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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Trump Isn’t the First to Be Offered a Free Plane

Trump Isn’t the First to Be Offered a Free Plane

May 13, 2025 at 10:17 am ET By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Donald Trump isn’t the first president to be offered a free luxury jet worth hundreds of millions of dollars from the ruling family of Qatar,” the Daily Beast reports.

“In 2018, Sheikh Tamim Al Thani gifted Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan with a $500 million Boeing 747-8i, the same model on offer to Trump.”

” The gift—which at the time was described as the ‘largest and most expensive private jet in the world’—came after Turkey had backed Qatar in a year-long stand-off with other Arab states.”

Filed Under: Foreign Affairs

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Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.

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