As Democrats attack President Donald Trump for accepting the Qatari royal family’s gift of a $400 million jet to be refurbished to serve as Air Force One, photos have resurfaced of some Democratic lawmakers three years earlier enjoying an expenses-paid trip to the Gulf emirate.
The trip, paid for by the U.S.-Qatar Business Council, involved four House Democrats and one Republican who went to Qatar in 2021. During the trip, at least two of the Democrats participated in a sightseeing excursion via camelback for them and their family members.
While the trade group that footed the bill for the Democrat excursion is not directly tied to the Qatari royal family, it describes its work as “dedicated exclusively to enhancing the bilateral business relationship between the U.S. and Qatar.”
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“This you frolicking in the sand on a camel as part of your $84,621.59 trip paid for by the US-Qatar Business Council to the Four Seasons in Doha in 2021?” Republican strategist Steve Guest asked in response to criticism about Trump’s jet from now-Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz. The senator accused Trump of engaging in a “pay-to-play” scheme and “selling out U.S. policy.” Gallego, at the time of the trip, was a congressman representing Arizona’s 7th District.
“This is pay-to-play, plain and simple,” Gallego said in a post on X. “Trump isn’t making decisions based on what’s best for you – he’s selling out U.S. policy to whoever gives him the biggest jet.”
“Gallego’s feaux [sic] outrage would hit hard, except, here he is, shirtless and riding camels in Qatar – all paid for by a special interest group,” conservative writer John Hasson said in response to Gallego’s post.
Both Hasson and Guest’s posts included a now-infamous image of Gallego, alongside Democratic California Rep. Eric Swalwell, sitting on camels – shirtless and smiling – as they participated in an excursion through the desert with their wives during their 2021 trip to Qatar funded by the U.S.-Qatar Business Council.
At the time, Swalwell was a prominent member of the House Intelligence Committee, which he was later removed from after it was discovered he allegedly had a romantic tryst with a Chinese Communist Party spy, among other concerns related to his judgment on national security.
Following backlash over their trip to Qatar in 2021, the U.S.-Qatar Business Council told the New York Post that it did not pay for the camel excursion, only “costs directly associated with travel and the working agenda of the trip.”
The trip cost roughly $85,000, according to congressional database Legistorm, which noted that the total cost amounted to more than half of the entire congressional travel expenses accounted for in 2021.
In addition to Swalwell and Gallego, Reps. Lou Correa, D-Calif., Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., and Lisa McClain, R-Mich., were part of the American delegation on the trip.
In response to the criticism from Republicans over his alleged hypocrisy, a spokesperson for Gallego shot back at the notion that the 2021 trip was anywhere near the same as Trump’s acceptance of the roughly $400 million plane from the Qatari royal family.
“If you think traveling on a bipartisan congressional delegation and visiting U.S. troops is the same as corruptly accepting a $400 million plane, then I have beachfront property in Arizona to sell you,” Gallego communications director Jacques Petit told Fox News Digital.
Fox News Digital reached out to Swalwell’s office for comment as well, but did not hear back.
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Trump shot back at criticisms over his planned acceptance of the Qatari gift, which the administration was given to use in place of Air Force One. Trump has been pushing to upgrade Air Force One, but the process that was initiated in 2018 has repeatedly been delayed.
“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 in a Truth Social post published Sunday. “Anybody can do that! The Dems are World Class Losers!!! MAGA”
