‘It’s a bribe’: MAGA media stars bash Trump’s reported Qatar plane gift

“Indefensible.” “It’s a bribe.” “Such a stain” on the administration. Some of President Donald Trump’s staunchest supporters are among the loudest critics of his plan to accept a jet from Qatar for use as Air Force One. In a rare break from the cheerleading that typifies MAGA media outlets, some commentators are using their platforms to urge Trump to change his mind about the highly unusual gift. Others are encouraging Trump voters to consider how they’d react if a Democratic president hatched the same plan. “I think if we switched the names to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, we’d all be freaking out on the right,” Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro said Monday on his podcast. Shapiro also linked the potential Qatari deal with other reports of “influence peddling,” like Trump’s cryptocurrency sweepstakes. “The administration’s policy is too important for this sort of activity,” Shapiro said, emphasizing that he wants Trump to succeed. “President Trump promised to drain the swamp. This is not, in fact, draining the swamp.” Some Trump-aligned commentators and social media stars are echoing the president’s talking points about the luxury jet, including his insistence that only “stupid people” would turn down such a gift. Some MAGA media outlets are deflecting the criticism by sowing doubt about the media coverage of the controversy. However, a striking number of Trump boosters sound almost as outraged as the Democratic lawmakers who say accepting the plane would be profoundly unethical and possibly illegal. Many of these right-wing critics, like Laura Loomer, predicated their objections on Qatar’s relationship with the militant group Hamas. Senior members of Hamas have long been based in the Qatari capital of Doha, though Qatar reportedly agreed to expel Hamas officials last November. Loomer criticized Trump’s potential jet deal on Sunday and Monday by writing a series of anti-Qatar posts on X. “This is really going to be such a stain on the admin if this is true,” she wrote. “And I say that as someone who would take a bullet for Trump. I’m so disappointed.” Fox News host Mark Levin shared her post and wrote, “Ditto.” For now, most of the conservative criticism has been leveled in social media spaces, not on the TV shows Trump is known to enjoy. The jet controversy has been very lightly covered on Fox News, the country’s dominant right-wing TV channel. The main story on Fox’s website about the matter on Monday was titled, “Trump rips ABC reporter for asking about accepting luxury jet from Qatar,” as if ABC was the problem. But “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade did ask White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt about the matter on Monday morning. Leavitt positioned it as a government-to-government transaction that would be done “in full compliance with the law,” sidestepping reports that Trump’s presidential library will take possession of the plane shortly before he leaves office, ensuring he can still use it. The “Fox & Friends” host then asked Leavitt, “Do you worry that if they give us something like this, they want something in return?” The press secretary said no because Trump “only works with the interest of the American public in mind.” Kilmeade then moved on and asked Leavitt about Mother’s Day. Other conservative media figures seem less inclined to move on. “This is not a gift” from Qatar, it’s “a bribe,” Batya Ungar-Sargon, who has championed the MAGA movement on CNN and other channels, told Newsmax on Monday afternoon. National Review contributing editor Andrew McCarthy wrote Monday that accepting the plane is “indefensible,” arguing that “the president and his flacks again demonstrate that they don’t grasp the concepts of constitutional duty and conflicts of interest.” He cited the “Trump family crypto venture” as another example. Talk radio host Erick Erickson, who, like the National Review, has often criticized Trump from a conservative perspective, didn’t mince his condemnation of the potential jet gift. On his Monday show, Erickson argued that Qatar is not a US ally (though the US government disagrees) and pointed out that Attorney General Pam Bondi, who reportedly signed off on the legality of the gift, was previously a paid lobbyist for Qatar. “I think she’s opening Donald Trump up to legal trouble later,” Erickson said. On X later in the day, Erickson observed that “even a lot of Trump supporters were not thrilled about the Qatar plane gift” when the initial reports surfaced on Sunday. “Now,” he wrote, suggesting bots are flooding X with pro-Trump propaganda, “a lot of small accounts I’ve never interacted with before are flooding my timeline insisting it is a great idea.”