from Democrats and even Trump's own supporters. Far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer said the decision to accept the plane would be a 'stain' on the Trump administration, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the plane amounted to 'premium foreign influence with extra legroom.' Trump defended the decision to accept the plane, which officials told ABC News would be given to the Defense Department and later be donated to the Trump Presidential Library just before he leaves office. 'So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane,' Trump wrote on Truth Social. 'Anybody can do that! The Dems are World Class Losers!!!' Trump also blasted ABC News reporter Rachel Scott after she asked Trump on Monday whether the gift could be seen as improper, saying the network should be 'embarrassed' that she asked the question. 'It's a gift to the Department of Defense, and you should know better,' Trump said. 'Cause you have embarrassed enough, and so has your network. Your network is a disaster, ABC is a disaster.'
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's latest idea is just to pay off everybody to do what he wants
When he ran for president in 2016, Donald Trump bragged that he donated to politicians because that meant they would return his calls when he needed something. His description sounded a lot like the quid pro quo of a bribe. 'I've got to give to them,' he said, 'because when I want something, I get it.' In his second term, Trump has moved on to the idea of doing the same thing, but with voters. Since taking office, he's floated several proposals that amount to paying people cash to do what he wants. It started in January, with an email to federal workers offering to give them full pay and benefits through Sept. 30 without requiring them to work if they resigned immediately. In April, the administration floated the idea of paying each resident of Greenland $10,000 per year if the island chose to become part of the United States. Later that month, it put forward a vague proposal to pay every American mother a $5,000 cash 'baby bonus' after delivery. Then last week, it announced a policy to offer $1,000 and a flight home to undocumented immigrants who willingly leave the U.S. In each case, Trump is trying to get something he wants: a smaller federal workforce, Greenland, a higher birthrate, fewer immigrants. But to get that, someone else has to give up something of value: their job, their sovereignty, their sleep, their home. And the alternatives for Trump to achieve those goals are less attractive, ranging from mass firings to mass deportations to war. I've long thought that more government programs should involve direct cash payments, which cut overhead costs while giving recipients the freedom to decide how best to use the money. And such ideas aren't exactly new: Democratic Sen. Cory Booker has long called for giving each newborn 'baby bonds' that could be cashed in later in life, while then-candidate Kamala Harris pitched a $6,000 tax credit for parents of newborns during her 2024 run. But those payments were framed as a way to help people who were already doing something, not to provide an incentive for them to do a thing in the first place. Setting aside the wisdom of such policies for a moment, there's something distasteful about the spirit in which Trump and his Cabinet of billionaires are making these proposals. It has the vibe of a man in an expensive suit slipping the maître d' at a fancy restaurant a $20 to overlook the fact that he doesn't have a reservation. But it's not just the idea that everything is for sale, that everything has a price — as Trump basically argued to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday. ('There are some places that are never for sale,' Carney said, leading Trump to reply, 'Never say never.') It's also the idea that people can be bought so cheaply. In 2017, the U.S. Agriculture Department estimated that a middle-class couple would spend $233,610 to raise a child through age 17, not including college tuition and without adjusting for inflation. In 2022, The Brookings Institution, a respected nonpartisan think tank, revisited those calculations and pegged the cost at $310,605 when adjusted for inflation. When you look at those numbers, Trump's $5,000 bonus seems like a terrible deal. Imagine a salesman offers you the first five months free on a new car that will require you to pay $1,000 every month for the next 17 years, slapping the roof and saying, 'If you sign a long-term contract, I'll give you 1% off!' This is an offer that assumes you are too stupid to do the math. The other deals are even worse. The payments to Greenland would potentially come from the sale of the island's rare earth minerals, copper, gold, uranium and oil. It's as if Trump had offered to take your home, sell it for parts and then give you some of the money back, all while giving you the kind of treatment he gives Puerto Rico. As for undocumented immigrants, it's absurd to think people who risked so much to get our freedoms and opportunities would trade all of that for the price of a high-end laptop. There are a lot of problems with Trump's offers. For starters, these aren't written into law, which means you're relying on Trump's typically unreliable word if you base a life-changing decision on them. From a policy standpoint, they're also expensive without even getting the desired results. The baby bonuses alone would cost $18 billion a year, most of which would go to people who were already going to have kids, which is great for them but probably not sufficient to tip someone into parenthood. But the biggest problem is that Trump doesn't seem to understand that people care about more than just money. That Trump seems to think anyone would give up a job they love or a country they've made their home for some cash shows how little he shares our values. And that he thinks we would do it for a pittance shows how much he underestimates our intelligence. This article was originally published on
