Bulwark Takes - Trump Accepted The $400 Million Plane Bribe!

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

Trump erupted when questioned about a luxury jet gifted by Qatar, an ethically dubious move possibly tied to diplomatic favors. Despite constitutional concerns, the Pentagon accepted the jet, and Trump plans to retrofit it for brief presidential use before likely turning it into a museum showpiece. Legal challenges may follow, but so far, no one has stopped him.

America's energy future begins now. More American oil and natural gas means more jobs, more security, and more innovation. America's moment is now. Learn more at LightsOnEnergy.org. Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute. Hey guys, me Sam Stein, Managing Editor at The Bulwark, and the guy who interrupts everyone who appears with him on the bulwark uh joined with andrew egger author of morning shots to discuss the formal uh i guess end of the deal for the qatari airline gift the pentagon has announced that it is accepting the gift uh from qatar and president trump uh who is appearing with the president of south africa to talk about allegations of white genocide in the country had an absolute meltdown when Peter Alexander of NBC News asked him about the jet, an epic meltdown by even Trump's parents. Anyways, subscribe to the feed. We're going to get into it very quickly. Andrew, what'd you make of the fact that they weren't shamed into not accepting the gift? Well, this was always going to be the thing of it, right? Is, is yes, the

constitution obviously baldly forbids this sort of thing from happening. Yes. You know, the, the, the deal as initially laid out was totally baldly corrupt, but when it comes right down to it, you know, if, if, if Qataris wheel a $400 million plane up to you and they're like, here it is, and you get in it and you go home. The question then becomes like, okay, who's actually going to stop you from doing that, right? And are the courts going to stop you? And who has standing to sue over it? Is Congress going to stand up and do something about it with these feckless Republican majorities? And it kind of seems like the answer to those questions has been no. And so yes, it looks like

we're going to move forward with this thing. And there are a million different things we can talk about all the different ways in which it is so insane and so psychotic and just so so grisly and silly and wrong. But but it looks like it looks like we're going forward with it. We're going to spend a ton of money retrofitting this thing. So Donald Trump can make it his Air Force one for an hour or two. And then who knows? So yeah, let's do it. I didn't interrupt once. Even though you used a multitude of adjectives,

including the word baldly twice, I just sat back and said anything. I just wanted that to be... Let's go back to the interruptions. I prefer the interruptions to the quick critique at the end. Come on, man. Let's do a video. All right. In terms. Come on, man. Let's do a video. All right. In terms of the plane, yeah, I didn't think anyone was ever going to shame the guy into

not taking it. But I think a few tidbits are worth talking about here. One, it's not entirely clear now that it was a gift. CNN's reporting that we purchased the Qataris about it. Tom Malinowski, talking to Bill Kristol the other day, said he thought it was a shakedown, actually, that the Trump right now said, we want the plane. In exchange, we'll give you some sort of security guarantees or tighter relationships, trade, whatever. So I want to just be clear. I mean, I'm going to call it a gift because that's the kind of how it's known at

this point, but I'm not totally sure it was a gift. Two is I'm not entirely sure that, well, it's obviously going to happen. But when I talked to Brian Schatz, the Senator from Hawaii, he said that Richard Blumenthal, his colleague, Senator from Connecticut, was exploring the possibility of using the annulments clause to sue the administration. And so I wouldn't be totally shocked if a lawsuit was filed. I don't think it's going to go anywhere because they tried this in the first go around and it didn't work. Yeah. Yeah. And they should absolutely explore that, right? I mean, they'd be kind of derelict not to, but yes. But yes, in the first administration, that was the exact problem

that they ran into because when Trump would get these gifts and these kickbacks from different foreign leaders at his companies or whatever, members of Congress tried to sue. And ultimately, where the courts came down on that, it didn't go all the way up to the Supreme Court. But where courts left it was that they didn't have standing. Individual members of Congress didn't have standing. The whole body, in theory, could bring some kind of legal action. But that hasn't been tested.

OK. Well, I doubt the whole body will in this case. But I guess the one element of surprise, it's not really a surprise, but evident to me is that this has been a political problem for Trump in ways that some stories are, but not every story. But this one, our colleague Lauren Egan was writing about it. Democrats think this is really breaking through. And the fact that he went and accepted it shows he just doesn't give a fuck at this

point. I continue to be increasingly convinced that Trump knows he's not running for a third term i mean he's joking about it constantly but he's doing stuff that like if you really cared about a third term you probably wouldn't do and this is one of those things yeah yeah especially with the and i don't know what the the what the very latest bleeding edge state of the reporting on this is but the the idea that it would be eventually transferred to his presidential library. I mean, like that's the thing, first of all, that makes it so openly corrupt. But second of all, it makes it so compatible with what you're laying out right now, that

this is a pure cash-in. I mean, just even the idea of retrofitting it for service as Air Force One, right? I mean, that's the kind of thing that's going to take so long now, right? Do we have estimates of how much it's going to cost? I don't know. Has someone done an estimate, right? Yeah, Joe had it in his newsletter the other day. It was some mind-boggling number. I don't remember exactly, you know, many, many zeros. But the point is, like, it's not like this thing is going to be in service as Air Force One, even during Trump's term for very long. So if he's going to try to then, you know, re-decommission it, which will cost a bunch more money, by the

way, because they have to strip out all the stuff re decommission it, which will cost a bunch more money, by the way, because they have to strip out all this stuff that they put in there. The, the whole, the whole rigmarole, all this nonsense is for him to be able to fly around in it for a little while, a couple months, a year, who knows? And then park it at his library where it's like a new big fancy. Do you really think he's going to park it at the library? Or do you think? I don't know. Maybe not physically. I don't know.

What do you think? I think he's going to use it. I don't know what do you think what do you think i think is gonna happen with it i think he's gonna use it i think he's gonna take it and he's gonna use it and eventually he'll be at his library but that's probably when he passes he'll go to his library but he's gonna use it and he'll say something like you know we spent so much money retrofitting this thing like it would be a shame to waste all that money and just put it as an ornament in my library right right i gotta use this thing come on don't be a sucker. Anyways, to underscore the sensitivity of the matter, let's play the clip of Trump responding to Peter Alexander and we'll do reactions on the flip side.

Okay. Mr. Ambassador, the Pentagon announced that it would be accepting a Qatari jet to be used as Air Force One. What are you talking about? We know we need to. You know, you to get out of here. What does this have to do with the Qatari jet?

They're giving the United States Air Force a jet. OK, and it's a great thing. We're talking about a lot of other things. It's NBC trying to get off the subject of what you just saw. You are a real, you know, you're a terrible reporter. Number one, you don't have what it takes to be a reporter. You're not smart enough. But for you to go into a subject about a jet that was given to the United States Air Force, which is a very nice thing.

They also gave $5.1 trillion worth of investment in addition to the jet. Go back. You ought to go back to your studio at NBC because Brian Roberts and the people that run that place, they ought to be investigated. They are so terrible, the way you run that network. And you're a disgrace. No more questions from you. Go ahead.

Talk about that. His name is Peter Selfling. He's a terrible reporter. All right. So there you have it. Now, in Trump's defense, he was on like a 20 minute tangent about how white genocide was being committed in South Africa. He just played a sizzle reel of totally out of context news clips and viral videos of minor political parties talking about white genocide. And the South African president was just sort of sitting there being like, I don't know what I'm watching. And then right as they went out of the clip, Peter Alexander was like, Mr. President, what do you think of this Qatari jet situation? So he lost it. But then also that's like that kind of behavior is just so abnormal and or should be at least not for trump

so that that is i was gonna gonna bring up the the one thing that cuts a little bit against maybe the the theory that you laid out before that that he just kind of is totally in on the take and it's a cash in and it's naked and and and whatever because like counter take well well i just think that there is this also this element in trump like psychologically where where stuff that he doesn't want to see, he just doesn't see, you know, it's not like, it's not like this like conscious decision to like, to, to insulate himself from the, from this criticism. He just, he just, it bounces off of him and he short circuits to, ah, you know, the fucking fake news and people are so sick.

And he does this on a lot of stuff. I mean, like back in his hundred day interviews, you would see this kind of thing where it's like the the second the second he is asked to kind of contemplate a concept uh that is that is difficult or or or like um you know unhappy for him to have to contemplate or to answer real questions it's just a it's just like a defensive reflex to to to blow the aid and and push back against it and he is so surrounded by people now who, who just flatter all of that stuff. Like the whole world is shaped to fit his psyche now that he just barely ever has to contemplate these things, except in these interactions with the fake news media that he brings into the office. And it's very easy for him just to be like, ah, you know, these, these

jerks in the media, nobody likes them. You're, you have no viewership. It's all fake. Like, like there's no one in the whole world who has this complaint except this asshole in my office who's giving it to me right now. And so, and I think that is part of it. Like, I don't think he's necessarily making like a calculation. I can afford to do this, even though it's politically bad for me because it's just a cash out later and I never need to run again. I'm not 100% sure it's as calculating as that, just for the reasons I said. I will just say his behavior, his petulance is eerily, eerily similar to how you treat minor edits that I offer in the morning track school doc. It's, it's uncanny.

Yeah, but I'm trying to get better. He's a, he's only getting worse. Are you? All right. Andrew Edgar. Thanks so much for doing this. Appreciate it. Thank you guys for watching this. Appreciate it. If you have a Qatari jet to gift me, I will accept it and put it in my library at a given point in time. But until then, just subscribe to the feed. That's all we ask.

Take care.