Newsmax host defends Qatar’s gift to Trump then admits he’d ‘definitely criticize’ Biden for the same thing – UK Times

Newsmax host Rob Finnerty laid bare his hypocrisy on Tuesday night when he admitted that he’d “definitely criticize” Joe Biden if the Qatari royal family had gifted him a $400 million plane while president – right after passionately defending Donald Trump over the same thing.

Finnerty, a fervent MAGA sycophant who once proudly declared that Trump “is a dictator that the American people want,” opened his primetime Newsmax broadcast by parroting the president’s talking points when it came to justifying the lavish “palace in the sky.”

At the same time, he also took aim at Republicans who have come out against the president over accepting the gift, who have called it “skeevy” and “not America First” as it could run afoul of the Emoluments Clause.

“Once again, the current plane is almost 40 years old. To put that into perspective again, FDR, if he flew around on a 40-year-old plane at the start of the Second World War, he’d be cruising the friendly skies in the Wright Brothers glider from the very first flight in North Carolina,” the right-wing host declared. “It was 1903. Do the math. If Spirit or some other low-cost airline was offering really cheap tickets, but the catch was you had to fly on a 40-year-old plane, would you still book that flight? I doubt it. I wouldn’t.”

Finnerty went on to air the president’s recent comments in which he’s made the case for accepting the pricey gift. “Why should our military, and therefore our taxpayers, be forced to pay hundreds of millions of Dollars when they can get it for FREE from a country that wants to reward us for a job well done,” Trump declared on Truth Social this week. “Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our Country.”

After playing a clip of Trump saying the luxury jet was merely a “gesture of good faith” and a gift to the United States and not him personally, Finnerty then groused about allies of the president taking issue with the Qatari plane.

“And even Republicans are so jazzed up about this,” he noted before reading off a tweet from Ari Fleischer urging Trump not to “do it” because “Air Force One should be American through and through.” Additionally, Finnerty shrugged off what the Constitution says about US government officials receiving gifts from foreign governments, mostly because Democrats were citing it.

“My goodness, Democrats are suddenly so upset at even the hint of a quid pro quo because of something called the Emoluments Clause,” he exclaimed. “Public officials can’t accept gifts, but this plane would not be a gift to Donald Trump. It would be a gift to the United States.” Still, Finnerty acknowledged that if the shoe were on the other foot, he’d be up in arms over the royal family of an authoritarian regime giving a Democratic president a massive airliner.

“I will say, I would definitely criticize Joe Biden if he cut the exact same deal, and I would criticize Joe Biden if he was about to get a $400 million plane from Qatar to fly around for a couple of years, then donate to his presidential library that no one would go to. I would definitely criticize that move,” the Newsmax anchor admitted. “That would not go unnoticed by this show.”

According to Finnerty, though, the hypocrisy on his end was acceptable because of the former president’s son.

“But the left never seemed to care when Hunter Biden was appointed to the board of a Ukrainian energy company when his dad was vice president,” he concluded. “That didn’t seem to bother anyone on the left.”