President Donald Trump snapped at an ABC News reporter Monday as she confronted him on accepting a luxury gift from the royal family of Qatar to the U.S. government.
The president is set to accept a Boeing 747-8 jet, which he will use as Air Force One, and later be transferred to his presidential library at the end of his second term, ABC News first reported. The reporter asked why Trump decided not to leave the jet behind given that he is receiving backlash for accepting the gift.
“What do you say to people who say that you got a luxury jet as a personal gift to you? Why not leave it behind?” the reporter asked.
“You’re ABC fake news, right? Only ABC, well, a few of you would. Let me tell you, you should be embarrassed asking that question. They’re giving us a free jet. I could say no, no, no. Don’t give us [the jet], I want to pay you $1 billion or $400 million or whatever it is. Or I could say thank you very much … When they give you a putt, you pick it up, you walk to the next hole and you say ‘thank you very much.’”
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The president clarified that the jet is a gift to the Department of Defense, and not him personally.
“It’s a gift to the Department of Defense, and you should know better because you’ve been embarrassed enough and so has your network,” Trump continued. “Your network is a disaster. ABC is a disaster.”
Trump criticized Democrats in a Sunday Truth Social post for wanting the U.S. government to pay for the jet, calling the gift a “very public and transparent transaction.”
“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,” Trump wrote.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told NBC News that all gifts given by a foreign government are “always accepted in full compliance with all applicable laws.”
The gift was expected to be announced during Trump’s upcoming visit to Qatar, though a White House official said the jet will not be presented during the trip, according to ABC News.
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