AMY GOODMAN: President Trump was greeted by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as he landed in Riyadh today on the first stop of his major trip of his second term. He’ll then head to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Trump is pushing for Saudi Arabia to invest over $1 trillion in the United States and sign new arms deals. Executives traveling on the trip include the world’s richest man and Trump adviser Elon Musk — also his brother — BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, Palantir’s Alex Karp and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Ahead of the trip, President Trump confirmed reports that the royal family of Qatar may soon give him a $400 million luxury 747 plane known as the “flying palace” to temporarily replace Air Force One. ABC News reports the plane may be the most valuable gift ever given to the United States from a foreign government. According to multiple press reports, the plane would be initially given to the Air Force, which will need to spend millions to refurbish it. The plane will later be donated to President Trump’s presidential library, meaning Trump could continue using the plane after he leaves office. On Monday, President Trump defended Qatar’s offer.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It’s not a gift to me. It’s a gift to the Department of Defense.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen. President Trump just said, Rob, “This is not a gift to me. This is a gift to the Air Force.” Your response?

ROBERT WEISSMAN: Yeah, it’s not a gift to the Air Force. It’s not a gift to the American people. It’s a very personal gift to Donald Trump, designed, as everyone can see, to buy influence and ongoing access with the president of the world’s most powerful nation. It is almost certainly the most corrupt deal in all of American history.

Part of the plan, as you mentioned, is that he’ll use it as Air Force One and then keep access to it after he leaves the presidency, which he is going to do at the end of this term, for his personal use. Never been anything like this before. It plays perfectly to Trump. It’s not just a large gift. It is, as you said, described as a “palace in the sky,” so plays into his love for the ornate, the opulent and the regal. And it is — to say it is unconstitutional is to understate the scale of this corruption.

AMY GOODMAN: Rob Weissman, if you can also talk about — I mean, it’s a $400 million so-called gift, but then the Air Force would have to pour in millions. Explain.

ROBERT WEISSMAN: Right. Well, this is made to be a palace in the sky, but it’s not made to be Air Force One. So, all of the national security devices and protections that have to be built into the plane would have to be built into this so-called gift. So it’s a huge waste of taxpayer assets. It’s not clear how much time Trump would be able to use it while in the presidency. Reports are it would take years to do that upgrade, and by the time it’s upgraded, it may be time to move on to the next president.

So, it is — for an administration that claims to care about efficiency, which is obviously a lie, this is yet another indication that that is just a nonsensical claim, a sop that they throw out there. It is the most wasteful and inefficient administration probably in American history. That this is a small piece of that is a tiny part of this problem. The core problem here is the core corruption that this embodies, and it is fundamental to understanding what this Trump administration is all about.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s a number of Republicans who are raising serious questions about this. You have Senator Hawley, who’s saying, “Why can’t this big, beautiful plane be from the United States?” In fact, Trump worked a deal to get two Boeing planes — what’s happened to them? — as Air Force One.

ROBERT WEISSMAN: Right. So, this actually is a Boeing plane, but it’s owned by Qatar, which would then gift it to him. You’re right that lots of Republicans — even they — are saying, “Hey, this is a step too far.” Right-wing commentators like Laura Loomer and Ben Shapiro are denouncing it, which gives you some indication of how outrageous it is. It is a direct violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which says the president cannot accept gifts from foreign nations.

And it is also the case, as you said, that there already are more Boeings on the way. They are slow. Boeing is a company that is not doing well now and is messing this up, apparently, as it’s messing up so much more. But it does take a long time to build Air Force One, in part because everyone who’s even making a part for the plane is required to undergo a national security background. In the same way, it’ll take a long time to upgrade this plane if, in fact, the gift is made to Donald Trump.

AMY GOODMAN: Qatar, dubbed indispensable for U.S. military operations, recently extended its defense cooperation agreement with Washington, yet signed a beachside villa resort deal with the Trump Organization. Can you talk about the significance of this deal, Rob?

ROBERT WEISSMAN: Everything about the trip that Trump is on right now should be understood as about personal grift first, and secondarily about potential U.S. interests. So, Trump is accepting this plane. He and his family business are looking to make so-called investments in the UAE and Qatar. They’re not really investments. They’re just licensing deals where they’re paid to let their name be plastered on golf courses and towers. He also has his cryptocurrency businesses and just accepted a deal that’s going to purchase $2 billion of his crypto for no reason at all, except to gift some portion of that to Trump. So there’s a lot of money flowing in to this presidency personally.

The first Trump administration was the most corrupt in American history by far. What’s going on now is literally orders of magnitude worse. You know, in the first administration, we were upset about the Trump hotel and people in foreign governments taking out hotel rooms they didn’t need at $800 or $1,200 a night. Now they’re making deals for $400 million a pop. It is quite something. And it is both a degradation of the presidency, but, more fundamentally, it’s a corruption of the office, meaning foreign policy, or policy in general, is for sale in this administration. If you want to get an outcome, find a way to get some money directly to the president and his family, and you’ve got a good chance to get what you want.

AMY GOODMAN: And very quickly, on the executive order he just signed before his trip to require drug companies to decrease their prices within 30 days, which sounds like a very good thing, make them so they’re not more expensive drugs than in other parts of world. You’re contending he will just pick up the prices, and this will benefit drug companies in the rest of the industrialized world.

ROBERT WEISSMAN: Right. It’s a good tagline. It would be a good policy if it were his policy — as you said, Bernie Sanders supports it, Public Citizen supports it — the idea that the U.S. shouldn’t pay more for drugs than other rich countries around the world. Donald Trump could push that policy forward by supporting legislation in Congress, which would pass in no time if he said he supported it, or even using his own existing tools. He’s not doing that. He just signed an executive order which said, “Please don’t make us pay more,” which no drug company is going to follow.

But what he also said is the rest of the world should pay more, to raise their prices to be more like the United States. So the practical impact of what he’s going to do is going to be to raise prices overseas. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress aren’t trying to lower prices. They’re trying to extend monopoly protections to make the prices paid by Medicare more expensive. So the drug companies are going to come out pretty well from this deal. Even though they’re pretty scared of what might happen, what seems to actually be happening is going to benefit their bottom line, hurt the rest of us.

AMY GOODMAN: Rob Weissman, I want to thank you for being with us, co-president of Public Citizen.

Coming up, New York Times reporter Eric Lipton on how President Trump’s two oldest sons, Don and Eric, are profiting from their father’s presidency, negotiating overseas deals worth billions of dollars. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Exit Only” by Deerhoof, performing in our Democracy Now! studio.