The founders didn’t foresee flight — but they knew a throne when they saw one. And to this George Washington scholar, Qatar’s $400 million jet gift to President Donald Trump reads like a punchline 250 years in the making.
Patriots fought against unchecked power, foreign entanglements, self-dealing and a ruling class blind to suffering. King George III and Parliament enriched themselves while ordinary people struggled. Palaces, ceremonial coaches, gilded thrones — these weren’t luxuries colonists enjoyed. They were obstacles to the earliest articulation of the American Dream.
If a prince gives you a jet and you take it, you owe him — even if you pretend you don’t.
In 1787, the Constitution’s framers gathered in a sweltering room in Philadelphia to design a government that wouldn’t collapse into monarchy or rot with foreign influence. They wrote the emoluments clause — Article I, Section 9 — which they saw as a firewall. It forbade federal officials from accepting gifts or titles from foreign states without congressional consent.
The logic was simple: no monarchies by stealth, no subtle realignments of loyalty. If a prince gives you a jet and you take it, you owe him — even if you pretend you don’t. In the founders’ eyes, it’s more than improper. It’s a betrayal. They didn’t fight a king just to watch a president accept a sky-high royal estate — or what Donald Trump calls a write-off.
The early republic was on high alert for anything that resembled aristocratic excess.
George Washington warned of “the insidious wiles of foreign influence,” calling it “one of the most baneful foes of republican government.” His successors remained hypersensitive: Thomas Jefferson returned a diamond-studded snuff box from the French ambassador on constitutional grounds and warned that the presidency could devolve into elective despotism. John Adams was publicly dragged for his taste in carriages, so his son, John Quincy Adams, surrendered horses and gilded gifts to the State Department rather than risk the appearance of impropriety.
This Congress — stacked with elected officials who swore to uphold the Constitution — hasn’t cried out, but the first one would have. When John Adams suggested calling the president “His Majesty, His Highness, the President of the United States of America, and Protector of Their Liberties,” Congress balked. Too monarchical. Too much. Too soon. They didn’t need to be reminded, as the 119th Congress so often does, that patriots waged a brutal eight-year war on domestic soil to get out from under a crown.
This week, NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked Trump whether, as president, he would uphold the Constitution. “I don’t know,” he replied. Fifty-three Republican senators refused to comment. Only Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul spoke up — on social media, naturally — reminding us that “Following the Constitution is not a suggestion.”
When referring to the document you swore to defend is treated as political bravery, we’re already in trouble. But doing nothing? That’s permission. This Congress isn’t just tolerating the jet. It’s underwriting the decay that made it possible.
What Trump is doing is anti-constitutional — not “unconstitutional,” a term we apply to so many of his official acts, as if they exist in a gray area of vague corruption that might be defensible. In reality, it violates the independence that was supposed to anchor the presidency. Thomas Jefferson didn’t fear a tyrant who seized power. He feared one who bought it with borrowed luxury. What Trump is doing is anti-constitutional — not ‘unconstitutional.’ And yet here we are. A $400 million soaring throne room from an authoritarian monarchy to a man who treats the Constitution like a nuisance. Trump’s plane joins a long list of foreign giveaways he — or rather, his friends, family and future presidential library — have accepted: Saudi cash funneled through his hotel lobbies, Chinese patents fast-tracked for Ivanka, a $2 billion investment from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund to Jared Kushner’s firm shortly after he left the White House, and so many more. It’s classical corruption: the decay of the body politic, the collapse of civic virtue, the slow confusion of public service with personal reward. The founders fought for more than a break from monarchy — 1776 was the beginning of the American Dream. Not golden thrones, but ordinary people having a chance to get ahead. Trump’s flying palace doesn’t just violate the Constitution. It mocks the idea entirely.
Alexis Coe
Alexis Coe is a presidential historian and a senior fellow at New America and the New York Times bestselling author of "Young Jack: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1957" (2025), "You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington" (2020) and "Alice+Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis" (2014). 
