Even some congressional Republicans who are reliable White House allies have expressed concerns about Donald Trump’s plan to accept a superluxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, for example, told CNN, “I think we ought to have a big, beautiful jet, but I’d like it to be made in the United States of America.”

But that’s not all he said.

“Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought,” Hawley added. “I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?”

In other words, the public need not worry about the president and the extraordinary number of corruption allegations he’s facing, for the simplest of reasons: Trump’s wealth, according to the senior senator from Missouri, makes him incorruptible.

The obvious problem with this argument is that the president has gone to almost comical lengths in recent memory to take advantage of a series of cash-grabs. Indeed, it’s been difficult to keep up with the ridiculous line of merchandising opportunities he’s pursued of late, including everything from Trump-branded watches to silver Trump commemorative coins, batches of digital trading cards to Trump-branded guitars, gold sneakers to Trump-endorsed Bibles.

And don’t get me started on the memecoin — which has been fairly characterized by a Democratic senator as “the most brazenly corrupt thing a president has ever done.”

Hawley rhetorically asked on CNN, “[W]hat does Donald Trump need more money for?” That’s a difficult question to answer with confidence, but it’s clear that Trump disagrees with the premise behind the senator’s point. It’s not as if the president started putting his name and likeness on all of these products as a hobby; he obviously did this to help put more money in his pocket.

But the less obvious problem with the GOP senator’s observation is more systemic: By Hawley’s reasoning, there’s no reason to be concerned about wealthy people in general and corruption, because those who are already rich can’t be bribed with offers of greater riches.

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This argument comes up far more often than it should.

For example, on Christmas Eve 2016, during Trump’s first presidential transition process, Larry Kudlow — two years before he became the director of Trump’s White House National Economic Council — wrote a memorable piece for National Review. Reflecting on the many wealthy people the then-president-elect was tapping for his incoming team, Kudlow wrote, “Why shouldn’t the president surround himself with successful people? Wealthy folks have no need to steal or engage in corruption.”

Soon after Trump took office, then-Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah — before he started working at Fox News — made the same argument to defend his indifference to assorted White House controversies. Asked about the president cashing in on his office, the then-House Oversight Committee chairman replied, “He’s already rich. He’s very rich. I don’t think that he ran for this office to line his pockets even more.”

The problem, whether Hawley and his like-minded allies appreciate this or not, is that a wide variety of wealthy people have been caught going to outrageous lengths to become even wealthier. As Jon Chait wrote for New York magazine several years ago, “[L]ook at Donald Trump himself, who was born into massive wealth, had no need to steal or engage in corruption, yet cheated hundreds of contractors of their money, defrauded thousands through scams, and frequently boasted of his success at corrupting politicians. Clearly, it is not impossible for already-wealthy people to steal and to engage in corruption.”

If the president’s allies are going to defend him against corruption allegations, they’ll have to do better than this.