In the 2½ decades since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, America has become Islamized—largely thanks to one man. In this morning’s feature story, Jacob Boren gets into the details.

Receive a free news briefing in your inbox each weekday—the Trumpet Brief.

What is with this luxury plane Qatar is giving Trump? Thanks to oil, Qatar is rich. And it spends a lot of that cash underwriting Islamist violence. One of the world’s biggest state sponsors of terrorism, Qatar maintains financial and political ties to designated terrorist groups like Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda affiliates. It hosts Hamas leaders in Doha and has provided an estimated $1.8 billion to Hamas-run Gaza since 2007. It has also spent a lot on building relationships with people who are placed highly within the Trump administration. This plausibly explains why Qatari leaders seem to have such a hold over the Trump administration.

Now come reports the Qatari royal family will donate a $400 million “flying palace” super-luxury Boeing 747-8 for use as Air Force One. Reportedly, after Trump leaves office the plane would be owned by his presidential library foundation, enabling him to personally keep it. In a Truth Social post, President Trump praised the fact that it wouldn’t cost taxpayers anything.

This may be the only thing that the Chuck Schumer leftists and the hardcore MAGAites have ever agreed on: This is a bad look for Donald Trump.

Back in 2017, President Trump himself was calling Qatar a “funder of terrorism” with “radical ideology.” Now his administration is praising Qatar and relying on Qatar and cutting real estate deals. Last month, the Trump Organization secured its first luxury real estate deal in Qatar, planning a billion-dollar skyscraper in Dubai where apartments can be purchased with cryptocurrency. These arrangements coincide with Trump’s upcoming Middle East trip, including a visit to Qatar, aimed at landing security and investment deals.

President Trump’s peacemaking efforts, in the Middle East and beyond, have been compromised by a fundamental misapprehension of human nature. It looks like they may also be compromised by money.

If Qatar’s “palace in the sky” gift is Exhibit A, we might consider this Exhibit B:

Hamas’s “goodwill gesture” to President Trump: Edan Alexander, an Israeli-American soldier kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, is set to be released today. Hamas is calling it a “goodwill gesture to President Trump.” Qatar and Egypt mediated the talks. Alexander is due to first be flown to Qatar, where he will meet President Trump.

Remember, Qatar helped finance the October 7 attack. And what does Hamas expect to gain from Trump by offering this concession? Do we really think Hamas makes “goodwill gestures”?

The fact that the U.S. is conducting its own negotiations with Hamas to get the last American dual citizen released without it being part of a larger hostage deal is difficult for Israelis to take. It fits the pattern we have seen since Trump’s first deal with Hamas back in January. As Gerald Flurry wrote,

This deal has exposed Mr. Trump’s flaws in a way that none of us want to see. Something is dreadfully wrong here.

What Mr. Trump has done here is going to plague him for the rest of his tenure in office! Just watch and see if it doesn’t happen that way—unless he dramatically changes course.

The Obama and Biden administrations were disastrous for U.S.-Israel relations. This second Trump term seems little better. This gesture from Hamas makes Benjamin Netanyahu look ineffective and weak. For Israelis to see Trump receiving such a concession while their prime minister can’t retrieve any of his own hostages will hurt him politically. On top of that, Trump is visiting the Middle East and won’t even drop in on Netanyahu. Perhaps President Trump views Israel, or Netanyahu himself, as the obstacle to him being able to secure his reputation as a peacemaker. It is deeply troubling.

In a related story, America has removed its contingency for Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel as part of its nuclear program negotiations, our In Brief reports.

Why Cardinal Prevost picked “Pope Leo”: We continue to look for clues as to the direction the papacy of Pope Leo XIV will take. We got one on Saturday, when in a meeting with the College of Cardinals, the pope explained how he chose his name. “Leo” highlights Robert Prevost’s commitment to Catholic social teaching, particularly amid a revolution in artificial intelligence.

“There are different reasons” for choosing this name, he said, “but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. In our own day, the church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.”

The World Economic Forum warned that the world is on the verge of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and sought help and guidance from late Pope Francis. Now Pope Leo wants to take up Francis’s mantel as the “moral conscience” of a new world order where private businesses can no longer just do as they see fit but must submit to Catholic elites who manage the world’s wealth.

Revelation 18:1-3 prophesy that the “merchants of the earth” will weep bitterly when Rome falls, indicating that the Roman Catholic Church will indeed guide a new world economic system for a time. You can learn more about this in Andrew Miiller’s article “The Pope’s New World Order.”

IN OTHER NEWS

India and Pakistan deescalate: After four days of escalated conflict, India and Pakistan stepped away from the nuclear brink. On Saturday they agreed to a U.S.-brokered ceasefire. Pakistan is actually giving President Trump credit for the agreement. Unlike the peace talks with Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Hamas and elsewhere, in this case, you have two sides that actually want peace and who don’t want to die in a nuclear war.

U.S. and China deescalate: The temperature also came down on the trade war between the world’s two largest economies. The U.S. and China agreed today to slash punitive tariffs for a 90-day period, with the U.S. reducing tariffs on Chinese goods from 145 percent to 30 percent, and China cutting levies on American goods from 125 percent to 10 percent. At talks in Geneva by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, both sides committed to ongoing negotiations to address trade imbalances and non-tariff barriers, signaling a temporary truce in the escalating trade war.

Partners in trade: The U.S. and UK announced a new “trading zone” on Thursday, our In Brief reports, removing or reducing many of the tariffs President Trump had placed on the UK.