It’s unwise to get between a political leader and a VIP jet.

I discovered this long before the US scammer-in-chief, Donald Trump, began making grateful cooing noises when the crafty Qatari royal family offered him the gift of a $600 million flying palace.

All those gold walls, carpets deep enough to soothe the alleged bone spurs that saved young Trump from serving in Vietnam, the several bathrooms suitable for a man who lives on Big Macs and chocolate milkshakes.

Donald Trump before an audience of military personnel at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar last week.Credit: Getty Images, digitally tinted

Why, if only it had particularly ghastly crystal chandeliers, it could be Mar-a-Lago in the sky.

Still, as Trump himself protested on his hilariously named Truth Social, “Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our country.”

Or, perhaps, a fool who was still a smidge concerned about bribery and corruption.

Or a fool who figured the authors of the US Constitution actually meant something by inserting a clause prohibiting a president from accepting any gift, emolument, office, or title from a “King, Prince, or foreign State” without the consent of Congress.

We do things differently in Australia.

Way back in 1993, Australian prime minister Paul Keating was deeply unimpressed to find himself reduced to flying around the world in a 30-year-old second-hand Boeing 707.

The 707 was Australia’s VIP jetliner, but it had seen better days. The little fleet of 707s came from the late 1950s/early ’60s era when rock ’n’ roll and V8 hot rods ruled and noise pollution wasn’t a........

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