Turns Out, Trump’s Qatar Private Jet Wasn’t Even a Gift

There’s no such thing as a free plane.

Donald Trump’s administration specifically sought out the luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from Qatar’s government to replace Air Force One, despite the president’s insistence that the plane was a gift, sources informed CNN.

A senior White House official told CNN that Trump tasked Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy to the Middle East (and shady crypto partner), with tracking down a replacement for Air Force One, after Trump learned that Boeing would not have new jets ready for another two years. Witkoff ended up leading initial conversations with the Qatari government, according to the White House official.

Boeing provided the Pentagon with a list of other clients who might be able to help with America’s search for a new plane, three sources told CNN. One of those sources said that Qatar was included on that list of clients and that the U.S. reached out about purchasing the luxury plane from the Qatari Defense Ministry, which indicated it was willing to sell. There were also discussions about leasing the plane, said another source.

Legal negotiations over the plane’s transfer are still ongoing, and it’s unclear how the plane went from being a potential purchase to a $400 million gift. Trump and his administration have repeatedly stressed that the plane will be free of charge, a gift of goodwill from a foreign government—sparking major backlash on both sides of the aisle over concerns of foreign corruption.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the potential transfer a “donation to our country” on Monday, but the plane is much more of a personal gift to Trump himself than to the people of the United States, whose tax-paying dollars could end up funding the costly rebuild for the president’s supposedly free gift.

Trump reportedly toured a Qatari plane with aides in February and began lamenting how luxurious the plane was compared to his own transportation options. Last week, Trump whined that the current Air Force One is a “much less impressive” plane than the lavish ones dictators use.

CNN’s reporting upends a recent claim from Senator Markwayne Mullin—which was then repeated by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—that negotiations to receive a plane from Qatar began under Joe Biden’s administration.

Donald Trump ranted and raved during a speech to Kennedy Center trustees Monday night, complaining about the 2020 election.

At the White House event, Trump bragged about bringing the upcoming Olympics and World Cup to the United States before segueing into the 2020 election.

“We got the Olympics, and then we got, through [FIFA head Gianni Infantino], he’s the boss, he’s a friend of mine, we got the World Cup,” Trump said. “I got them both, and I said, ‘Man, I won’t be president and they’re gonna forget that I got them. Nobody’s gonna mention it.’”

Then he went into his pet subject how the 2020 election was stolen from him.

“And then they rigged the election, and then I said, ‘You know what I’ll do? I’ll run again and I’ll shove it up their ass,’” Trump told the audience.

“If they would’ve left us alone, and wouldn’t have cheated on the election, and wouldn’t have rigged it, I would’ve been retired right now. I would’ve been happily doing something else, and instead they have me for four more years, can you believe that?” Trump continued.

Trump also complained about the Kennedy Center’s programming, which he promised would change.

“The programming was out of control with rampant political propaganda, DEI, and inappropriate shows,” Trump said. “They had dance parties for quote ‘queer and trans youth.’ And I guess that’s all right for certain people.… But that wasn’t working out too well.”

The speech Monday night was another example of Trump’s bitterness and cognitive decline. He’s fixated on perceived slights and wants to take revenge against his enemies. The president also wants to remake Washington in his own image, dictating everything he can, including a nonprofit arts center. Now that Republicans control Congress, there’s little that can stop him except the courts.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa plans to grant billionaire Elon Musk a deal with his Starlink internet network in an effort to smooth over their rocky relationship before Ramaphosa meets with Trump and friends on Wednesday. 

Ramaphosa is circumventing the country’s Black Economic Empowerment laws to bring Musk’s Starlink to rural regions, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the news. Musk has lumped the BEE initiative in with his false narrative of white genocide in South Africa, stating that “Starlink is not allowed to operate in South Africa, because I’m not black.” 

Even Musk’s own Grok AI took issue with this claim, writing in March that “Elon Musk’s claim about race based restrictions lacks evidence; the issue is regulatory compliance, not racial discrimination. Similar challenges have delayed Starlink in other African Countries like Cameroon.” This was before Musk forced Grok to reply to everything with claims that there is a white genocide happening in South Africa.

This deal comes before what is expected to be a tense meeting, as Ramaphosa has vehemently denied Trump’s claims of “white genocide,” which caused the administration to bring in 59 Afrikaner “refugees” to the U.S. this month. He may also challenge the Trump administration on its support for Israel’s actual genocide. “[It is] laughable that you can use the genocide word on South Africa, while on the other hand you’re looking the other way where the actual genocide is being committed,” a spokesman for Ramaphosa told The New York Times on Monday.   

Only time will tell if this Starlink deal—made on the tail end of another successful deal-making trip for Trump and Musk in the Middle East—will be enough to soften the blow. 

First there were “concepts of a plan,” then there were tariff trade “subdeals,” and now, per National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, there are trade deals “in principle.”

The Trump administration is running out of time on its self-imposed 90-day deadline to craft 90 trade agreements in the wake of Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff pitch. By mid-April, the administration claimed it had more than a dozen potential deals in the works with nations eager to sort out their trade arrangements with the United States. But since then, the White House has had practically nothing positive to show for its drastic economic overhaul.

“You told us even before ‘Liberation Day’ that you had 15 countries that were on the brink of making a deal. It’s been nearly two months and you’ve had one deal, so what is the holdup?” asked a reporter.

“There’ve been a whole bunch of deals,” Hassett laughed.

“I’m sorry, with what country?” the reporter pressed.

“So you don’t think the deal with China counts as a deal? The deal with the U.K.? We’ve got an agreement in principle with India,” Hassett said.

“Everybody—you could talk to Jamison Greer, Scott Bessent, Howard Lutnick—everybody has seen awesome deals that are on the table,” Hassett continued, shrugging, as he referred to the U.S. trade representative, the treasury secretary, and the commerce secretary, respectively. “Last week we were in the Middle East cutting trillions of dollars in deals with our Middle Eastern friends.… Now we’re closing the trade deals because the president is back in the country.”

Meanwhile, “governments from Seoul to Brussels” have taken notice of China’s turtle-pace winning strategy against Trump’s punishing tariffs and are seemingly deciding to slow down their own trade negotiations with U.S. officials, Bloomberg reported Sunday.

“This shifts the negotiating dynamic,” Stephen Olson, a former U.S. trade negotiator, told Bloomberg. “Many countries will look at the outcome of the Geneva negotiations and conclude that Trump has begun to realize that he has overplayed his hand.”

Some of those nations could be banking on the fact that the U.S. will be the first to feel the sting of Trump’s tariffs, forcing a policy change from within, before they have to show their own hands.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sold potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock just days before Donald Trump’s sweeping reciprocal tariffs went into effect, ProPublica reported Monday.

Duffy sold between $75,000 and $600,000 of stock on February 11, just two days beforeTrump first announced that he had instructed his trade advisers and federal agencies to examine imposing “reciprocal tariffs” on a “country-by-country” basis. Duffy sold $50,000 more the day of the announcement.

Duffy sold stock in 34 different companies, several of which were part of an ethics agreement he’d made to sell stocks where he might have a conflict of interest, according to disclosure records he filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. Other companies he sold stock in include some that are projected to take hits as a result of Trump’s tariffs, such as Shopify and John Deere, which is expected to have a whopping $500 million in new costs as a result of Trump’s trade policy. Duffy also sold stocks in companies that are unlikely to be directly affected by the tariffs.

A Transportation Department spokesperson told ProPublica that Duffy “had no input on the timing of the sales” and that his transactions were “part of a retirement account and not managed directly by the Secretary.”

“The Secretary strongly supports the President’s tariff policy, but he isn’t part of the administration’s decisions on tariff levels,” the spokesperson said.

While it’s certainly not clear that Duffy was privy to discussions about Trump’s tariff announcement before it was made, he has credited himself for laying the groundwork for the transformative (i.e., destructive) trade policy through his work on a piece of failed legislation called the U.S. Reciprocal Trade Act during his time in Congress. Duffy has said that Trump’s current policy is the “cumulation” of the work he did on that bill.

Duffy isn’t the only Cabinet member to dump stock at a suspiciously convenient time. Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 million and $5 million of her share in Trump Media on April 2, the same day the president’s “Liberation Day” tariff war announcement broke the stock market, according to reporting from ProPublica. Trump Media stocks specifically fell 13 percent that day.