Trump Once Called Qatar a ‘Fundraiser for Terror'. Now He’s Flying Their $400M Jet

In the gilded glow of Doha’s palaces, Donald Trump stood transformed, a gold medal from Qatar’s emir draped around his neck, his motorcade shadowed by Arabian stallions.

What made it so strange was the stunning reversal from his past.

Indeed, in 2016, during a fiery October 19 presidential debate, Trump lambasted Qatar’s influence, accusing Hillary Clinton of tainting her integrity by accepting donations from the emirate for the Clinton Foundation.

“It’s a criminal enterprise,” he thundered. “Saudi Arabia giving $25 million, Qatar, all of these countries. You talk about women and women’s rights? So these are people that push gays off buildings. These are people that kill women and treat women horribly. And yet you take their money.”

Qatar, he implied, was a moral stain, its wealth a tool to compromise American values.

Yet, in 2025, a $400 million Boeing 747-8, offered by Qatar as a temporary Air Force One, has recast the emirate as a generous ally, revealing a relationship as tangled as the Gulf’s desert winds.

Facing criticism for accepting the luxury jet, Trump defended it,” insisting it would be “stupid” to reject a free plane. “I could be a stupid person and say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane,’” he told reporters.

On Truth Social, he doubled down: “The Boeing 747 is being given to the United States Air Force/Department of Defense, NOT TO ME! ... Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our country.”

In a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity, he tied the gesture to U.S. support for Qatar’s security, boasting, “We’re the United States of America and I believe we should have the most impressive plane.” The jet, he argued, would serve only during his term before joining his presidential library, following Ronald Reagan’s precedent, and save taxpayers from Boeing’s delayed, over-budget Air Force One program, potentially stalled until 2029.

Accepting a gift of such proportions from Qatar is troubling enough, but when you look at it in contrast to his 2016 stance, it's downright horrible.

The ethical qualms Trump had about Qatar in 2016? Gone. In their place, a pragmatic bargain. Even when Laura Loomer railed, “We cannot accept a $400 million ‘gift’ from jihadists in suits,” he shrugged.

Qatar’s metamorphosis from pariah to partner is also no accident. Reeling from a 2017–2021 blockade Trump once endorsed, when he declared Qatar “a funder of terrorism at a very high level,” the emirate has wielded soft power, Al Jazeera’s reach, $8 billion in upgrades to the U.S.’s Al-Udeid Air Base, and a mediator’s finesse, to secure its place.

Since 2012, at Washington’s urging, it has hosted Hamas’s political wing, brokering a fleeting 2023 ceasefire and a 2025 truce. It midwifed a 2020 U.S.-Taliban deal and U.S.-Iran prisoner swaps.

Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, praises Qatar’s “good, decent” leaders, echoing Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani’s quest to position his nation as a global dealmaker. Last week’s $243 billion in economic pacts and Trump’s pledge to 10,000 U.S. troops at Al-Udeid, “Our friendship has never been stronger ... We are going to protect you,” point to this seismic shift.

Not everyone is buying it though. The jet skirts constitutional boundaries, encouraging questions about Trump’s enrichment as his family’s Gulf ventures thrive. Congress remains silent. Qatar, balancing ties with Hamas and Western powers, has bought influence with opulence and necessity.

And the man who once decried foreign gifts now flies toward a gilded horizon, his principles as mutable as the desert’s dunes.