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"Intellectually Challenged" GOPer Tommy Tuberville and the Qatari Jet Bribe [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-05-19

“Intellectually Challenged” GOP Senator Tommy Tuberville’s Take on the Qatari $400 Million Jet Bribe to Donald– “Free is Good” May 19, 2025

Until now, just about nothing Demagogue/Dictator wannabe Donald has tried to do in his first and now second term in the Oval Office has been seriously questioned by his GOP House and Senate followers/rubber stampers. Most of his “Team Red” gang are marching lockstep in his cult of personality. When Trump’s numerous attempts to destroy the guardrails of our democracy have been challenged by Democrats or questioned in the media, the “Team Red” response has been silence/ “crickets.” However, after Trump accepted the $400 million jet from the oil-rich Middle Eastern Gulf State of Qatar, which Donald wants to use in place of “outdated” Air Force One, some GOPers are making dissenting grumbles. Even hard-right Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) says there is a “real problem” with Qatar because they have a “really disturbing pattern” of funding theocratic lunatics like Hamas and Hezbollah and that there could be espionage and surveillance problems.However, GOP Senator Tommy Tuberville is celebrating this bribe. Why? Because according to Sen. Tuberville, this $400 million jet given to Trump is free, and “Free is good.” Tuberville added, “You know, we don’t have a lot of money right now to buy things like that,” Tuberville told CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/12/politics/gop-senators-trump-plane-qatar

Let’s look at Sen. Tuberville.

First-term Republican U.S. Senator Thomas Hawley Tuberville (70) is currently Alabama’s senior Senator. Prior to becoming a member of the U.S. Senate, he had no political experience. Arkansas native Tuberville is best known for his time as a college football coach. Tuberville graduated from Southern State College (SSC), now Southern Arkansas University, where he lettered in football as a safety and also played on its golf team for two years. He received a 1976 B.S. in physical education. After coaching football in high school and working his way up the ranks in college football, including at the University of Miami and at Texas A&M, he received his first head coaching job in 1994 at “Ole Miss,” the University of Mississippi. In 1997, he was named by the AP as SEC Coach of the year. https://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Tuberville

In 1998, Tuberville took the head coaching job at the Auburn, Alabama University football team. Tuberville’s decade as coach of the Auburn team was the only extended time he lived in Alabama. Apart from his football career, Tuberville spent a brief time as the co-owner of a hedge fund. The hedge fund was a failure. Tuberville’s partner was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Tuberville was sued by investors who accused him of fraud and violating his fiduciary duty to take care of their investments. In 2013, Tuberville reached a private settlement. Once in the Senate, a NY Times analysis found 20 possible conflicts of interest in his recent trades and Senate business along with failing to file required disclosures on time.

https://www.thealmanacofamericanpolitics.com , National Journal, 2023, pp.48-49

In 2020, Democratic Senator Doug Jones was facing re-election in “Ruby-Red” AL. Jones, a former U.S. Attorney who had prosecuted Ku Klux Klan members for killing four young Black girls in a 1963 Birmingham church bombing, was facing tough odds to keep his seat. He had won in a big upset in a 2017 special election to replace Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had previously held that seat. Jones was victorious then because he was running against GOPer Roy Moore, a former chief Justice of the AL Supreme Ct. Moore lost by two points, 50%-48% when it was disclosed during that campaign that he had made sexual advances to four teenage girls while he was in his thirties.

https://www.thealmanacofamericanpolitics.com , National Journal, 2023, pp. 48-49

In 2020, Tuberville, running to defeat Jones, won a seven-way GOP primary. Tuberville tied himself to Trump “big time” and defeated former Trump Atty. General Sessions. In the general election, with Trump at the top of the ticket and with football hero Tuberville running, Jones was clobbered 60%-40%. Tuberville’s previous financial problems were irrelevant. IMHO, the “R” after his name in racially polarized AL was, frankly, enough.

https://www.thealmanacofamericanpolitics.com , National Journal, 2023, pp. 48-49.

Many of Tubervilles’s fellow lawmakers, including GOPers, certainly think he’s a “knucklehead,” and he is one of the most hated people in D.C. He has been called “the dumbest Senator of the Year.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/177658/dumbest-senator-2023-tommy-tuberville

These Senators should not have been surprised. Just days after he won election, Tuberville, in an interview with the Alabama Daily News, misidentified the three branches of government as “the House, the Senate, and the executive.” No, Sen.-elect Tuberville, those three branches, as most school children know, are the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. In that same interview, he claimed that WWII was fought “to free Europe of socialism,” when it was, instead, a battle against fascists Hitler and Mussolini. Following the horrible Trump-incited January 6, 2021 D.C. riot to keep Biden from being certified President, Tuberville was one of seven GOP Senators to object to certifying PA’s electoral votes for Biden and one of six Senators to object to certifying AZ’s votes for Biden as well. In 2021, according to the National Journal, Sen.Tuberville had a zero rating from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and an 8% rating from labor’s AFL-CIO. In 2022, the League of Conservation Voters gave him a basement 4% score, a decrease from his 2021 awful 6% score. https://www.thealmanacofamericanpolitics.com , National Journal, 2023, p. 48.

Sen. Tuberville, however, is best known for his nine months of single-handedly blocking more than 450 military promotions. With this action, he has made the Defense Department and just about every other Senator furious with him. And why did Sen.Tuberville, who comes from one extremely pro-military state and sits on the Armed Services Committee do this? Because Sen. Tuberville was protesting Biden Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin’s announcement to allow pregnant service members leave and reimbursement of travel costs so that they could obtain legal abortions in states that still allow that procedure after the Supreme Ct. ruling that overturned “Roe v.Wade.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/177658/dumbest-senator-2023-tommy-tuberville , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Tuberville

Throughout this time, Democrats tried to bring individual candidates to the floor for a vote, but there were too many stalled promotions for this to have been efficient. In the end, Democrats were forced to wait until Tuberville finally relented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Tuberville

Tuberville always seemed to get involved with controversial actions and comments. In a May 10, 2023 Birmingham-area radio interview on WBHM, Tuberville was asked whether white nationalists should be allowed to serve in the military. Sen. Tuberville replied that the Biden administration “calls them that. I call them Americans.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Tuberville

After this interview, Tuberville’s brother Charles stated he felt “compelled to distance himself” from Tuberville and his “ignorant, hateful rants” and “vile rhetoric.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Tuberville

Democrats want to use Trump’s receipt of this Qatari jet as a strong issue in opposition to him. Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has put a hold on many of Trump’s nominees until he gets answers to how our national security is affected by this bribe. In Sen. Ed Markey’s (D-MA) words, “He’s going to turn Air Force One into Bribe Force One.”

https://time.com/7285261/trump-qatar-plane-democrats/

Democrats must force a vote on taking this blatant bribe in the Congress and vote it down. Trump, Tommy Tuberville, and all of Donald’s other allies must be strongly defeated on this matter.

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