Because I am easily moved by our traditional displays of patriotic fervor, a flag in the breeze, loud fireworks and Air Force One buzzing a stock car race or flying low over Mount Rushmore, I can’t abide our presidential airplane first having belonged to some potentate in Qatar, a country that can’t even settle on a pronunciation of its name.
That is our plane, not the president’s. This is our thing, not a your thing.
We pay for that plane. We fuel it, maintain it and might even indulge in a brief shiver of proprietorship when it flies overhead or lands at our airport, an event I never miss despite my lousy record of missing celestial events.
Don’t take the plane, Donald. It feels wrong. I realize it was made by Boeing, presumably in Seattle, but it was never intended for us. These guys over there who wear robes instead of suits have a different take on aesthetics. That thing might have a statue of Elvis in it, gold bathroom fixtures and thick dark draperies tied off in braided silk that suggest a madam’s place of business.
President Donald Trump said only stupid people would refuse a $400 million gift. He said it was like a favor on a golf course. A player gives you a putt and you accept it with a thank you, Trump said. You’d have to give a putt long enough to circle the Earth to be worth $400 million. Maybe that’s why Trump wins so many club championships and why Vladimir Putin miraculously scores so many goals in a Russian celebrity hockey game. That creep who runs North Korea said his father shot 18 in a round of golf. Pick that one up, boss, it’s good.
This isn’t about a gift or a favor. This is about America retaining some class in the world. Trump is certainly capable of understanding class, but I keep getting the feeling that when he opens his jacket, he has stuff hanging from the liner, watches, coins, maybe a Bible. And it’s all for sale.
Accepting that so-called gift would be like the president of Ford Motor Co. driving a gifted Mercedes or the White House replacing the presidential fleet of Chevrolets, Lincolns and Cadillacs with Audis and Jaguars. Those analogies fall short. Hard to compare anything to a president of the most powerful country in the world preening about getting a $400 million jet from a little country on the other side of the world.
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Somehow Trump rationalizes accepting the plane because Boeing has been slow to deliver a new Air Force One and he won’t use the gift plane when his term is up. He would donate the plane to his future presidential library. Great. I guess there would be a big plane out front of a building where you could go in, buy his stuff and read tweets.
Trump is exhausting. To his credit, he has unbelievable energy for a guy his age. But he either is too easy to flatter, or he demands flattery. Hard to say. Let’s put it this way. Trump is the only president in our lifetime who would actually accept a $400 million gift and think nothing of it. You might turn it around and say only stupid people would accept such a gift.
Certainly, the people around the president have warned him of the security problems. This gift isn’t being offered by Wyoming. That plane could be so loaded with spyware that we might have to spend $400 million just to take it apart and put it back together again.
Qatar is offering that plane to the president, not to the people of the United States.
The people of the United States neither want it or need it.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.
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