Hillary Clinton, the former Democratic Party presidential nominee, faced an embarrassing fact check while attempting to criticize President Donald Trump over his trip to Qatar on Wednesday.
In a post on X, Clinton implied that Trump might be under blackmail from Qatar after the oil-rich Persian Gulf nation offered a luxury plane valued at $400 million as a gift to the United States. The Department of Defense is expected to modify the Boeing 747-8 luxury jet for use as Air Force One.
Democrats have attempted to claim the plane was offered to President Trump personally, which is not the case. “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! The Dems are World Class Losers!!!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Sunday.
Nevertheless, Democrats have tried to spin the story into a scandal, though with limited success. Clinton joined the outrage cycle by implying that Trump was being blackmailed. “No one gives someone a $400 million dollar jet for free without expecting anything in return. Be serious,” she wrote on the X platform. The post quickly went viral for all the wrong reasons, as internet users pointed out that the Clinton Foundation had once accepted a $1 million donation from Qatar while Hillary was serving as U.S. Secretary of State. The donation was accepted despite Clinton’s promise to allow the department to review new or significantly increased support from foreign governments, as reported by Reuters at the time.
Qatari officials pledged the $1 million donation in 2011 to commemorate the 65th birthday of former President Bill Clinton, Hillary’s husband. They sought to meet with the former U.S. president in person the following year to present the check, according to an email from a foundation official to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta. The email was part of the thousands of messages from Podesta’s account that were leaked by WikiLeaks during the final stretch of the 2016 presidential election.
Clinton’s post was quickly ridiculed online: