Trump mocked last night Democratic backlash to his administration’s plan to accept a Boeing super luxury jet, estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
“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 on Truth Social, in a post that goes on to call the party “world class losers.”
Democrats roundly criticized reports that Trump was planning to accept the gift, arguing it violates a provision of the Constitution that bars federal officials from accepting gifts from foreign governments without Congressional consent.
Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., called for an investigation into the gift on Sunday, describing it as a “flying grift” that is the “most valuable gift ever conferred on a President by a foreign government.”
“Rather than enforcing ethics, the Attorney General has affixed the Department of Justice’s seal of approval to a transaction that flagrantly violates both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause,” Torres wrote in a letter to the head of the Government Accountability Office, the acting Inspector General of the Defense Department and the acting director of the Office of Government Ethics.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Sunday that “any gift given by a foreign government is always accepted in full compliance with all applicable laws.”
