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.

Qatar Airways will buy 210 jets from Boeing, the companies announced Wednesday during President Donald Trump’s visit there, as Trump is expected to accept a $400 million jet from the country, despite bipartisan criticism of security and conflict-of-interest concerns.