ALBAWABA - US President Donald Trump announced yesterday that the country will possibly accept an expected $400 million plane gift from Qatar during the president's visit to the Middle East, which will start on May 13.
Trump said that a Boeing 747-8 jet to replace Air Force One could be accepted by the US Defense Department as a “GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE.”
In an earlier report by CNN, the Trump administration could get a $400 million luxury plane from the Qatari royal family, the American news outlet cited two people familiar with the agreement.
In a post on Truth Social, the president explained that the expected plane would be used on a temporary basis “in a very public and transparent transaction.”
On the other hand, CNN said that a Qatari official detailed that the plane is technically being gifted from the Qatari Ministry of Defense to the Pentagon, describing it more as a government-to-government gift rather than a personal one.
The Defense Department will dedicate the multi-million-dollar Boeing plane for the president's use with security features and modifications.
"The possible transfer of an aircraft for temporary use as Air Force One is currently under consideration between Qatar’s Ministry of Defense and the US Department of Defense, but the matter remains under review by the respective legal departments, and no decision has been made," Ali Al-Ansari, Qatar’s media attaché to the US, announced Sunday.
Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: "We've never seen something on the level of a $400 million plane," he said. "It is a scale well beyond anything we’ve ever seen before."
