Trump knows nothing of the bounds of propriety or of the dignity of the office he holds

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hortly after the 2020 presidential election, Jim Geraghty, a traditional conservative and no great admirer of Donald J. Trump, wrote in National Review, “As Trump’s selection of Matt Gaetz for attorney general... makes clear, he’s still the same erratic, temperamental, narcissistic jerk, he always was.... But even presidents you don’t like can make the right decisions every now and then. The job of conservatives for the next four year is to steer, nudge, cajole, and pressure Trump toward as many good decisions — and away from bad ones — as possible.”

It should be noted that that concluding paragraph followed almost two pages, in which Geraghty outlined nine crucial areas in which he fully expected the Trump administration to be markedly better than its predecessor. And that’s the main point in thinking about Trump: You never really know when his character will prove an embarrassment and even result in disastrous policies, and when his out-of-the box thinking might yield surprisingly positive results.

TRUMP KNOWS NOTHING of the bounds of propriety or of the dignity of the office he holds. Presidents traditionally wait until they are out of office before cashing in. But Trump and his family could hardly wait to do so. The president’s sons were busy striking deals for billion-dollar resorts and office towers in Qatar and Dubai, even as their father was on a state visit to the region. The only thing they have on Hunter Biden is that at least they have some experience as real estate developers, whereas he had none in the energy field prior to being placed at a hefty salary on the board of the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.

Andrew McCarthy was the lead prosecutor of those behind the first World Trade Center bombing and wrote an entire book on how the deep state crippled Trump’s first term in office, Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency. Yet today he writes in amazement of Trump’s hawking of a new meme coin, $TRUMP, prior to coming into office — “an announcement that was as dumbfounding in its crassness as it was unprecedented in the history of American presidents-elect.” He estimates that Trump has already made hundreds of millions of dollars on the worthless coins, while offering special deals and White House dinner invitations to the largest purchasers.

George Washington considered shaking hands beneath the dignity of the office of president. That would never pass in these more egalitarian times, but even we should be shocked by the president’s efforts to turn himself into P.T. Barnum (“There’s a sucker born every minute”) while serving as president.

EVEN MORE SHOCKING is the president’s eagerness to accept a $400 million gift from Qatar of a Boeing superjumbo plane to serve as Air Force One during his presidency and to revert to his presidential library at the end of his term.

Unquestionably, the primary beneficiary of the gift is Donald J. Trump, even if it’s styled as a gift to the US Defense Department, and thus would appear prima facie to violate the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution, which prohibits any officer of the United States from accepting, without the consent of Congress, “any present, emolument... of any kind whatever from a foreign state or its rulers, officers, or representatives.”

(The memo approving the gift by Attorney General Pam Bondi need little detain us, as in her previous lobbying work, she was a registered foreign agent of the Embassy of Qatar, for which lobbying work her firm was paid $115,000 per month.)

Trump defended the gift on the grounds that only a dope turns down a $400 million gift. Well, only a dope who has never read the Iliad and the story of the Trojan horse, through which Greek troops entered the walls of Troy. Leaving aside the constitutional issue, why would the president put himself in debt, or even the appearance thereof, to the Qataris? As Senator John Kennedy (R–LA) put it in his characteristically earthy language, “I trust Qatar like I trust a rest stop bathroom.”

And with good reason. Qatar is the seat of the Muslim Brotherhood, home to Hamas’s leadership, the chief propagandist for Islamism worldwide, through its media powerhouse Al Jazeera, which reaches 430 million viewers and listeners in more than 150 countries, and a close ally of Iran. Qatar is an oil-rich country of 300,000 citizens, who are serviced by millions of foreign workers who live as virtual slaves, working 14 to 18 hours a day.

In a major exposé last week in the Free Press, “How Qatar Bought America,” Frannie Block and Jay Solomon detail how Qatar has spent almost $100 billion to establish its influence in Congress, universities, newsrooms, think tanks, and corporations. It is the largest foreign funder of American universities, to the tune of $6.8 billion since 1986, and has helped establish Middle East Studies departments that are hotbeds of anti-Israel propaganda and have helped to fuel campus unrest. In the use of their money, the Qataris have shown themselves far more efficient than Jewish donors to university Jewish studies departments, which have largely become a second source of anti-Israel propaganda.

The mother of the current Emir, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, wrote on X after the killing of Yahya Sinwar, “He will live on, and they [the Jews] will be gone.” She chairs an educational nonprofit funneling millions into the creation of pro-Palestinian curricula for American public schools. And she was recently given one of Georgetown University’s highest awards, reserved for those “whose contributions reflect the university’s deepest commitments.”

Why, at a time that it is fighting so vigorously against the scourge of campus anti-Semitism, would the Trump administration want to ally itself with a state that funds incubators of that anti-Semitism?

IT TURNS OUT that the plane the Qataris are dangling in front of Trump is actually owned by former prime minister Sheikh Hamad ben Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani (HBJ), a member of the ruling family. Perhaps he does not qualify as representative or officer of the Qatari rulers under the Emoluments Clause, but the gift would be no less unsavory coming from him.

He has long served as the principle bagman for Hamas, to the tune of $30 million per month, and was a major funder of October 7. In addition, he has a long record of financing terrorism against America. The 9/11 Commission found that he wired money to one of the original World Trade bombers. And he provided refuge to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the mastermind of 9/11. In 1996, five years before 9/11, US authorities prepared an indictment of KSM in connection to a plot blow up multiple airliners, but someone in the Qatari government, likely HBJ, warned him, and he fled to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

Is this really someone from whom the president of the United States should be receiving presents in any amount, much less $400 million?

We will take up the implications of President Trump’s recent Middle East tour after Shavuos.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1062. Yonoson Rosenblum may be contacted directly at rosenblum@mishpacha.com)