President Taking Jet as Gift from Country
that Abbott Prodded Texas A&M to Leave
Capitol Inside
May 12, 2025
Governor Greg Abbott pushed behind the scenes for the shuttering of the prestigious Texas A&M University satellite campus in Qatar based on unsubstantiated claims on antisemitism and the Aggies sharing nuclear energy and weapons development research with the government there.
The governor sought to keep his fingerprints off an abrupt decision by the Texas A&M University System board to phase out the branch in Qatar by 2028 without public discussion before a vote at a meeting early last year.
Abbott and his Republican allies in the Texas Legislature have all remained mum, however, on President Donald Trump's plans to travel to Qatar next week to accept a gift from the Qatar government in the form of a luxury jetliner that will serve as Air Force One.
While the early Christmas present from the oil-rich country in the Middle East has been portrayed as an unconstitutional ethics breach, Trump contended on Monday that the airplane would not be a gift to him personally. Trump said the jet would be a gift to the U.S. Department of Defense, which would donate it to his presidential library after he leaves office in 2029.
Trump called the Qatar jetliner a "great gesture" - adding that he "would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer” at a time when he's been unhappy with Boeing for the amount of time it's taking to build a new Air Force One.
ABC News broke the story on the gift - and Trump confirmed it in a Truth Social post on Sunday night.
"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," Trump said. "Anybody can do that! The Dems are World Class Losers!!! MAGA."
But Trump's plans to accept the gift has raised the specter that the Texas A&M system regents jumped the gun with the sudden slam-dunk vote to phase-out the Qatar campus based on allegations that the university president steadfastly denied before the board pulled the plug on it.
The board members who Abbott appointed voted to close the Qatar campus two months after
an organization called the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy
issued an investigative report that sought to tie the partner Qatar Foundation to Hamas terrorists. The foundation said it was caught completely off-guard by the board vote and blamed it on a propaganda campaign aimed at the regents.
After the regents declined to attempt to justify the decision to the public, Texas A&M system official Mike Reilly attributed the campus closure in Qatar to regional instability and shifting priorities. A&M system board member Bill Mahomes tried to justify the vote in a written statement.
“The Board has decided that the core mission of Texas A&M should be advanced primarily within Texas and the United States,” Mahomes said. “By the middle of the 21st century, the university will not necessarily need a campus infrastructure 8,000 miles away to support education and research collaborations.”
The ISGAP has accused Texas A&M University of allowing antisemitic activities on its home campus - an allegation that it's also lodged against Columbia University, Yale and Cornell - due to protests against violence by Israel against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The silence seems all the more deafening among Abbott and the Republicans in Austin on Air Force One as a gift from a country where the Texas governor didn't want A&M to operate any longer. Trump plans to meet next week with leaders in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar where he will accept the gift.
more to come ...
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