DONALD TRUMP, AN ELITIST TAKING HANDOUTS

Most of the time, Donald Trump seems good at messaging, and at creating bamboozlements that distract us from news stories that are bad for him. I generally resist the argument that he's doing X specifically to distract us from Y -- I think his strategy is to throw everything at the wall all the time, on the assumption that whatever lands poorly for him will be forgotten as soon as he generates the next cycle of people-pleasing (or at least base-pleasing) headlines.

But the plane from Qatar seems to be a messaging disaster for him. He can't seem to drive it from the headlines, and it buried the story of his China tariff deal, which wasn't much of a win but could have been spun as one. Stock markets rallied yesterday, today he has a decent inflation number -- yet he still can't get past the damn plane story.

I think Trump misread the way poor and middle-class voters respond to his wealth. Many Americans enjoy rich people's wealth vicariously. Many actually believe they'll get wealthy themselves someday. Trump has successfully sold millions of Americans on an idea connected to this: I'm rich because I'm a business genius. Now I'm applying my business genius on your behalf.

That's more or less the message he tried to convey on Truth Social when the first reports appeared:

But the Trump of his voters' fantasies shouldn't need a gift from the Middle East. Trump's voters think he's so brilliant that he should be able to get a new Air Force One built ahead of schedule and under budget. Why get one from foreigners? Why should America -- Trump's America! -- need a handout like this from overseas?

And the foreigners who gave us this handout are Muslims who don't wear Western clothes! Islamophobia isn't as visible in America as it was two decades ago -- we've swept the unpopular Iraq and Afghanistan wars under the rug (Trump has helped make them almost as unpopular among Republicans as they've been among Democrats), and we don't talk about the "war on terror" very much anymore -- but people on the right still regard Muslims with deep hostility, and everyone thinks the Middle East's petro-states are sleazy and suspect.

Much of Trump's corruption -- the crypto cash grab, for instance -- seems too complicated for most Americans to follow. But the plane is different. It's a big, expensive gift. Why would these rich Muslims in funny clothes give Trump something for nothing? They must be expecting something in return.

Trump misread this because he now thinks the entire country is on board with everything about his presidency, including the corruption. This is Trump as an out-of-touch elitist -- which is ironic, because our entire political culture believes that Democrats are the out-of-touch elitists and Trump is a true Man of the People leading a party rooted in common American soil. At the same time, he also looks as if he's accepting charity in our name -- which is in character for Trump, who's spent much of his life scrounging for financing. All in all, it's a bad look. I hope the story stays in the news for weeks.