America’s would-be king spent Tuesday yukking it up with real royals in Riyadh. On Wednesday, he was in Qatar which means, much as it pains me, I have to talk about the “free” 747.

Most readers have probably heard the story by now, but humor me. Maybe you’ll learn something new. My goal’s everywhere and always to inform. If I didn’t think I had anything to add, I wouldn’t have bothered.

To my great surprise, Republicans both in and out of government — including some who fall squarely in the “crazy” camp — were aghast at the notion that Donald Trump might accept a $400 million luxury-fitted Boeing from the Qataris.

As more than a few observers have pointed out this week, the biggest problem with Trump accepting a personal plane from Doha isn’t the optics, although they’re comically bad to the extent this is a flagrant example of influence-peddling. The most concerning aspect of this proposition, rather, is the threat to national security.

Those things aren’t entirely separate, which is to say the bad optics, the favor-buying and the espionage risk are inextricably bound up with one another.

Trump said it’s a “stupid person” who turns down a “free very expensive airplane,” a statement with which I’d wholeheartedly agree if, in fact, the plane were free. But it isn’t. As Chris Murphy put it, the jet’s tantamount to “a cash payment in exchange for favors.” Suffice to say you don’t want to owe the Qataris any favors, let alone $400 million worth of them.

The Qataris are among the most adroit geopolitical operators on the planet. I don’t want to call them conniving, but there it is. They’re a double-dealing, scheming bunch, and Laura Loomer wasn’t wrong to call the government in Doha “jihadists in suits.” The fact that I’m quoting Loomer is itself a testament to just how absurd this idea of Trump’s really is.

Importantly, Qatar pursues an independent foreign policy, which can make them difficult to read even for people with deep experience in the region. Recall that Saudi Arabia orchestrated a boycott of Qatar in 2017 on the excuse Doha was a state sponsor of terror. That effort was an outlandish example of glass house stone-throwing (to be accused by Riyadh of supporting Sunni extremists is about like being branded a pathological liar by Trump) and it arguably backfired in that it was seen in Doha as proof that Qatar’s better off going its own way in true “with friends like these” fashion.

Today, Qatar’s a heavyweight global power broker and a regional go-between with few, if any, peers. Doha can talk to anyone in the region about anything at any time, with almost no exceptions. Need to get a message to Tehran and the Omanis aren’t picking up? Qatar can make the call. Need to reach a random beard cleaning an AK-47 in a wind-swept tent? Qatar knows him. Need to get $5 million cash to Hamas in a briefcase? You can count on Qatar.

Whatever it is you want to get done “over there,” Qatar can help. For a price. And being one of the richest countries on Earth on a per capita basis, that price tends not to be denominated in dollars, but rather in influence, favors and, more to the point, leverage.

These are the people from whom Trump wants to accept a 747 on which he intends to fly, as president, until such a time as Boeing can provide him with an acceptably luxurious official plane.

If the Qatari 747 isn’t outfitted with surveillance equipment, it’ll only be because Qatar knows even this GOP’s not that stupid. Even Ted Cruz knows better, if that tells you anything. “The plane poses significant espionage problems,” he fretted on Tuesday.

Let me put it this way: If Trump succeeds in convincing Republicans to let him have this plane an it’s not, “strip[ped] to bare bones,” to quote Markwayne Mullin, before Trump gets on it, then God help us. Because that’ll mean the Qataris will know where the President of the United States is in the air whenever he’s flying, and also everything he says while he’s up there.

If, as Mullin suggested, the solution is to strip the plane and rebuild it, that’s fine (I guess), but that sounds like a lot of work. Would that time and labor not be better spent helping Boeing finish long-delayed, US-customized presidential planes?

While in Doha Wednesday, Trump shook hands on deals worth nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars, but the big story was an announcement by Qatar Airways which plans to buy more than 200 widebodies from Boeing. The record $96 billion contract was signed by Kelly Ortberg in the Qatari Royal Court, where Trump and Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani looked on.

So, to sum up the situation with the planes, Qatar’s spending nearly $100 billion with Boeing on 787s and 777Xs and they’re going to gift Trump a 747, which he says he needs because Boeing’s late delivering new aircraft to the White House.

Boeing is, of course, America’s largest exporter, and Trump’s desperate to convince a skeptical American public that his policies are in fact benefiting US manufacturing. It’s also worth noting that the Trump Organization late last month signed a deal to build a golf course at Simaisma.

In many respects, it makes sense for Trump to cozy up to Doha given his goals for the region and Qatar’s indispensability as a facilitator. Without Qatar, for example, there are no Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks. At this point — i.e., with Tehran’s capacity to reach its proxies severed — there’s only one state actor who can get a message down into Gaza’s gopher tunnels: Qatar.

Consider also that it was Qatar who provided a lot of the funding for al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syria offshoot. Al-Nusra eventually became Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel alliance which finally succeeded in overthrowing Bashar al-Assad in Syria late last year.

Not surprisingly, al-Thani was the first head of state to visit Damascus after Hayat Tahrir al-Sham chieftain Ahmad al-Sharaa assumed the Syrian presidency. And who did Trump meet this week to great fanfare in the Mideast? Ahmad al-Sharaa. And what was the purpose of that meeting? To convey the White House’s intent to lift US sanctions on Syria in a bid to give al-Sharaa a chance to rebuild the country.

Although the new government — if you can call it that — in Damascus is arguably more beholden to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey than Qatar, Trump’s going to need Doha if he wants to, for example, convince Ahmad al-Sharaa to recognize Israel.

Again, Qatar’s indispensable and, lest anyone should forget, it hosts the largest US military base in the Mideast. You have to engage them as a Western leader. Part and parcel of managing the relationship entails pretending they aren’t duplicitous weasels, and deflecting whenever someone reminds you that they are.

So, the concern isn’t that a US president’s fostering cordial relations with Doha. Rather, the concern is the same as that critics raise anytime Trump’s seen as insufficiently attentive to the shrewdness of world leaders keen to exploit his vanity, which is all of them.

Simply put: Trump’s an easy mark. He’s defenseless in the presence of flattery and he’s a sucker for pomp and circumstance. That means he’s being manipulated everywhere he goes. When he’s in, say, Tokyo with someone like the late Shinzo Abe, that’s not such a big deal. When he’s in the Mideast amongst the vipers, it’s a national security risk.

Beware, Mr. President, of royals bearing gifts.