Trump Melts Down Over Damning Report on Qatar Giving Him a Private Jet

Donald Trump is trying desperately to defend receiving a $400 million luxury jet as a gift from Qatar.

In an angry post on Truth Social Sunday night, Trump claimed that he’d done nothing wrong by agreeing to take a Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the Qatari royal family to replace Air Force One.

“So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane,” Trump wrote.

“Anybody can do that! The Dems are World Class Losers!!!” he added.

Sources familiar with the plans told ABC News that Trump’s supposedly “very public and transparent transaction” was expected to be announced this week. One source told NBC News that talks about gifting Trump that specific plane had been in the works for “quite some time,” and that when the formal offer materialized, the president “happily accepted.”

The jet will be gifted from Qatar’s Defense Ministry to the U.S. Department of Defense, where it will be outfitted with security and communications equipment to military standard. The plane, which will then be worth an estimated $400 million, will be transferred to Trump’s Presidential Library Foundation in 2029, sources told ABC News.

Since news of the gift was first reported, Democrats have been quick to criticize Trump’s brazen corruption. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote in a post on X that the gift was “not just bribery, it’s premium foreign influence with extra legroom.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi, who previously worked as a lobbyist to the government of Qatar, provided a legal memo on the legality of the gift to White House Counsel David Warrington, according to ABC News. The two determined that the gift was “legally permissible,” and that it did not violate laws against bribery or the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause, which forbids U.S. government officials accepting gifts “from any King, Prince or foreign State.”

It’s not clear that the deal has actually gone through. Ali Al-Ansari, Qatar’s media attaché to the U.S., said in a statement to Politico that the transfer was “currently under consideration.”

Trump is scheduled to visit Qatar this week. His family business intends to build a Trump-branded golf course in the Gulf nation, as part of a $5.5 billion development project there.

The White House is “actively looking” at ending habeas corpus as it continues its massive deportation crusade, according to deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

Habeas corpus requires authorities to justify an individual’s confinement.

“Well, the Constitution is clear—and that of course is the supreme law of the land—that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller told reporters at the White House Friday.

The Trump administration has leaned on the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify its immigration crackdown while ignoring immigrants’ due process rights, sometimes defying court orders in the process. Donald Trump has defended the infractions by claiming that immigration into the country is tantamount to an “invasion,” and has described the current era as a “time of war.”

But continuing that rhetoric flies in the face of direction by the Supreme Court, which ruled immigrants must be allowed to challenge their deportations under the centuries-old act via habeas corpus.

Judges in several cases have so far ruled against the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law, deciding that the executive branch was illegally leveraging the Alien Enemies Act to deport residents it perceived to be threats.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez ruled that Tren de Aragua’s presence did not constitute an “invasion,” as Trump had claimed.

“The Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful,” Rodriguez decided. “[Administration officials] do not possess the lawful authority under the AEA, and based on the Proclamation, to detain Venezuelan aliens, transfer them within the United States, or remove them from the country.”

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Friday after gaining entry to Delaney Hall, which ICE opened as a detention facility this week against the city’s wishes.

Baraka and other city officials repeatedly tried to visit the facility this week to serve a representative of its operating company, Geo Group, with summonses over code violations, including refusing to grant access to the facility and failing to have an evacuation plan in place. They were denied entry.

On Friday, three Democratic members of Congress from New Jersey—Representatives Rob Menendez, Bonnie Watson Coleman, and LaMonica McIver—were admitted to tour the facility, and brought Baraka with them. After the mayor gained entry past the gate, the representatives tried to include Baraka in conversations. At least one of them was shoved by agents, and Baraka was subsequently arrested.

The acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey and Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Alina Habba, announced the arrest on X, saying that Baraka “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon.”

Baraka is currently running in the Democratic primary for governor of New Jersey, and in April, the city of Newark filed a lawsuit against the opening of Delaney Hall, seeking to allow the facility to be inspected. Currently, a federal judge is considering whether to block the opening of the facility, and it’s unclear whether anyone is being held there right now.

Coleman said that she and her colleagues, as well as Baraka, were assaulted by guards.

“What we experienced was the weaponization, is the abuse of power.… They know who we are … they manhandled us and arrested the mayor,” Coleman said, adding that “if they can treat members of Congress like that, imagine how they treat people on the streets.”

It’s the first arrest of a sitting U.S. mayor by the Trump administration over immigration. Last month, the FBI arrested a judge in Milwaukee for allegedly “obstructing an immigration operation.”

This story has been updated.

The Trump administration remains delusionally committed to its abuse of executive power, doubling down on threats to Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk after a federal judge ordered her release on Friday.

In March, Öztürk, a Turkish Ph.D. student on a Fulbright scholarship, was disappeared from the Boston area by masked, plainclothes ICE agents after she wrote an op-ed that called for Tufts to acknowledge the ongoing genocide in Palestine and to divest from Israel. Her release—after six weeks in ICE detention—is a direct rebuke of the Trump administration’s actions, as was the release of Palestinian student activist Mohsen Mahdawi last month.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt was tasked with answering for the Trump administration’s legal loss.

“Does the administration have any response to the news today that a federal judge has ordered the immediate release of Rümeysa Öztürk from detention?” a reporter asked Leavitt on Friday afternoon. “Particularly his comments that the government submitted no evidence other than an op-ed that Öztürk wrote last year?”

Leavitt defaulted to one of her go-to answers: It’s the judges who are crazy.

“I think our overall feeling—we’ve made quite clear lower level judges should not be dictating the foreign policy of the United States, and we absolutely believe that the president and the Department of Homeland Security are well within their legal rights to deport illegal immigrants,” Leavitt replied. “As for visa revocations, the secretary of state has the right to do that as well. It is a privilege not a right to come to this country on a visa.”

This is one of many examples of the Trump administration only considering the courts valid when they agree with the rulings they make. Green card holder Mahmoud Khalil, who missed the birth of his child while being detained in Louisiana, and Georgetown student Badar Khan Suri, who is now held in a Texas detention center, are still in custody.

Senate Republicans are defending their Democratic colleague, John Fetterman, after a series of reports called into question his mental fitness to remain in office.

Senators Tom Cotton, Chuck Grassley, and fellow Pennsylvanian Dave McCormick all defended Fetterman in a series of posts on X Thursday, rallying behind the Democrat who has alienated his staff and his constituents by hawkishly supporting Israel in its massacre of Gazans and taking a softer line with President Trump.

Democratic Representative Ritchie Torres, who has also alienated much of the left with his stance on Israel, accused Fetterman’s critics of attacking him for his “unapologetic pro-Israel politics.”

Reports from New York magazine and The Philadelphia Inquirer over the past week exposed how Fetterman frequently loses his temper and patience and has become disengaged from his duties as a senator, missing meetings and votes. Fetterman also reportedly avoids colleagues and spends many hours alone in his Washington, D.C., office. New York reported that Fetterman even misses regular medical check-ups, drives erratically, and has diminished spatial awareness.

Despite these worrying reports, Republicans may be trying to rally around Fetterman because they smell blood in the water. Politico reports that a recent internal poll shows Fetterman losing support from Democratic voters in his own home area of Pittsburgh. While Fetterman has defended Trump in the past few months, he still is a relatively reliable Democratic vote in the Senate, and the GOP could see an opportunity to replace him in 2028 with one of their own.

Republicans could also be trying to convince Fetterman not to resign from the Senate. The New York profile mentioned tension between Fetterman and his wife, Gisele, a formerly undocumented immigrant from Brazil, over his turn toward Trump and his vehement support for Israel—and it’s conceivable that Fetterman chooses to resign, citing health or family reasons.

A replacement senator appointed by Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro would result in a more solid Democratic vote and hurt Republican chances to retake the Pennsylvania Senate seat in 2028. Whatever the reason for the sudden show of support, Republicans probably have an ulterior motive.