People who reject gifts aren’t always stupid. Just ask the Trojans. Oh, wait.
Maybe President Donald Trump never read "The Odyssey." But even if no Qataris or their technology are hiding inside a $400 million luxury jet that country might gift to the U.S., plain ethical reasons should stop our president from being in the business of accepting extravagant gifts from foreign nations.
The president pulls the far left off sides plenty, not only because of his policies but with his disregard for the social orthodoxies that had become strictures of rightspeak in American society.
The Dallas Morning News editorial board agree sometimes with his policies, and sometimes we disagree. On the whole, we agree with his confrontation of the left’s hegemony over universities, media and other areas of culture.
But all of that is a waste if Trump’s repeated flaunting of basic ethical standards undermines his presidency, endangers American security and weakens our standing in the world.
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“I mean, I could be a stupid person and say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’ But it was — I thought it was a great gesture,” Trump said, testily, in response to questions about the plane.
Either it doesn’t occur to Trump that expensive gifts from foreign powers aren’t just gifts or he’s indifferent to the basic ethics that any professional person would operate under in order to avoid a conflict of interest.
This is part and parcel of a common theme of how he uses his office to further his personal interests. Recall that before he was re-elected, Trump launched the meme coin $TRUMP. We feel confident in saying that most of the investments in that coin aren’t related to its long-term market value. Many $TRUMP investors appear to represent foreign interests.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that a fund backed by Abu Dhabi “would be making a $2 billion business deal using the Trump firm’s digital coins.”
Trump, meanwhile, has paused enforcement of what’s known as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a law intended to prevent U.S. firms from bribing foreign governments. The apparent logic behind this decision was that everyone else is engaging in corruption so it’s unfair if American companies can’t, too.
Lowering the norms of American standards will do lasting damage to our standing as a country that President Ronald Reagan called a shining city upon a hill. The United States is the place people long to reach because we try to operate according to a rule of law that reflects an ethic of fairness, transparency and honesty.
The Qatari plane is a winged symbol of indifference to those standards. Greeks may not be hiding inside, but bringing it past our gates makes us all weaker.
