Scrupulous? You decide. Qatar has become a favored nation after giving Trump a jet, making golf course deal
At a time when the Trump administration has seriously damaged America’s relations with longtime allies, including our neighbors in Canada, we do have a new friend in Qatar, a peninsula in the Persian Gulf that is approximately the size of Connecticut.
It's possible that Qatar, which nobody accuses of being a democracy, is simply in the right place at the right time. During the efforts to end the devastation and genocide in Gaza, Qatar appears to be the only country that can communicate with both Israel and the militant organization Hamas. President Donald Trump was understandably furious when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a military strike against Qatar while it was hosting peace negotiations to end the two-year war.
Still, some of the deals that our government has made with this absolute monarchy in the middle of the Middle East are startling.
Trump made the unilateral decision to grant Qatar protection similar to that provided to NATO countries without any input from Congress. Earlier this year, Qatar gave Trump a multi-million dollar passenger jet (dubbed “Air Force Two”) which taxpayers will generously help to remodel and equip, and which is eventually slated to be given to his presidential museum when his term of office ends.
Article I, Section 9 of our Constitution specifies that the president cannot accept any “present” from “any King, Prince or foreign State” without congressional consent. Apparently President Trump is not required to follow the dictates of the Constitution.
Back in April, the Trump Organization, which is apparently managed by his grown children, announced that it had made a deal with Qatar to build a luxury golf resort there. This may remove some of the sting from the realization that they will apparently not be able to turn war-ravaged Gaza into a golf resort after removing its pesky Palestinian inhabitants.
Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News personality who is now identified as the “secretary of War,” recently held a press conference with Qatari Defense Minister Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani to announce an agreement to build a Qatari Air Force training facility at Mountain Home Air Force Base, which is just southeast of Boise, Idaho. Some apologists for this unprecedented partnership have explained that the location is ideal, since both Qatar and southern Idaho are basically desert.
Qatari airmen will be trained to fly F-15s, which could come in handy since Qatar, which is heavily Sunni Muslim, is hostile to Iran, a longtime American adversary which is heavily Shiite. For what it's worth, Qatar might also be a handy base from which we could launch military strikes against Russia.
Of course, America does have other potential allies in the Middle East, including Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. We continue to operate in lockstep with Israel, our longtime ally which now reviled by most of the world for its savage devastation of Gaza over the last two years.
Among the Muslim countries in that part of the world, Qatar now appears to be our closest ally.
Noah Bookbinder, the CEO of CItizens for Responsibility and Ethics, recently commented that “you want a president making decisions that are in the best interest of the United States, not his bottom line.”
As we consider the generous gift of the luxury airplane and the plans for the luxury resort, that level of ethics may now be a forlorn hope.
Jay Davis of Rapid City is a retired lawyer and regular contributor to The South Dakota Standard.
Photo: Trump visits Qatar, 2025, public domain, wikimedia commons
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