Planes, Parades, and Automobiles

A look at President Trump's priorities.

Note: This column has nothing to do with automobiles, but I liked the title too much to change it. My sincere apologies to car enthusiasts.

Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Constitution makes pretty clear what the Founding Fathers thought of government officials receiving bribes.

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

It’s easy to see the logic behind such language. Newly separated from English rule, the Framers feared a world where the mighty British Empire could flex its might upon young America, offering lavish titles and riches to any elected official looking to make a quick buck off their office. Democracy itself was kind of a new thing, hence why the Clause uses terms like King and Prince.

The Founders weren’t exactly being extra cautious either. Canada passed a similar law, the Nickel Resolution in 1919, barring Canadians from accepting titles from foreign actors. It’s pretty telling that Canada, a country whose Head of State also presides over fourteen other realms, thought it was a bad idea to let other countries mess around with their business.

Alexander Hamilton, that guy from the musical, described the crux of the issue in The Federalist Papers: No. 73. Writing, “He can, of course, have no pecuniary inducement to renounce or desert the independence intended for him by the Constitution,” Hamilton states that the whole point of tossing the gift question to Congress was to remove any temptation to stray from one’s duties to the Constitution.

Trump, of course, doesn’t give a shit about the Constitution. When asked on Meet the Press if he had a duty to uphold the Constitution, Trump responded with a good old, “I don’t know.” It’s literally in the oath he took on January 20^th before he rambled for a few hours about his own greatness and released all the Jan. 6 rioters.

Trump’s decision to accept a 400 million dollar Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from Qatar has raised natural objections related to that old document called the Constitution. He claims it’s okay because Attorney General Pam Bondi, herself a former registered lobbyist for the Qatari government, signed off on it. The only problem is, it doesn’t really matter what Bondi has to say. The pesky Constitution clearly separated those powers from the Executive Branch.

It does look like a nice plane.

Trump claims the new jet will be used as Air Force One before ownership reverts to his Presidential Library upon completion of his term. Nobody believes that will ever happen. Overhauling Air Force One is a long, complicated, and expensive process, even putting aside the national security implications of using such a gift from a country that Trump himself labeled as a state sponsor of terrorism back in 2017. Not only does Congress need to approve Trump’s acceptance of the plane, but they’d also need to appropriate the hundreds of millions necessary to convert it into a functional Air Force One. If that process started tomorrow (and it won’t), the plane probably still wouldn’t be ready until Trump was about to leave office.

Foreign leaders exchange presents all the time, for the same reason you bring a bottle of wine or a poundcake to a dinner party. It’s what’s expected. It’s rude not to. Seinfeld had it right.

The Constitution doesn’t really care what’s polite. Presidents can receive lavish gifts from foreign dignitaries, but they can only keep them under very specific circumstances. All federal employees, including the president, must disclose gifts any foreign gifts worth more than $480, such as a jumbo jet. All officials must pay taxes on any gifts they decide to keep for themselves.

There is a whole office in charge of tracking this stuff. The Office of the Chief of Protocol handles the appraisal and safekeeping of foreign items, which are usually turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). They take this stuff seriously. A bottle of whiskey gifted to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by Japan in 2019, valued at $5800, was never recovered. In 2023, House Democrats noted that at least 117 foreign gifts accepted during the Trump administration were either missing or never reported.

Where does all this stuff go? The National Archive has plenty of warehouses for all these treasures. Gifts considered significant or interesting to specific administrations are often put on display in their Presidential Libraries, fifteen of which are run by NARA. Some of these libraries, such as the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford Presidential Libraries, have fun databases where you can search through their gifts. All Presidential Libraries are active research facilities where you can comb through all the records of previous administrations.

Trump seems to have his eyes on the Presidential Libraries as a loophole allowing him to keep his precious plane. Other libraries do it, why can’t he? NARA either runs, or jointly runs every Presidential Library from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush. While NARA works closely with the Obama Foundation in organizing an accessible digital archive, the physical location of the Barack Obama Presidential Center will be run by the Obama Foundation and the University of Chicago. Any gifts displayed in the Obama Presidential Center, scheduled to open next year, will only be on loan from NARA. Those gifts don’t suddenly belong to President Obama just because he’s got them on display in his Presidential Center.

We don’t know exactly who is going to run the Donald J. Trump Presidential Center. A website for Trump Presidential Library, aka his digital archives, not the physical location, was set up when he first left office in 2021, before anyone knew he’d be back. If I had to bet, I would highly doubt NARA will run the physical location. Trump famously ripped up documents and ate paper to avoid turning them over to NARA, alongside all those classified documents he stored in his bathroom down in Florida.

Maybe his Presidential Library will have classified documents near the toilet as well.

It is theoretically possible that Trump doesn’t actually want to fly around in the plane. Qatari Force One wouldn’t be the only jet inside a presidential library. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library has had SAM 27000, a Boeing VC-137 that served as Air Force One from 1972 to 2001, on display since 2005. The biggest difference between that plane and Trump’s new toy is that SAM 27000 stayed in service for more than ten years after Reagan’s term. The Reagan Library and its Air Force One are run by NARA.

Trump does really hate the Reagan Library, though. He doesn’t like it when other people have nicer stuff than him. It seems unlikely that Trump would let a 400 million plane sit idly in a museum just a few years after it was “gifted” to him. Clearly Donald wants an upgrade in his personal plane over the old Trump Force One Boeing 757-200 that’s been in service since 2011, back when his political activity was mostly confined to questioning President Obama’s birth certificate.

Air Force One Pavilion at the Reagan Library

You may be wondering where I’m going with all of this. Trump wants the plane transferred to his Presidential Library because it seems fairly innocuous. Presidential Libraries handle foreign gifts all the time. But those Libraries don’t own the gifts. They don’t play with their toys. Trump is betting that his base doesn’t read enough to know, or care, about any of this, optics be damned.

Which is where we turn our attention to Trump’s big birthday bash, his planned military parade. The U.S. Army is planning a military parade for its 250^th anniversary on June 14^th, which coincidentally happens to be Trump’s 79^th birthday. At least 150 vehicles and 6,000 military personnel are expected to be in Washington, D.C. for the event. The cost of the event would likely exceed 100 million when travel, housing, security, and other logistics are taken into consideration.

Trump has been infatuated with the idea of a military parade since early in his first term back in 2017. Images of tanks rolling down civilian streets naturally evoke authoritarian regimes such as Russia or North Korea. We can actually likely blame French President Emmanuel Macron for planting the parade idea in Donald’s peanut-sized brain. Then newly elected himself, Macron invited Trump to France for their annual Bastille Day parade to ingratiate himself to the new American president at a time when Trump had all of Europe rattled by his anti-NATO antics (sound familiar?). Trump reportedly raved for weeks about festivities, demanding one for himself.

Russia’s military parade from Friday.

Why didn’t he get it? We can mostly credit former Secretary of Defense James Mattis. A retired four-star general, Mattis and Trump didn’t see eye to eye on much. Mattis likes NATO, Trump does not. Mattis dedicated his life to service, Trump to himself.

Trump likely picked James Mattis because one of his military nicknames is “Mad Dog.” General Mattis dislikes the name immensely, preferring one of his other honorary titles, the “Warrior Monk.” Trump repeated the Mad Dog name constantly throughout the early days of his first administration, before he realized that Mattis disagreed with most of his idiotic world views.

Mattis was diplomatic back in 2018 regarding the parade. A 2019 book, after Mattis had left the Pentagon over objections to the withdrawal of troops from Syria, suggested that Mattis would rather swallow acid than organize Trump’s parade. Considering the objections from the Pentagon, not to mention plenty of Republican senators back when more than a handful were brave enough to stand up to him, it’s easy to see why Trump’s fabled parade remained a fantasy until there were nothing but sycophants left in the room.

The optics are obviously horrible. DOGE was responsible for major VA cuts. No money for vets, but at least a hundred million for a military parade/birthday party?

Trump sometimes cares about optics. He certainly didn’t want Elon to get a Pentagon China briefing. Trouble is, he’s really wanted this parade for a long time. Mattis isn’t around anymore. His replacement came from Fox & Friends Weekend and built a makeup studio in the Pentagon. I can’t really picture General Mattis walking around Sephora.

Trump’s dislike of NARA is well known. Trump fired the Archivist of the United States back in February. Whatever adults in the room are quickly being purged, which sounds like something a nation that holds gauche military parades would do. If all goes according to his plan, the next time a NARA official tries to get its stuff back from Mar-a-Lago, he’ll be too busy in the clouds, flying in his fancy new plane.

**For those disappointed in the lack of automobiles, here’s a picture of a hideous Cybertruck I saw last weekend.**