Discussing the controversy over the new Air Force One gifted by Qatar, which Trump is reportedly expected to take to his presidential library after leaving office, Cooper recalled the president once had “very strong feelings about accepting foreign gifts.”
He played footage of Trump’s 2016 election debate with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton when he slammed her over the Clinton Foundation’s reception of donations from Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
The donations to the Clinton Foundation “certainly did not look good, and then-candidate Trump knew it,” Cooper noted, before playing a clip of Trump in 2015 boasting about the access he gained from his own donations to politicians.
Cooper noted how “at the time, that openness about buying future favors from elected officials was seen by many as refreshing honesty” but that “lately, though, when he‘s on the receiving end of a gift worth far in excess of any that he himself ever gave anyone, the president wants us to believe that he is not like all those other politicians that he criticized for all those years.”