Really? Qatar gets its own air force facility inside the United States? Why?

When Trump is fighting the "enemy within" America and kicking out anyone who can't prove they belong here?

Friends,

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the U.S. will allow Qatar to build an Air Force facility at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, where Qatari F-15 fighter jets and Qatari pilots will train alongside US troops.

“The location will host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase the lethality, interoperability,” Hegseth said at the Pentagon during a meeting with his Qatari counterpart Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-Thani. “It’s just another example of our partnership. And I hope you know, Your Excellency, that you can count on us.”

What?

On its face, the very idea of a tiny Arab nation in the Persian Gulf having an an air force base in the United States seems absurd. Why is this happening — especially at a time when Trump has all but declared war on the “enemy within” America?

One possible reason: Qatar served as mediator with Hamas in the negotiations that ultimately resulted in a cease-fire in Gaza, so maybe Trump owes it.

Perhaps more to the point, Trump and his family have close financial ties with the kingdom, whose vast natural-gas reserves have generated vast wealth for it and its ruling family.

In May, Trump accepted a $400 million luxury Boeing jet from Qatar — a gift that Trump intends to keep after he leaves the White House (but will use in the meantime as Air Force One, after extensive and expensive modifications).

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it the “kind of thing that even Putin would give a double take.”

In April, the Trump family company struck a deal with Qatar to build a luxury golf resort there, featuring Trump-branded beachside villas and an 18-hole golf course. The planned resort will be developed by a Qatari company owned by the Qatari government.

Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kuschner, who is shepherding the Israel-Hamas negotiations, has plenty of financial interests in Qatar and the Middle East.

After leaving the White House during Trump’s first term, Kushner founded an investment fund, Affinity Partners, with major backing from sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf, including Qatar’s.

Last month, Kushner’s firm teamed up with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and other partners for a $55 billion deal to take the video-game maker Electronic Arts private — the largest leveraged buyout in history.

Qatar’s wealth has also enabled the small kingdom to ramp up its spending on Washington lobbyists and PR, in favor of its activities.

But the Qatari air force inside America?

Republican political consultant and commentator Mike Madrid wrote on X: “Joe Biden was criticized for a Chinese balloon flying over our airspace. They’re giving Qatar an entire f’ing air base.”

Conservative commentator Amy Malek said, “Qatar has spent $100 billion buying influence in the U.S., and it’s paying off. I am in shock that Washington would approve a deal letting Qatar, Hamas’s #1 financier, open a Qatari Air Force facility on U.S. soil.”

Even the MAGA faithful are up in arms.

Steve Bannon says there “should never be a military base of a foreign power on the sacred soil of America.”

Laura Loomer, who calls herself a “proud Islamaphobe,” says the U.S. is “training the funders of Hamas,” and asks “What happened the last time we let Muslims learn how to fly planes on US soil!” She “never thought I’d see Republicans give terror financing Muslims from Qatar a MILITARY BASE on US soil so they can murder Americans.”

Loomer shared a clip of Trump speaking in 2017 in which he accused Qatar of historically funding terrorism “at a very high level.”

After hours of this right-wing assault, Hegseth tried to clarify that the airbase would still be under U.S. jurisdiction, and the deal only gives the Qatari air force its own facility, not its own base.

The German air force has a tactical training command in Texas. More than 1,000 Singaporean military troops train in the U.S. each year. Pilots from several other NATO allies also train in the U.S.

Still, the Trump family’s conflicts of interest with Qatar raise troubling questions. Why Qatar? What does it mean to be “under U.S. jurisdiction?” How much information will the U.S. have about what’s occurring on the facility? What exactly does Qatar get out of it, and what does America gain from it?

Most fundamentally — at a time when Trump has all but declared war on the “enemy within” America, and is busy kicking immigrants out of the nation and isolating America from the rest of the world — what does the Trump family get out of its deal to give Qatar its own facility inside the nation?