Air Farce One: When Gift Becomes Grift

[justaprogressive]

A signature complaint from conservatives trying to dismantle government is that it wastes taxpayer dollars while providing nothing of value. I await their condemnation of Donald Trump, who has pilfered just under a billion dollars from a secret Pentagon account to pay for the retrofitting of the gold-plated “gift” airplane he accepted from the government of Qatar.

When Qatar made the gift in May, Trump pitched it as a cost-saving measure. “I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer,” Trump said. “I mean, I could be a stupid person and say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’”

But documents provided to Congress reveal $934 million that was covertly shifted from a Pentagon account earmarked for the modernization of America’s ground-based nuclear missiles. The money was moved to an unnamed classified project that budget experts have identified as Trump’s new vanity plane. If Trump has nothing to be ashamed of, why the clumsy attempt at secrecy?

Trump has blocked or attacked far smaller outlays as wasteful. Most recently, he tried to embarrass Fed Chairman Jay Powell by pulling out a document on camera that supposedly showed a $600 million overrun in the Federal Reserve’s budget for modernization of its headquarters. Powell, who does his own homework, looked at the document and pointed out that the money was for a separate building completed five years ago. It was Trump who displayed rare embarrassment.

https://prospect.org/politics/2025-07-29-air-farce-one-when-gift-becomes-grift/]