ArcaMax

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — I don’t know about you, but I prefer my political corruption to be as visible as a drunk uncle at a wedding. So when Donald Trump teased accepting a $400 million jumbo jet “gift” from Qatar, it felt like he was finally giving the scandal-hungry public the dinner theater they crave. Or was he? Spoiler: nope. But try telling that to people who treat every Trump press conference like a felony in progress.

Trump announced before his Middle East tour – loudly, publicly and with his usual flair – that Qatar was handing over a jumbo jet. Naturally, critics lost it, acting like he had casually stuffed the plane into his pocket, no different from the guy who steals supplies from the office.

Never mind that the plane would obviously be headed to the Defense Department for evaluation. Depending on what was left of it after any spyware removal, it might be scrapped, refitted or passed over entirely. Forbes even pointed out that Qatar had long been trying to offload it like an old couch on Craigslist.

Oh, and a U.S. president legally can’t keep foreign gifts worth more than $480. Unless, of course, that limit magically jumps to $400 million next year when the amount is up for the usual three-year review.

Sure, Trump joked about using the plane himself – but since when does a Trump joke NOT cause a complete public meltdown? It’s a wonder that Elon Musk’s SpaceX hasn’t made a schedule to coordinate critics' self-launches into orbit every time Trump opens his mouth.

Did any of these folks stop to think that perhaps Trump was just trolling them, yet again? Qatar was quick to clarify that the plane was for “temporary use” by the U.S. government. And what if that “temporary use” was actually just serving as bait in a brilliant PR trap? If so, it worked like a charm.

Trump has long grumbled about Air Force One, calling it ancient – a 40-year-old Boeing that he keeps treating like a date he got stuck with, and looks nothing like her online profile photo. “When you land and you see Saudi Arabia, and you see UAE, and you see Qatar and they have these brand-new Boeing 747s mostly. And you see ours next to it, this is like a totally different plane. It’s much smaller. It’s much less impressive,” he recently sighed.

Thanks to Trump’s public drooling over the Qatari plane, suddenly everyone is paying attention to his delayed Air Force One upgrade. Boeing, previously dragging its heels like a hungover intern, delaying an expected 2024 delivery to 2028 or 2029, is now under public pressure. Suddenly, the postponement is a national crisis of major public interest. Only Boeing can toss a new jet at Trump and prevent him from doing corruption with the Qatari Boeing!

“Boeing says it can deliver Air Force One in 2027 – if requirements are relaxed,” Defense One suddenly relayed in the wake of this fiasco. “The Air Force has already lowered security requirements so Boeing can move faster.”

And just like that, through Jedi-grade trolling, Trump has somehow managed to get exactly what he wanted all along – by co-opting the usual rage of the anti-Trump brigade. When does the “temporary use” plane go back to the Qatari prop department? That is, if it ever leaves it. The whole debate may turn out to be even more moot, according to Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper’s Washington correspondent, underscoring that “the U.S. would end up shelling out a lot of money for a jet that wouldn’t be ready much earlier than the planes Boeing is working on.”

It's all so much ado about absolutely zilch. Does this mean that Trump won’t rake in foreign money once he’s out of office? Please. Of course he will. Name a U.S. president who hasn’t made millions in speaking fees, including from international entities, after leaving office. I’ll wait.

If anything, the fact that he skipped Israel during his Middle East trip, while touting the progress made in nuclear negotiations with Iran, suggests that, right now, he's more interested in doing exactly what his voters elected him to do: adopt an agnostic approach to all players in the region. The kind that leads to the kind of long- term stability that can only come from the knowledge that they all have to get along because Uncle Sam isn’t going to come to their rescue if they don’t.

While there have been reports of Trump’s kids launching a cryptocurrency and auctioning off invitations to a private gala with the president for top buyers of the “Trump coin,” good luck proving that it’s some kind of pay-to-play influence peddling scheme. Do international donors have such intentions? Maybe. But it’s not like Trump has to actually indulge them. Ask “Israel First” mega-donor, Miriam Adelson, if she considers the $100 million she spent on pro-Trump political action committee funding to be a good investment in the wake of Trump’s Middle East trip during which he totally blew off Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and seems totally uninterested now that Hamas has released the last American hostage.

Unless you've got actual receipts, maybe cool it with the nonstop corruption accusations. Forget the plane – the only thing consistently taking off these days is the same old, tired anti-Trump outrage.