(c) 2025 , The Washington Post · Aaron Blake · NATIONAL, POLITICS · May 12, 2025 – It’s one of the most telling occasions in politics these days: when President Donald Trump does something so obviously problematic that even the Trump-friendly opinion hosts at Fox News feel compelled to press his team on it.
Such was the case Monday amid reports that the Trump administration is considering accepting a gift of a multi-hundred-million-dollar “palace in the sky” aircraft from Qatar to use as Air Force One. The plane would then, according to an ABC News report Sunday, be transferred to Trump’s presidential library foundation.
The potential gift raises major concerns not only about security but also about corruption and self-dealing. Here we would have a president in the first year of a four-year term accepting a historic and extraordinarily expensive gift from a foreign government that has plenty of interests in his administration’s actions. The plane could seemingly be transferred to Trump’s personal use later on, though Trump said Monday that he wouldn’t use it. Some experts have told The Washington Post that this would transparently violate the Constitution’s “emoluments” clause.
The news also comes on top of increasingly explosive reporting about Trump getting rich off cryptocurrency – another area in which his White House and administration have rather cavalierly disregarded potential conflicts of interest.
“Do you worry that if they give us something like this, they want something in return?” Fox host Brian Kilmeade asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday about the potential Qatari gift.
Leavitt responded: “Absolutely not, because they know President Trump, and they know he only works with the interests of the American public in mind.”
But that is not, in fact, something that the American people appear to know, public opinion data show. In fact, Americans have been quite concerned about potential self-dealing and corruption by Trump, amid previous episodes including Trump’s newfound crypto effort and others involving foreign money flowing to his businesses and family dating to his first term.
And while those concerns haven’t been enough to torpedo his political career, an extraordinary gift of an airplane is the kind of thing that could seemingly drive home a liability that has long lurked beneath the surface.
There is relatively little polling on views of Trump’s alleged corruption. But the polling we do have paints a consistent picture that people are at least concerned about it:
-61 percent of Americans said “behaved corruptly” described Trump at least “somewhat,” according to a pre-election Marquette Law School poll. (By contrast, just 38 percent said the same of Kamala Harris).
-More than 6 in 10 Americans said the word “corrupt” applied to Trump either “a lot” (46 percent) or “a little” (18 percent), according to a March YouGov poll. Two-thirds of independents agreed.
-60 percent of independents and 53 percent of all Americans expressed concern that Trump would not avoid conflicts between his family company and his work as president, according to a January CNN poll.
-A majority of Americans were “very” (35 percent) or “somewhat” (17 percent) concerned about the potential for Trump’s conflicts of interest, according to a February Economist-YouGov poll. Just 4 in 10 weren’t that concerned. Even 1 in 5 Republicans were at least “somewhat” concerned.
-Americans disapproved nearly 2-to-1 of Trump having a personal stake in crypto while serving as president, according to a January YouGov survey.
So would this actually be a political problem for Trump? It’s tempting to say no, because these views are somewhat baked-in with him, and his numbers rarely shift that much – even after he was indicted and after he was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump has also inoculated himself somewhat by pitching himself as a smart businessman who is accomplished at exploiting the system. Perhaps people wouldn’t be that concerned about a very wealthy president adding a hugely expensive gift or would view it as an official rather than personal one.
But a couple unhelpful factors loom over this.
One is that benefactor. While the United States has a military base in Qatar, Americans maintain somewhat uneasy feelings toward the oil-rich Persian Gulf nation with a very checkered human rights record. An October 2023 Economist-YouGov poll showed that Americans were about as likely to view Qatar as unfriendly as friendly. And just 7 percent labeled it an “ally.” (Interestingly, Republicans were slightly more likely to view Qatar negatively.)
And the second is the simplicity of this.
Conflicts of interest have stalked Trump before, but in ways that are more difficult to explain. Trump’s first big “emoluments” issue dealt with wealthy foreigners doing business at his then-D.C.-based hotel. The big one shortly after his first term was a Saudi-government-linked sovereign wealth fund investing $2 billion with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Trump’s crypto ventures could be his biggest windfall yet, but the vast majority of people don’t understand crypto – and many people’s eyes glaze over at the mere mention of it.
But here we have something very easy to explain: the potential transfer of an extremely valuable gift, without the cover of potential legitimate business. And perhaps most politically troublingly for Trump, it would be transferred even as Trump asks Americans to stomach the austerity required for his on-again, off-again trade war.
Even for a president who has grown increasingly bold in his disregard for norms, rules and laws, that would be pretty brazen. We’ll see if the administration decides it’s worth the risk.
