Quid pro quo Potential conflicts of interest are taken to new heights

Fox & Friends, the show beamed into millions of American homes every morning, is not generally considered to be the place where Donald Trump faces the tough questions.

- Ed Pilkington

Fox & Friends, the show beamed into millions of American homes every morning, is not generally considered to be the place where Donald Trump faces the tough questions. The "Friends" in the title gives that away.

But on Monday morning the show's co-host Brian Kilmeade put the billion-dollar question to the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. News had just broken that Trump had decided to accept a gift of a $400m luxury (£300m) jumbo jet from the government of Qatar, a petro-state the president once denounced as a "funder of terrorism".

"Do you worry that if they give us something like this they want something in return?" asked Kilmeade.

Leavitt swatted the question away, saying the Qataris knew Trump "only works with the interests of the American public in mind". Despite her protestations, the heart of the matter is now out there for all to contemplate: what about the quid pro quo?

The avoidance of quid pro quo - of favours granted in return for something, or to put it colloquially, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours - has been a bedrock of US governance, especially in foreign policy, for decades. It even informed Trump's first presidency when the Trump Organization, his family business, forewent all foreign deals for the duration.

Now that he is back in the Oval Office all such guardrails separating personal from public gain appear to have been removed. Since Trump's victory in November, the Trump Organization, under the management of his third child, Eric, has seen an explosion of activity in the Gulf region.