Trump Threatens ABC in Wild Rant Whining About Qatar Plane Reporting

Donald Trump is threatening to sue American businesses for discussing the apparently cozy relationship he has with Qatari leadership.

In a post on Truth Social Sunday, the president publicly threatened to sue ABC News for reporting on the super luxury jumbo jet he received as a gift from Qatar.

“Why doesn’t Chairman Bob Iger do something about ABC Fake News, especially since I just won $16,000,000 based on the Fake and Defamatory reporting of Liddle George Slopadopolus,” Trump wrote, referring to a December arrangement in which ABC agreed to donate $15 million to Trump’s presidential library to settle his defamation lawsuit against the anchor.

“He was given warnings, but just couldn’t be restrained by ‘management.’ Now I see they are at it again, and I again give these SleazeBags fair warning!” he said.

The jet was widely interpreted as a foreign bribe, including by longtime supporters of the president’s agenda, such as far-right influencers Ben Shapiro and Laura Loomer. It was one of the most lavish gifts ever bestowed on a U.S. president.

“The wonderful country of Qatar, after agreeing to invest more than 1.4 Trillion Dollars in the United States of America, deserves much better than Misleading (Fake!) News. Everyone, including their lawyers, has been told that ABC must not say that Qatar is giving ME a FREE Boeing 747 Airplane, because they are not,” the president continued online, apparently incensed that a news organization was doing its job.

“Instead, and as Fake News ABC fully knows and understands, this highly respected country is donating the plane to the United States Air Force/Defense Department, AND NOT TO ME,” he posted. “By so doing, they are saving our country, and the American Taxpayer, hundreds of millions of dollars. ABC Fake News is one of the WORST.”

Claiming that the plane is going toward the Defense Department is a convenient workaround that would allow Trump to ethically accept the pricy present, since it is obviously illegal for a president (or any U.S. public officeholder) to accept gifts “of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State,” per the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause.

Except that the plane is not actually being donated to the American people. Instead, Trump is opting to use the luxurious aircraft as his new Air Force One until “shortly before he leaves office,” at which point he will transfer ownership of the plane to his presidential library foundation, sources with knowledge of the arrangement told ABC News.

Richard Briffault, a Columbia Law School professor, told NPR News Trump’s decision to accept the jumbo jet is a “pretty textbook case” of violating the emoluments clause, clarifying that if Trump hands the jet over to his library after leaving office, then it’s “not really a gift to the United States at all.”

“[Gifts are] designed to create good feelings for the recipient and to get some kind of reciprocity,” Briffault told NPR. “But the thing that [Trump] can give, of course, is public policy—weapons deals or whatever. And then, of course, it’s an incentive to other countries to give similar gifts as another way of influencing presidential decision-making.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s new strategy for defusing Donald Trump’s Qatari jet controversy is an oldie but a classic: Blame Joe Biden.

During an appearance on NBC News’s Meet the Press Sunday, Bessent tried to explain why it would be appropriate for Trump to accept a $400 million Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the Qatari royal family to replace Air Force One—a move that has raised deep concerns about foreign corruption from across the political spectrum.

“Well, it’s not the president accepting it, it’d be the United States government,” Bessent said. “And Senator [Markwayne] Mullin said this weekend that talks had actually begun under the Biden administration.”

“I think this is an off-ramp for many in the media not to acknowledge what an incredible trip this was,” Bessent added, touting the trillions in foreign investments the president had secured during his multiday tour of the Middle East last week.

Last week, Mullin claimed that the “conversation” about accepting a luxury plane “started with Qatar with Biden a year ago.”

“What no one is talking about is [that] this same 747 has been in negotiations for a year,” Mullin said on CNN Wednesday.

A spokesperson for the Oklahoma Republican told Fox News that Mullin had been privy to a recent conversation with the Qataris and had gleaned information about the Biden administration’s reported involvement in plane talks. The Trump administration hasn’t confirmed this surprising claim, and neither has Biden’s team.

Meanwhile, Trump has been quick to try to defend himself, but not so quick to play offense.

Bessent’s assertion that the luxury plane would be a gift to the U.S. government and not Trump himself doesn’t hold much water either, considering that Trump will be the only president who uses the new Air Force One before it will be moved to his presidential library foundation in 2029, where it may be available for him to use as a private citizen.

Joe Biden’s announcement Sunday that he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer surprised many, but a doctor told MSNBC’s Morning Joe Monday that Biden has probably had cancer for many years.

“Oh, he’s had this for many years, maybe even a decade, growing there and spreading,” said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and bioethicist who is the brother of politician Rahm Emanuel and talent agent Ari Emanuel. “It’s a little surprising I look back at the records, and there’s no evidence that when he got his health status and the medical records were released, that he had a prostate-specific antigen.”

The fact that the cancer had spread to the bone, Emanuel told hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, indicated that it has been in Biden for “for a very long time.”

“We don’t know [how many years], obviously, and it is a little surprising to many of us oncologists that he wasn’t diagnosed earlier,” Emanuel said, noting that a regular prostate exam would have very likely caught the cancer.

“I would say it is surprising that he did not get this test given the fact that the proclivity of presidential physicians is test more rather than less, and I think it is a little, it’s a little strange,” Emanuel added. “We do know from the population, like I said, 7 percent of people diagnosed with prostate cancer get it diagnosed at the metastatic moment, when it’s already metastatic. So it’s not unusual that people can say, ‘No, I don’t want the test,’ or their doctor doesn’t recommend it or they don’t get the tests for one reason or another.”

The expert opinion of Emanuel, who also served as an adviser in the Obama administration and was on Biden’s Covid-19 advisory board when he was president, indicates that either Biden’s medical evaluations weren’t as thorough as they could have been or that the former president kept this information hidden from the public.

Whatever the case may be, these new cancer revelations do not reflect well on the Biden administration, which has already been facing criticism in recent weeks for how the final months of Biden’s presidency were handled and how details of his mental decline were kept from the public and his own staff. It seems that may have also extended to the president’s physical health.

President Trump wants to investigate Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Bono, and Oprah Winfrey.

“HOW MUCH DID KAMALA HARRIS PAY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN FOR HIS POOR PERFORMANCE DURING HER CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT? WHY DID HE ACCEPT THAT MONEY IF HE IS SUCH A FAN OF HERS? ISN’T THAT A MAJOR AND ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION? WHAT ABOUT BEYONCÉ? … AND HOW MUCH WENT TO OPRAH, AND BONO??? I am going to call for a major investigation into this matter,” he wrote on Truth Social at 1:34 a.m. on Monday.

“Candidates aren’t allowed to pay for ENDORSEMENTS, which is what Kamala did, under the guise of paying for entertainment. In addition, this was a very expensive and desperate effort to artificially build up her sparse crowds. IT’S NOT LEGAL! For these unpatriotic ‘entertainers,’ this was just a CORRUPT & UNLAWFUL way to capitalize on a broken system. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!”

This is an incredibly useless thing to post so late at night. Trump is irked at Bruce Springsteen for talking about how much he dislikes him on tour, so he goes on an unhinged rant calling for a Justice Department investigation that would do nothing for anyone, especially not anyone who actually needs help. It’s rich to read a man who is making shady billion-dollar crypto deals and who just accepted a luxury jumbo jet from the Qatari government speak about what is “CORRUPT & UNLAWFUL.”

For what it’s worth, the Harris campaign did come under scrutiny for making some large checks to the production companies of Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé, especially after she was defeated so resoundingly. The Harris campaign paid $165,000 to Beyoncé’s Parkwood Production Media LLC on November 19, and $1 million to Oprah’s Harpo Productions.

The Supreme Court has once again ordered President Donald Trump to cool his jets on using the Alien Enemies Act to conduct deportations.

The high court ruled 7-2 Friday to temporarily block the Trump administration from deporting another set of detainees in northern Texas, Venezuelan immigrants accused of being gang members who feared they would be the next to be removed from the country under the wartime powers law.

The court sided with the detainees, ruling they should have been given more notice to contest their removal, and sent the case to a lower appeals court to decide whether Trump can legally deport the immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act and how much notice detained immigrants should receive before being deported.

“We decide today only that the detainees are entitled to more notice than was given on April 18, and we grant temporary injunctive relief to preserve our jurisdiction while the question of what notice is due is adjudicated,” the seven justices wrote in the majority opinion.

“Under these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster.”

Naturally, conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas couldn’t even agree on this meager ruling. Justice Kavanaugh concurred.

The court even went so far as to quote itself on the Fifth Amendment, a worthwhile action given Trump and Stephen Miller’s constant redefinition of the very straightforward policy.

“[T]he Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in the context of removal proceedings.”

This story has been updated.