Bad optics

 "Nothing about getting Air Force One from a foreign government feels right.  It may be legal but I wouldn't do it.  Air Force One should be American through and through.  It shouldn't pass through foreign hands and it shouldn't be a gift from a king.  Don't do it."

If they make me start my day by quoting Ari Fucking Fleischer, I can't be responsible for what follows.  

By any measure Qatar is Trump's kind of place.  It's ruled by obscenely rich people and their obscenely rich royal family whose interest in renewable energy is nonexistent.  It abolished slavery only in 1952 and replaced it with something called kafala or sponsorship, which is just as bad.  Kafala allows Qataris to "hire" desperately poor people from all over the Middle East and as far away as Nepal, hold their passports and force them to work for little money in horrific conditions, and if they die, they die.  With chattel slavery the owners have a financial stake in keeping slaves alive and reasonably healthy.  Historical parallels abound, most recently the United States.  People submit to kafala because the money they send home keeps their families alive.  Needless to say, sexual exploitation is often part of the "sponsorship."

Qatar has learned that most things are for sale, such as the 2022 World Cup.  Hardly a football power, the kingdom made FIFA an offer it didn't want to refuse.  The country's image was polished apart from a few fans who resented not being able to buy even beer -- Islamic, you know.  Nevertheless they bought tickets and endured the desert heat.  Footie!

The kingdom has quietly observed the Trump kleptocracy for several months and realized that this presidency's sticker price was well within its means.  In advance of Trump's first visit this week it announced the "loan" of a $400 million jet from the Qatari Ministry of Defense as soon as it can be retrofitted to meet his standards of Byzantine splendor (Early Palm Beach Tacky).  Boeing is building two planes to serve as Air Force One and promises the first by 2027, but that's not soon enough and it will almost certainly lack chandeliers.  

Fleischer is not the only protester.  Adam Schiff remembered that business in the Constitution about "gifts, emoluments, offices or titles from foreign governments without the consent of Congress," but it's like the oath to uphold or habeas corpus -- does it really matter anymore?  Laura Loomer was near despair:  "We cannot accept a $400 million 'gift' from jihadists in suits.  The Qataris fund the same Iranian proxies in Hamas and Hezbollah who have murdered US Service Members.  The same proxies that have worked with the Mexican cartels to get jihadists across our border.  This is really going to be such a stain on the admin if this is true...I'm so disappointed."  And she'd take a bullet for him; she says so twice.  Speak up, Laura, you see him more often than Melania.

Trump doesn't care.   Opulence!  Free!

Did a sketchy country offer Joe Biden a big shiny plane?  No way!  Loser.  And it's not because Merrick Garland never lobbied for Qatar like Pam Bondi, two completely separate things.  Ooh, I wonder if it will have a putting green and an omelet bar.

As the grumbling continued, however, he insisted that declining the bribe gift would make him a "stupid person" and that the plane was really a gift to the Defense Department (having earlier said it would be donated to the "Trump Library," a catchall phrase for Grifty Grandpa's Goody Bag).  Maybe one of those home entertainment things with the big speakers so he can watch his favorite musical Les Miserables on a loop.  

He prepared for his trip to the Middle East by listening intently to intelligence briefings -- I'm sorry, I needed a laugh.  No, it was TV as usual and his new favorite topic, They Chose an American Pope Because I Won the Catholic Vote:

With all that on his mind he has time to worry about ABC's ratings.  Multitasking, how does he do it?  Another theory of the conclave, of course, is that they chose Prevost because he is diametrically opposed to Trump on everything from immigration to gun control.  And MAGA's response reminds us that they absolutely hate George Floyd.  Why?  He wasn't a politician or a community leader.  All he did was get murdered by a cop in front of witnesses.  I'm sure he would have preferred to live.  All Archbishop Prevost did was invite people to pray for him, which was his job.  Trumpers are so crammed with rage, I don't know how they move their bowels.

Trump must be running low on lickspittle loyalists.  He had to replace K$H Patel as director of ATF when it turned out he was barely doing his FBI job.  He appointed his lawyer Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General who sanctioned the American Bar Association for lack of subservience, to be Acting Librarian of Congress too, though there is some dispute about this because the job is supposed to be filled by Congress itself.  Marco Rubio is currently Secretary of State, acting national security adviser (following the Mike Waltz screwup), national archivist and lord high everything else.  Even rotating the incompetents -- Waltz is UN ambassador today -- is leaving them shorthanded.  

Now that he's no longer a TV fraud Mehmet Oz has stopped dyeing his hair, but he's just as dangerous in charge of Medicare and Medicaid.  He says it's "your patriotic duty to be as healthy as you can" because 70% of money is spent on chronic illness "and we're not getting our money's worth."  So pull up your socks and get better, damn it, especially you Medicare geezers.  He might want to discuss this with his boss Roadkill Bob, who took his grandchildren swimming in Rock Creek Park, which is both illegal and insane.  The National Park Service has posted even dogs from swimming due to high bacterial levels, the product of Washington's aging sewer system.  It certainly sounds like actionable child endangerment.  Roadkill gave an illuminating interview to Brett Baier in which he seemed to suggest that measles is an excellent way of eliminating the unfit ("Only very, very sick kids should die from measles"), which is uncomfortably close to Aktion T-4.  Then he complained that people who refuse vaccines because of his lies about fetal tissue are "treated like lepers."  Leprosy should be coming back with a vengeance on his watch, so we'll soon see.

Sending someone a fish wrapped in trousers is not really "a Sicilian message" --  it was invented for The Godfather -- but sending a judge unwanted pizzas is real and serious.  Federal judges in seven states, many hearing lawsuits that challenge Trump crimes, have received hundreds of pizzas at their homes, an unsubtle way of letting them know that MAGA knows where they and their families live.  After the murder of Judge Esther Salas's son in 2020, the attack on Paul Pelosi and the arson at the governor's mansion in Harrisburg, no one is taking this lightly, except perhaps the Bondi Department.

And in meddlesome priest news, the migration service of the Episcopal Church refused a directive from the federal government to re-settle the 59 white South African "refugees" who arrived today and were greeted by a White House delegation.  The presiding bishop, Sean Rowe, cited the church's "commitment to racial justice and reconciliation."  Yes, DEI, and protected by the First Amendment.  Your move, racists.