Sheikh Attack: Qatar and Company Turn America Into a Grift Shop

Jeff Robbins on May 20, 2025

Donald Trump may not know due process from "101 Dalmatians," but he knows get-rich-quick schemes, and he wasted little time after taking office before making a beeline for the world's most reliable generator of cash for the Trump family: the Mideast. His trip to the Gulf last week could hardly have been a happier experience for our president: lavish, gushing receptions by an assortment of medieval kings and princes while -- apropos of gushing -- petrodollars didn't merely flow, but poured, into Trump family financial accounts.

We're talking billions. Whatever relative peanuts were paid to Hunter Biden by that Ukrainian oil company weren't even a bellhop tip compared to what Trump's family will net from this, "Thank you, ma'am" presidential visit by the greatest grifter ever.

There were the announcements of a Trump Tower in Dubai, a Trump International Hotel in Oman and two massive Trump Organization real estate developments in Saudi Arabia. There was the $2 billion investment in a Trump family-founded cryptocurrency venture by a state-backed company in Abu Dhabi. There was the golf resort in Qatar.

And speaking of Qatar, there was the headline-grabbing gift -- since when is there something wrong with a little token of friendship? -- of a $400 million luxury jet headed straight to Trump's presidential foundation, where Trump will be able to use it in perpetuity once he leaves office, should that ever occur.

Apart from purchasing an American president, Qatar is known for two things.

First is its crucial political and financial backing of Hamas, which has kept the terrorist organization in power in Gaza but cost ordinary Gazans dearly. And Qatar has more in common with the Ivy League than one might think; on Oct. 7, 2023, when Israeli medics were still trying to locate the body parts of Israelis blown to pieces by the several thousand Hamas gunmen who massacred kids at a dance festival, Qatar issued a statement holding "Israel alone responsible" for Hamas' slaughter of innocents.

Second is Qatar's repression of its tiny citizenry. There is hardly an element of crude authoritarianism that the Emirate does not feature, which may endear Trump to it as much as the free airliner. In Qatar, criticism of the Emir is prohibited. The government is empowered to censor and ban objectionable reporting, to close media outlets and confiscate their assets and, even better, to jail journalists for up to five years for publishing "false news." In short, Qatar is a dictator's Nirvana.

The con artist who sold Americans the line that there was a "Biden Crime Family" headed by "Crooked Joe" waved aside what even toddlers know is a jaw-droppingly gross conflict of interest. "I could be a stupid person and say we don't want a free plane, but this helps us out," said Trump. And by "us" he meant "me." The equivalent of $400 million cash payment in an envelope to a sitting president was, he said, "an act of good faith."

That's one way of putting it.

Besides, no less an honest broker than ethicist Pam Bondi, Trump's attorney general, said the gift from Qatar to Trump was A-OK. And she should know, because in 2019 she was a registered lobbyist under the Foreign Agents Registration Act for a lobbying firm paid by Qatar to influence Congress on ... human trafficking issues.

One can only imagine.

"I am very proud of the work that I did," Bondi told the Senate Judiciary Committee about her lobbying for Qatar, which paid $115,000 a month. "It was a short time, and I wish that it had been longer, for Qatar."

Yes. At $115,000 a month, one does believe that she wished it had been longer.

Say this for Qatar: It knows how to spread its massive wealth around. The Emirate, closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, has poured billions into American educational campuses since Sept. 11, 2001, for the purpose of promoting distinctly anti-Israel narratives there. It's worked. Democrats who now howl about Qatar's largesse to Trump have been oh-so-silent about that.

"I can't be bought," former Rep. Barney Frank once quipped about the ethos in Washington, D.C., "but I sure as hell can be rented." Thanks to Qatar and friends, there's a whole lot for rent right about now.

Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.