The Democratic National Committee (DNC) trolled President Donald Trump by flying a banner that read “Welcome to Qatar-a-Lago” over Mar-a-Lago Wednesday.
The DNC put together the stunt after Trump confirmed that he would be accepting a $400 million luxury jet—dubbed the “palace in the sky”—from the Qatari government.
The DNC’s plane circled over his Florida estate in the early afternoon, shortly after Trump touched down in Doha, Saudi Arabia.
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Prior to the plane taking off, DNC Chair Ken Martin said that Trump is “using the presidency to personally enrich himself while he bankrupts working families.”
“His corruption is a slap in the face to the millions of Americans who are struggling to get by and put food on the table,” Martin added.
Martin accused Trump of not hesitating to “sell out America’s working families to the highest bidder,” whether that be to “billionaires at home or governments abroad.”
He added: “Today, the DNC is highlighting what foreign autocracies around the world already know: Trump has no loyalty to the American people, national security, or the Constitution – his only allegiance is to his bank account and his billionaire buddies.”
The aerial exhibition didn’t go down well with Trump’s biggest supporters. Trump supporter Steven Drew, who was visiting Palm Beach from North Carolina, tore into the stunt’s organizers in an interview with Reuters.
“Whoever’s flying that plane can kiss my ass,” he said.
Trump wants to use the massive Boeing 747-8 as his new Air Force One.
Trump’s current plane, which he’s dubbed “Trump Force One,” is a 757 jet from the 90s that he bought in 2011. It was previously used by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
Sen. Brian Schatz from Hawaii took to the House floor Tuesday to condemn the administration’s actions, noting how “this is the most blatant, obvious, ridiculous, gross corruption that I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”
“It really should go without saying, but no president should be accepting a $400 million gift from a foreign country,” he said. “It is gross, it is reckless, it is corrupt, and the outrage and the condemnation, especially on the Republican side, should be universal.”
He added how “you don’t have to be all fancy-pants to understand how ridiculous it is that a foreign government is going to say, ‘Hey, we’ll take care of Air Force One for you.’”
The president called out the “Crooked Democrats” for viewing the gift as a potential national security threat and evidence of potential corruption, calling them “World Class Losers” in a Truth Social post Sunday.
He wrote: “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. Anybody can do that! The Dems are World Class Losers!!! MAGA.”
Yet many of Trump’s loyal supporters and members of his inner circle have also expressed concern over the gift.
Sen. Ted Cruz worried about the jet being used as the new Air Force One, noting how it could pose “significant espionage and surveillance problems.”
“I’m not a fan of Qatar,” Cruz told CNBC’s Squawk Box Tuesday. “I think they have a really disturbing pattern of funding theocratic lunatics who want to murder us, funding Hamas and Hezbollah, and that’s a real problem.”
