United States President Donald Trump confirmed rumors on May 11 that he was about to acquire a new plane to serve as Air Force One. He posted on social media: “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!”

To replace the aging current Air Force One with a modern gift free of charge sounds like a good deal for the U.S. government. There is one major issue, however. That is who is supplying it: Qatar.

There are huge questions with Qatar’s gift to President Trump being a conflict of interest. As Trump mentioned, the gift is “temporary.” That is because his presidential library gets control of the plane after his term ends. In other words, Qatar is gifting President Trump a private jet gratis. The plane, worth approximately $400 million, is so lavish some nickname it a “flying palace.”

Such gifts have to be approved by Congress. They may very well veto such a deal because of how much this blatantly looks like a conflict of interest.

But should the president accept something that looks like a bribe by a foreign government? The truth is, Qatar has been greasing the pockets of the Trump administration for years now. Evidence suggests this is letting Qatar have an outsized influence in President Trump’s foreign policy—to the detriment of an important ally.

Background

Qatar is located on a small promontory of the Arabian Peninsula jutting out into the Persian Gulf. Like many of its neighbors, Qatar’s economy is almost entirely based on its export of fossil fuels. It is the world’s third-largest exporter of both natural gas and liquid natural gas, behind the United States and Russia. This has given Qatari leader Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani a lot of money to burn. Doha, Qatar’s capital, is filled with architectural marvels imitating Venice and other European cities. It hosted, among other high-profile events, the most recent World Cup.

But Qatar’s main fields of investment are much more serious than shiny buildings and sporting events.

Qatar is also one of the world’s biggest sponsors of Islamic terrorism. This includes Hamas. Analyst Didier Billion told France24 that Qatar’s “financial support of $30 million per month is proven and public. These payments are justified to pay civil servants in Gaza, and we know perfectly well that the latter are members of Hamas. Doha’s money is therefore the equivalent of direct support for this organization which has held the Palestinian enclave with an iron fist for many years.”

Qatar not only sponsors Hamas financially, it also provides diplomatic cover. Hamas leaders Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh used Qatar as their home base: Doha was literally Hamas’s capital.

Qatar has also sponsored al Qaeda for decades, even to the point of bankrolling Osama bin Laden in the 1990s. It also hosted an office of the Afghan Taliban for more than 10 years. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, also lives in Qatar. Just as most Shiite Islamist groups can trace their funding back to Iran, many of the world’s most notorious Sunni Islamist groups can trace their funding to Qatar.

Inroads to D.C.

One would think that such a country would be under massive sanctions. Not so. The United States not only ignores Qatar’s sponsorship of terror, it goes out of its way to actively protect Qatar.

Qatar has hosted U.S. military bases for years. In 2022, President Joe Biden designated Qatar a “major non-nato ally.” This gives the nation special privileges, like the ability to purchase uranium ammunition, options to purchase military equipment at a discount, opportunities for joint research projects and more. The Walsh School of Foreign Services, the unofficial school for the U.S. diplomatic corps, has one of its two international campuses in Doha.

Why the close links with a country with such sordid connections as Qatar? The U.S. government has never given a clear answer. But Qatar’s massive funding schemes probably have a lot to do with it.

The Qatari government spends vast amounts of money in American institutions. An investigation by the Washington Free Beacon revealed that Qatar spent over $5.6 billion between 2007 and 2024 on 61 American educational institutions, including Harvard University, Yale University, Cornell University and Standford University. The terms of the arrangements between Qatar and these schools are often not made public.

“What does a country this tiny want with so much influence?” Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of Treasury, asked the Washington Free Beacon. He said it is to “ensure the acceptability of terrorist groups like Hamas and the Taliban. It would also like the West to turn a blind eye to the regime’s funding, safe haven or normalization of other extremist groups ….”

Qatar’s relationship with President Trump is more complex. When Trump entered the White House in 2017, Qatar was in a quagmire. Other Arab countries, most notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, opposed Qatar’s terror program. The first Trump administration had strong links with these countries, which blockaded Qatar’s airspace, sea space and land borders. The Trump administration gave them America’s blessing.

Sheikh Tamim’s solution to this was, as with everything else, to throw money at the problem. In this case, he invested in American lobbyists to influence the White House.

Qatar started a massive lobbying campaign to reach Mr. Trump’s inner circle. In 2017, Qatar almost quadrupled its money spent on lobbying to $16.3 million. By 2018, it was directly employing 23 lobbying firms. Two prominent New York lobbyists recruited by Qatar told the Wall Street Journal they researched a list of 250 “Trump influencers” whom Qatar had targeted specifically.

The influence campaign appeared to have worked. In April 2018, President Trump welcomed Sheikh Tamim to Washington, where he called his visitor “a valued partner and longtime friend.” That year, a congressional bill that would have officially labeled Qatar a state sponsor of terrorism—which it most certainly is—stalled. In 2021, the Trump administration brokered an end to Saudi Arabia’s blockade.

What does all this have to do with today?

October 7

For years, the two major sponsors of Hamas have been Iran and Qatar. Iran is openly working to destroy Israel through Hamas, Hezbollah and other proxies. “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” are basically government policy statements for the Iranian regime.

Qatar, conversely, has cultivated an image as a moderate state open to dialogue with every side. It is one of the few countries Israel has permitted to openly send money to Hamas in Gaza. Because of this, Qatar is arguably an even more important sponsor for Hamas than Iran is.

Without the millions of dollars Qatar has provided Hamas every month, the mass torture, rape and butcher of Israeli families on Oct. 7, 2023, probably would never have happened. Without political and diplomatic support from the Qataris, the blight on humanity that is Hamas probably would have been eradicated long ago.

“All Qatar had to do was to summon the Hamas leaders in Doha and give them an ultimatum to release all the hostages immediately or face deportation from the Gulf state,” Khaled Abu Toameh wrote for the Gatestone Institute. “It is hard to see how the Hamas leaders would have been able to say no to their major political and financial patrons and backers. There was a lot the Biden administration could have done to pressure Qatar. … The Biden administration, however, chose to ignore Qatar’s role in supporting Islamist terrorism. The Qataris were never under the slightest pressure.”

What about the Trump administration?

In Qatar’s Pocket?

Steven Witkoff is the most prominent example of a conflict of interest. A real estate mogul and longtime associate of the Trump family, he had no diplomatic experience before President Trump named him special envoy to the Middle East. But he did have experience working with Qatar.

In fact, the Qataris bailed him out of a failing business. When a co-owner of the Park Lane Hotel in New York was indicted and fled to China, Witkoff was in financial trouble—until the Qatar Investment Authority bought out him and his other partners for $623 million.

Before pressuring Israel to accept the ceasefire deal that benefited Hamas, Witkoff was in Qatar preparing the deal. In 2024, he was a guest at the Qatar Economic Forum. Right before the ceasefire got approved in January of this year, Witkoff said in a Fox News interview that Qatar was “really doing God’s work.”

And Witkoff is far from being the only member of the Trump team that has dealings with Qatar.

President Trump nominated Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel. In 2017, a Qatari lobbyist paid Huckabee $50,000 as an honorarium for a visit to the country. Huckabee later called Qatar “surprisingly beautiful, modern and hospitable.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi did more than just accept gifts from Qatar. She formerly worked as a Qatari lobbyist, earning $115,000 a month. In her nomination documents for Senate confirmation, she didn’t mention this and refused to answer questions why. When asked how she felt about receiving money from a country that also funds Hamas, Bondi responded, “I am very proud of the work that I did. It was a short time, and I wish that it had been longer, for Qatar.”

fbi Director Kash Patel also did undisclosed work for Qatar. Qatar’s embassy in Washington paid Patel for “consulting services” until November 2024. Neither the sum Qatar paid nor what the exact services were are publicly known, and Patel is tight-lipped about the affair. Analyst Mitchell Bard, writing for Jewish News Syndicate, speculated that Patel’s services may have even violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin also received “compensation exceeding $5,000” from Sheikh Sultan bin Jassim, a member of the Qatari royal family. Zeldin has not explained what he did to receive his compensation.

These examples of Qatari influence in the Trump administration are extremely concerning. The same organization that bankrolls Hamas, al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and others bankrolled senior officials in the Trump administration.

Has this impacted America’s foreign policy?

Saving Hamas

For most of the war with Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to battle pressure from President Biden to limit his ground invasion of Gaza, to forego an invasion against Hezbollah in Lebanon, to declare a ceasefire that would let Hamas survive and remain in control of Gaza.

It looked like Netanyahu was holding out for a Trump victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. The first Trump administration was very kind to Israel, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and negotiating the Abraham Accords peace agreements between Israel and four Arab states. Netanyahu probably hoped Trump would show Israel the same favor in a second term and let him finish the job of eliminating Hamas.

Instead, before he was even inaugurated, Mr. Trump sent Witkoff to pressure Netanyahu to accept Biden’s ceasefire. Witkoff went to Doha first to coordinate with the Qataris. Then he made an impromptu visit to Jerusalem on the Sabbath, even though Mr. Netanyahu asked to postpone the meeting until after the Sabbath concluded at sunset. Witkoff pressured Israel to accept a deal that required Israel to stop destroying Hamas’s power in Gaza and to release more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including terrorists guilty of horrific murders. Israel announced the deal on January 16.

“Israel had made tremendous progress eliminating the threat from Hamas,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in the March Trumpet issue. “But with this deal, about everything Israel achieved in its war was quickly reversed! Israel was so close to victory—and now, suddenly, it has lost. It had nearly destroyed Hamas’s terrorists, and now, instead, it has emboldened them. … The reality is, with this deal, President Trump betrayed Israel.”

In November 2024, the Biden administration finally pressured Qatar to eject Hamas’s leadership. By this point, it was too little, too late: The damage to Israel had been done, much of Hamas’s leadership was already assassinated, and Biden’s term in office was about up. Hamas maintained an office in Doha but relocated its “capital” to Istanbul, Turkey.

Yet a few weeks later, aides for then President-elect Trump informed Qatar that Hamas could move back to Doha.

The Future

Events since January 16 have shown President Trump may be hardening his stance toward Hamas. But his administration’s links with Qatar remain.

Qatar sponsored Hamas well before, leading up to, during and after its demonic October 7 mass murders. It is unlikely to drop that support, especially when not even the U.S. will apply strong pressure. With so many high-level Trump administration officials connected to Qatari cash, it appears that the Doha-Washington hotline will stay active.

Based on Bible prophecy, Mr. Flurry has made many accurate forecasts regarding Mr. Trump’s political career. He prophesied Mr. Trump would regain the White House and in doing so expose the radical-leftist forces trying to destroy him and the United States. And he said Trump’s return would herald blessings for the American people.

This is because of a prophecy in 2 Kings 14:26-28, which refers to an Israelite king, Jeroboam ii, whom God sent to relieve Israel from “bitter affliction” and forces trying to “blot out the name of Israel from under heaven.” “Israel,” in this case, is a prophetic reference to the United States. Mr. Flurry has pointed to Donald Trump fulfilling this prophecy of Jeroboam. (To learn more, request your free copy of America Under Attack.)

2 Kings 14:24 summarizes the legacy of Jeroboam ii this way: “And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord: he departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat [an earlier king], who made Israel to sin.”

Anciently, Jeroboam the son of Nebat blasphemed God, opposed God’s plan for Jerusalem, and attacked the Jews (only one tribe of the greater people of Israel). The “modern Jeroboam” comes in the same spirit and attitude as both Jeroboam i and Jeroboam ii.

In the few months Mr. Trump has been in office, he has done a lot of good for America. He has ended the radical left’s stranglehold on American politics. He has exposed much corruption and is cleaning up America’s spending crisis. But as competent of a ruler President Trump may be domestically, his administration has an evil streak. God has used Trump to bring many blessings so far. But He cannot continue blessing a man who is letting someone who wants to destroy Israel, such as Sheikh Tamim, whisper foreign policy into his ear.

“What President Trump really needs is somebody to help him understand what is happening in the Middle East,” Mr. Flurry wrote in another article of the March issue. “And he must see in time what a catastrophe he has caused with this hostage deal.” If something doesn’t change with who is working on the government’s Middle East policy, Mr. Flurry writes, “Trump will be walking a dark path.”

Blessings

The most iconic four words of Donald Trump’s time in office are “Make America Great Again.” Joining league with countries like Qatar isn’t the way to achieve that goal. To extrapolate from Mr. Flurry, it leads down a “dark path.”

“Anyone who sincerely admires this country wants to see America made great again,” Mr. Flurry writes in his booklet Great Again. “The Bible has a lot to say about the state of America today. It explains the inspiring reason why this nation was so great in the first place. And why it has been so richly blessed.”

But Mr. Flurry continues, “The Bible also prophesies that these blessings would be removed in our day. America’s problems are spiritual—and solving them requires spiritual solutions.”

Until this is acknowledged, any resurgence America receives will be temporary. No man, President Trump included, can solve America’s problems without acknowledging this reality and turning to God. His administration’s foreign policy in cozying up to Qatar is case in point. But even as national curses come, God has a plan to make America great again. All prophecy—even that of a sinful Jeroboam—plays into that. Americans first have some lessons to learn before this happens. But once they do, God promises to take America—and the State of Israel and even the world—to heights they could never have dreamed of.

To learn more, request your free copy of Great Again.