What did Donald Trump do today?

He couldn't get away from the subject of his $400M "gift" plane.

Trump is on a three-country tour of the Middle East this week, visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. His family's wealth is deeply enmeshed with the ruling monarchies of all three of these countries. For example, Saudi Arabia gave billions of dollars to Trump's son-in-law's private equity firm even though their own analysis showed that it was probably a bad investment. (Once Trump was re-elected, other Gulf states, including Qatar, ponied up money for it as well.) And the UAE has, in recent weeks, been throwing money at several Trump business ventures, including real estate and cryptocurrencies.

In return, Trump has made a number of policy and diplomatic concessions to the rulers of these Gulf states, including ending sanctions on Syria and lavishly praising the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. MBS, as he is known, orchestrated the murder of a Saudi-American journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, during Trump's first term. The brutal murder of Khashoggi was international news for months, forcing Trump—who was financially entangled with the Saudi royal family then, too—to pretend he didn't know that American intelligence agencies had definitively linked the murder to MBS. 

Today, in his remarks about MBS, Trump gushed, "I like him a lot. I like him too much. That's why we give so much, you know? Too much. I like you too much."

But the main symbol of Trump's willingness to sell access to him and to the levers of American power for this week remains the $400M ultra-luxury jet that the Qatari ruling family wants to gift him. 

Trump has insisted it's not really "for" him because it would be donated to his presidential library after he left office, but only he or his heirs would ever have control over its use, making it his property in all but the most technical sense. He's insisted that it's "free," although inspecting and retrofitting it to the military standards necessary for a plane carrying the president will cost far more than the plane is worth in its current form.

Trump has always been intensely emotional on the subject of the planes he uses almost every week to shuttle between his various resorts, particularly with respect to the age of the current Air Force One. Its airframe is, as Trump bitterly complains about, some 40 years old. But it is, in every conceivable sense, a far "newer" plane than most Americans will ever see. Trump spent a great deal of time during his first term trying unsuccessfully to finagle a new plane on a faster schedule—or at least a new paint scheme. 

Pressed yet again on the matter today, Trump resorted to one of the few subjects where he has bona fide knowledge: golf. 

There was an old golfer named Sam Snead, did ever hear of him? He was a great golfer, he won 82 tournaments, and he had a motto: When they give you a putt, you pick up your ball, say "thank you very much" and walk to the next hole. A lot of people are stupid. They say "no, no, I insist on putting it." Then they putt it, they miss it. And their partner gets angry at them. You know what, remember that. Sam Snead. When they give you a putt, you pick it up, you walk to the next hole and say "thank you very much."

Trump is referring to the golf custom known as a "gimme," where in friendly no-stakes games, very short putts are treated as having been made without the player having to actually take a stroke or sink the putt. Of course, in the actual sport, which takes its rules so seriously that many infractions result in disqualification even if there was no ill intent on the part of the player, this is completely forbidden.

The United States Constitution, which are the rules of the game for Trump as president, explicitly forbids the president or any other officer to receive any "present" from any "king, prince, or foreign state" without explicit approval from Congress. 

Incidentally, for a man whose cognitive function is regularly called into question, Trump's recollection of Snead's record is accurate: he did, in fact, win exactly 82 PGA tournaments. However, in an interview on board the present Air Force One today, Trump couldn't recall the name or title of the person trying to give him the new plane.

Why does this matter?

• Open, naked corruption is still corruption.
  

• Nobody who becomes emotionally distraught because one of the most advanced, luxurious planes in the world simply isn't good enough is fit to serve as president.
  

• No matter how much a president may like kings, the President of the United States is not a king.