According to the plan that Defense SecretaryPete Hegseth announced Friday, Idaho’s Mountain Home Airbase will soon house a site for Qatar‘s Emiri Air Force pilots to train on F-15 jets, which angered some MAGA supporters who don’t trust the Qatari government and who (wrongly) believed Qatar was building its own base in the U.S.
“Today, we’re announcing a letter of acceptance in building a Qatari Emiri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho,” Hegseth said while standing beside Qatari Minister of Defense Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on Friday. Some in the MAGAverse took this to mean that Qatar would have its own base, rather than building a facility on an existing U.S. base.
J.D. Vance was asked on Fox News to clarify the Trump administration’s announcement on Sunday.
“This is largely a fake story,” Vance said of those who believed that Qatar would build its own base in the U.S. “We continue to have — with countries that we work with, we have relationships where sometimes their pilots work on our bases, sometimes we train together, sometimes we work together in other ways. The reporting that somehow there is going to be a Qatari base on United States soil, that’s just not true. We are continuing to work with a number of our Arab friends to ensure we are able to enforce this peace, but we’re not going to let a foreign country have an actual base on American soil, so there’s a bit of misreporting on that, as there often is.”
Hegseth’s original announcement sent shockwaves through some in the MAGA universe.
“Never thought I’d see Republicans give terror financing Muslims from Qatar a MILITARY BASE on U.S. soil so they can murder Americans,” far-right influencer Laura Loomer posted last week. “I don’t think I’ll be voting in 2026.”
After Loomer’s criticism, Hegseth later issued an “important clarification” to his original comments, writing on X (formerly Twitter) that “Qatar will not have their own base in the United States — nor anything like a base. We control the existing base, like we do with all partners.”
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That did not appease Loomer, who responded in part, “A jihadist in a suit is still a jihadi. It’s a threat to our national security.”
Steve Bannon, who was White House strategist in Trump’s first term, told Newsweek he believes there “should never be a military base of a foreign power on the sacred soil of America.”
Conservative radio host Mark Levin wrote on X, “I never dreamed of anything like this. We’ve not only agreed to go to war for Qatar but they’re now building an air force facility in our country. Shocking.”
He added, “This is very serious… A new facility with our base. Train their pilots with their jets they bought from us. Despite the fact they enabled [terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] to escape and plot 9/11 and pour billions into our country promoting Islamism and anti-Americanism… Outrageous to most of us.”
This is not the first time that a foreign nation has set up a training facility inside the U.S. In fact, Singapore houses several training programs in the U.S., including Exercise Valiant Mark, where, according to the Singapore Army’s website, the “U.S. training grounds provide the perfect environment for large-scale vehicular, mechanised and combined arms manoeuvre training, as well as air-land integrated live-firing exercises in both conventional and urban scenarios.” Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.K. have also trained their forces a U.S. bases for many years. And U.S. military forces have also trained at al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
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But to those on the right, allowing Qatar to train its forces on U.S. soil is different. For one thing, both Trump and conservatives have long criticized Qatar’s government for funding terrorists.
“The nation of Qatar, historically, has been a funder of terrorism at a very high level,” Trump said in June 2017 in an address at the White House, adding that “the time had come to call on Qatar to end its funding… and its extremist ideology.”
But in his second term, Trump has cozied up to Qatar’s authoritarian government. Earlier this year, Qatar gifted Trump a $400 million luxury jet that the U.S. will pay nearly $1 billion to transform into the next Air Force One, a move that also drew criticism from Loomer. Trump accepted the plane, nicknamed a “flying palace,” despite national security experts’ concerns that doing so could lead to security breaches since the Qatari government could have hidden listening or tracking devices on the plane.
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Trump earlier this month signed an executive order that promised Qatar the same kind of protection granted to our NATO allies, meaning an attack against Qatar will be treated as an attack on the U.S., and the U.S. will take “diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military” action to defend Qatar. President Joe Biden in 2022 designated Qatar as one of the U.S.’s major non-NATO allies, which helped establish a working relationship between the U.S. and Qatari military.
Even the Trump Organization, Trump’s private corporation run by his sons, has been working closely with Qatar. The company signed a deal in May to build a Trump-branded golf course, golf club, and luxury villas on the coast of the Arab nation north of Doha. This is the first foreign deal finalized by the Trump Organization since Trump became president again.
