Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon highlights a new report critical of the Biden administration’s largesse.
A $1,962 soccer ball for Hamas ally Qatar. A $1,557 bowl for Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping. A $2,310 handblown glass vase for Cambodian dictator Hun Sen. These are just some of the taxpayer-funded gifts the Biden-Harris administration awarded to foreign dictators, human rights abusers, and anti-American world leaders, financial disclosure forms reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show.
The administration doled out the gifts from October 2022 to September 2023, as President Joe Biden and his top cabinet members traveled the globe for diplomatic powwows. While it is customary for U.S. officials to present foreign leaders with gifts as a sign of goodwill, the Biden-Harris administration spent liberally on presents for some of the globe’s foremost human rights abusers.
China’s Xi, for instance, received a $1,557.84 “custom glass bowl” during Biden’s travel in November 2022, according to non-public financial disclosure forms submitted to Congress this month and reviewed by the Free Beacon. The lavish bowl was packaged in a “Navy gift box” and included “hand-painted White House wood.”
When Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to China in June 2023, he presented then-foreign affairs minister Qin Gang with a pewter tea set worth $1,345. The State Department sought special permission to purchase the gift because it exceeded the internal limit of $1,200 set under federal guidelines.
During the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, meanwhile, Biden presented the gulf state’s emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, with a $1,962 “custom leather presidential soccer ball.” The souvenir included the “seal and signature of the president of the United States” and was bestowed in a “custom leather presentation box with inscription.”
Biden presented Al-Thani with the ball as Qatar faced enormous international pressure over mass human rights abuses in the lead up to World Cup games, which took place in stadiums built largely using forced labor from foreign workers.