The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 16 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
The scandal around President Trump’s $400 million luxury jet just won’t go away. The Atlantic reports that Trump is privately telling his advisers it’s “humiliating” for a president to fly around in an outdated jet, and he’s even mused about keeping the jet after he leaves the White House. All that makes this whole story worse on multiple levels. Meanwhile, MAGA figures are increasingly breaking with Trump on this. And even some congressional Republicans are tentatively criticizing Trump for it as well, which is a true rarity. All this got us thinking that this story is actually a lot more serious and consequential than it first appears. Today we’re talking about all this with Russell Berman, a staff writer at The Atlantic who co-wrote that report. Russell, thanks for coming on.
Russell Berman: Great to be with you.
Sargent: So you and Jonathan Lemire report that Trump has told aides and advisers that it’s “humiliating” for the American president to fly in an outdated plane, and that foreign leaders will laugh at him if he shows up in such a plane. One outside adviser tells you guys that he’s mused about keeping the jet after his presidency. Russell, it sounds like Trump is privately angry over this whole thing. Why should he fly in an antique plane? Maybe he doesn’t understand why it’s a scandal? What does your reporting indicate along these lines about his mood and mindset on all this?
Berman: Yeah, the sources that talked to my colleague, Jonathan Lemire, certainly indicate that he would be—he is angry. And he’s been publicly angry. When a reporter asked him about this, he said it was “stupid” to ask about the idea. To him, the idea that you would essentially look a gift plane in the mouth and not accept this $400 million gift from a foreign government is absurd. And to everybody else, the idea that you would accept this gift from a foreign government is absurd. He’s also firing off, as he often does, his Truth Social posts in the middle of the night, which indicates that he’s angry about this. And part of it is that, as you indicated, this is a rare issue where Republicans on Capitol Hill have dared to criticize or question the president. And they think that this could be—to borrow another idiom—not a Trojan horse but a Trojan plane.
Sargent: You mentioned Republicans starting to speak out. Senator Roger Wicker said this would be “like the United States moving into the Qatari embassy.” And Senator Ted Cruz said, “I have concerns,” adding that it poses significant espionage and surveillance problems. Can you talk at a little bit more length about why it’s such a major security issue?
Berman: Right. Well, again, the question is: Why would the government of Qatar do this out of the generosity of its heart? Or does it want something? And even if it’s just about whether it wants something from the U.S., that’s a big enough concern. But what if there’s some subterfuge going on? This is the most important airplane in the U.S. and certainly in the world—arguably in the world. And so I think the concerns that Republicans have raised ... Rather than talk about corruption, which is what first comes to everybody’s mind—that President Trump likes to do his corruption out in the open—Republicans have pointed to that to suggest that it’s not corruption to be taking a gift, which could be considered an emolument in violation of the Constitution. So instead of talking about this as a potentially corrupt act, they have talked about it in terms of the security concerns. And so it’s, I think, safer political ground for them to talk about the security concerns than to say out now that the president of our own party is accepting a bribe essentially.
Sargent: That is fascinating. The Republican criticism also points to something else I want to bring up. Democrats are saying they want the whole transaction scrutinized by Congress, with Chuck Schumer saying he’ll place a hold on Trump nominees until that happens. Republicans aren’t going to let that happen—congressional scrutiny—are they? But that seems to be a problem for them because it’s so glaringly corrupt that it’s hard to make disappear. And the story will continue if and when Trump continues to go through with it and the challenges associated with it get aired out a little more. So how do Republicans handle that as it drags out? How can they hold off the congressional scrutiny while also appearing concerned about it and all that?
Berman: Right. Well, the challenge for them is that this appears to be the epitome of the need of why you would have an oversight branch, or the legislative branch conduct oversight over the executive branch. And of course, when there’s been a Democratic president, Republicans are all too eager to invoke the solemn responsibility that the legislative branch has to conduct oversight. We saw that obviously with Hunter Biden. We saw that before with Hillary Clinton—and really with the Clintons—and Bill Clinton and on down the line. And yes, while Republicans have been critical or questioning of this, they’ve stopped far short of saying that they’re actually going to investigate it or conduct oversight or do anything to try to stop it.
And it was amusing to see Speaker Mike Johnson at his weekly press conference. One, he tried to draw this distinction between what he characterized, I think very questionably, as the secretive dealings of what the Republicans call the “Biden crime family” with what Trump does, which is more transparent in that he does it out in the open—and therefore, because you don’t have the secrecy attached to it, it might seem to the average voter OK. So Johnson said, “Whatever Trump is doing is out in the open, they’re not trying to conceal anything.”
Then he also said, I have a big enough job to do as the speaker of the House. But of course, your job as speaker of the House is partially to conduct oversight over the executive branch, whether or not the executive branch is run by a member of your own party. And he made little effort to disguise the fact that Republican or Republican-controlled Congress is really unlikely to investigate a Republican president no matter what the issue is. So when a reporter put this to him directly, he said, “Congress has an oversight responsibility, but I think, so far as I know the ethics are all being followed.” And of course, that is not the standard that he would follow if Joe Biden were president—or Kamala Harris or Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. They wouldn’t say, Well, so far as I know, they’re following the letter in the spirit of the law. They would say, We’re going to look into it and we’re going to see if they’re following the letter in the spirit of the law. But they don’t seem to have any intention of doing that, at least right now. If pressure is brought to bear—by Democrats potentially but more notably by Republicans—then perhaps that would change.
Sargent: Sure looks as if Republicans are going to have a tough time holding this off because, as you point out, the argument is so preposterous. The idea that the fact that he’s doing it out in the open somehow absolves him of corruption seems pretty weak because (a) we don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes in his discussions between him and Qatar and (b) it’s becoming an argument against scrutinizing the whole thing even more deeply, which would reveal more. That just doesn’t make any sense on its face, does it?
Berman: No, but honestly that’s been his secret sauce: taking advantage of especially the media’s preference for reporting what happens behind closed doors as if it is worse than what happens out in the open. And whether intentionally or not, he’s recognized that—and therefore he just names what is usually unmentionable in the past. He says the quiet thing out loud as they say. And by doing so, it seems—at least to his Republican allies—that, well, if he’s talking about it and if he’s public about it, then there can’t be anything wrong with it. But that’s not how it works, right? It doesn’t matter whether ... If you announce that you are robbing a bank, it doesn’t make it any less illegal than if you go into the bank without announcing it beforehand.
Sargent: And this is clearly unconstitutional on its face. It’s a violation of the emoluments clause. And by the way, Congress is the body who the president’s supposed to go to in a situation like this to begin with. That’s what the emoluments clause says. It says you can’t take a gift like this unless it’s approved by Congress.
Berman: Right, but we saw in his first term that there was very little accountability for when he did this—arguably less egregious, but still highly questionable ways [like] the use of his hotel, the promotion of his businesses, basically directing anybody who had interests before the U.S. government to stay at his various properties and hold golf tournaments there and all the rest. And that’s only, of course, the tip of the iceberg. The fact that there was little accountability—certainly when Republicans controlled Congress and then even when Democrats controlled Congress and they impeached him twice over different issues and he was not convicted—then, of course ... As we’ve seen across a range of areas, he has acted with impunity in his second term, knowing that he is unlikely to be stopped.
Sargent: Well, I want to talk about MAGA opposition to this, which is really striking in a bit of a different way. You quote MAGA influencer Laura Loomer calling this “a stain on the administration” and another media influencer, Mark Levin, agreeing with her. Josh Hawley, who’s a bit more in the MAGA mold than some other Republicans says, “It would be better if Air Force One were a big, beautiful jet made in the United States of America.” There is a deep tension here because this whole scandal clashes so obviously with Trump slogans like “America first” and “drain the swamp,” doesn’t it?
Berman: No, that’s right. And this has put Republicans in a very familiar, awkward position of defending moves that they would clearly denounce were they made by Democratic presidents. So I think it’s been interesting because you have seen more questioning and criticism by the people that you mentioned. Some of these people are the people that defend him down the line, no matter what he does.
Now, of course, they are, as I indicated earlier, stopping well short of vowing to do anything about it—but the mere fact that they are not singing from the same page as the White House on this is certainly noteworthy and could be an indication that ... Again, Trump is always in search of that line. Is there a line with him where he can’t cross? To quote the president from his first campaign where he said, I could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes, is there anything that he could do that would prompt Republicans in Congress to stand up to him? And they aren’t quite standing up to him yet on this, but they are certainly closer to standing up to him than they have been on many other issues.
Sargent: Do you think this goes anywhere? What happens now? Does Trump eventually end up dropping this? Is there a component of MAGA that doesn’t want him to drop it? How does this all play out?
Berman: The challenge with Trump is that we’ll probably be talking about something else that is arguably outrageous next week—that Democrats will have to respond to, that Republicans will be questioned about. Maybe the focus next week is on whether the Republicans can pass this “big, beautiful bill” that Trump wants. Maybe it will be something else. And so the challenge with any of these Trump so-called scandals is that there are so many and nobody remembers them. We might hear about this again in a few months when the paperwork is being filed or submitted—if there is any paperwork to be submitted about this. So that’s the big question: whether we’re still talking about this in another week or two.
Sargent: Well, this is the thing. It seems like this story is inevitably going to be talked about again later, because there will be more shoes to drop. He’s going to have to say at some point that he actually is going through with this; we don’t know for sure whether he will. Then there will be a focus on, as you mentioned earlier, the security implications and the costs and the logistical problems associated with it. That brings this all back up again, doesn’t it? It’s not an easy story to make disappear.
Berman: Right, because if the president gets his way, eventually this airplane will be used as Air Force One. I think, again, using the past as a guide, it is easy to see the president quietly dropping this, right? And again, us not hearing much about it because he has been persuaded by his advisers that this would all be just way too complicated and not worth the fight. And maybe he will move on to some other interest. It’s similar to [him] saying that the U.S. is going to take over Gaza and make it into some luxury resort. And everybody is like, What? Really? And with what troops? It seems like he still wants to do that—but again, this is also the kind of thing that maybe doesn’t go anywhere. So maybe this doesn’t go anywhere, and we don’t hear about it again.
Sargent: Just to wrap this up, you guys cited a great quote from a former Air Force colonel. I want to read it, “Those of us who served in the military couldn’t accept a cup of coffee and a donut at a contractor’s site because of the appearance of impropriety. Now Trump is taking a 747 airplane from the government of Qatar for his personal use. Grift and corruption run amok.” That really captures it. There’s something about this story that, for a lot of people, neatly encapsulates Trump’s deep contempt for the very idea of public service and the obligations that come with it. Can you talk a little bit about that? You encountered that in your reporting, and you talked to others who have served the country before and felt the same way. What did you discover?
Berman: Right. As you said, this has always been the issue with Trump. When you’re talking about corruption or alleged corruption, it’s that what he is doing is on such a grand scale. And the laws and the rules that are actually on the book for public servants, for federal employees, for congressional staffers about accepting gifts or even taking free food at an event are so tight. They are so restrictive. There’s this huge gap between what your person making $80 or $100 or whatever thousand dollars working for the government is allowed to do and what the president of the U.S. appears to be getting away with.
And that’s where the danger is for him, because a lot of these people are nominally in his base. If you’re talking about members of the military, for example, or really, people in the federal government, right? We talk a lot about federal employees and how they are scattered throughout the country. They are not all Democrats and they are not all progressive. Many of them are Trump supporters or would-be Trump supporters. That’s where you see this huge disconnect. And yet, because there’s so much else out there, it doesn’t seem at the end of the day to always stick to him. And that’s how he essentially can get away with it.
Sargent: There’s something so simple about this that really captures self-dealing, and self-dealing is something people really, really hate. This is not a hard story to grasp; it captures that perfectly. Russell Berman, thanks for talking to us, man. It was great to talk to you.
Berman: Thanks for having me.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.
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