President Donald Trump has said that Qatar is "donating" its Boeing 747 to the U.S. and not to him personally, as the fallout from the potential transaction continues. On Sunday, reports emerged that Trump was to accept the Boeing 747-8, which will be retrofitted with state-of-the-art security and communications to serve as Air Force One.

As catnip for a high-end mendicant like Donald Trump, the Boeing 747-8 is unbeatable. It’s an exquisite machine, a perfect consummation of form and function and last in a line of one of the greatest airplanes ever built. It’s also a haunting specter for Boeing of a supremacy it achieved and then lost.

“The Boeing 747 is being given to the United States Air Force/Department of Defense, NOT TO ME! It is a gift from a Nation, Qatar, that we have successfully defended for many years,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, late on Tuesday, May 13.