By Kate Sullivan | Bloomberg
Donald Trump beamed from the passenger seat of a golf cart as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman took the wheel and personally whisked the US president to a desert oasis dinner in an ancient city.
Trump received the full royal treatment, and here in the Gulf it was clear he was among friends. His swing through the richest countries in the Middle East provided him with some quick wins. They took the form of billions in investments — though some dollar figures haven’t been accounted for and thus far amount to a mirage.
During the first planned overseas trip since his January inauguration, Trump returned to the global stage on his own terms, looking to burnish his image as a deal-maker. On display was his transactional approach to foreign policy, an unabashed drive for commercial deals — including with countries where his family has business interests — and a disregard for conventions and longstanding US foreign policy objectives.
Trump during his four-day tour embraced strongmen in ways new even for him. It’s a stark contrast to the derision and scorn with which he treats democratic US allies, such as Canada and those in Europe. He sees Arab rulers as natural partners in his push to shake up the global order.
“I like him too much,” Trump said of MBS, as the de facto Saudi ruler is commonly known.
Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates is a “magnificent man,” Trump said, and the president noted he had “been friends for a long time” with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad.
The monarchs returned the favor with fighter-jet escorts of Air Force One, sword dances and state dinners in opulent palaces.
The contrast with Trump’s approach to America’s partners in Europe and North America is stark.
Back in 2017, Trump looked uncomfortable among fellow Western leaders in Sicily during his first Group of Seven summit. While his counterparts walked together in the hilltop city of Taormina, he rode in a golf cart alone.
It was an image that at the time underlined Trump’s isolation. Now in his second term in office, it’s his traditional allies in Europe that have been left out. An emboldened Trump is instead gravitating toward and seeking to emulate the absolute rulers he’s long praised and found kinship with.
It wasn’t that long ago that Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden vowed to treat the crown prince as a “pariah” after the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. When Biden visited the kingdom in 2022, the de facto Saudi leader did not greet him at the airport and the two men later exchanged a fist bump.
Now, MBS had the leader of the free world smiling and laughing in his passenger seat and there was no sign of the topic of alleged human-rights abuses being broached.
“A new generation of leaders is transcending the ancient conflicts of tired divisions of the past and forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce, not chaos,” Trump said during a speech in Riyadh. “This great transformation has not come from Western intervention or flying people in beautiful planes, giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs.”
Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has steadily tightened the screws on his domestic political opponents, also emerged as a go-between in the region for Trump.
He dialed into Trump’s meeting with Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, a historic encounter that was one of the trip’s genuine surprises.
Trump’s bombshell decision to try and lift US sanctions on Syria blindsided many back home, and Israel, given that Sharaa is a former jihadist who until last year had a $10 million US bounty on his head. Trump told reporters he found him to be a “young, attractive guy,” again bucking policy orthodoxy in favor of his personal assessments.
The move came at the urging of both Crown Prince Mohammed and Erdoğan — and it won loud applause inside a US-Saudi investment forum, offering affirmation for Trump.
As the Saudi ruler clapped his hands high in the air, beaming at Trump, the president made clear his move was as much a gift to the Saudi royal as it was the new Syrian government: “Oh,” Trump said, “what I do for the crown prince.”
Russia Breakdown
At one point it looked like Erdoğan was on the verge of playing host to Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin for direct talks with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
It was one of the most tantalizing geopolitical encounters that was teased and stretched out to the very last minute in a will-they-or-won’t-they fashion. In the end, Putin dispatched low-level Russian officials to Turkey and Trump left for Washington without the meeting.
For all the white Arabian horses and camel escorts, the episode demonstrated the limits of Trump’s personalized approach to foreign relations. Signs of Trump’s impatience seeped through.
“Nothing is going to happen until Putin and I get together,” Trump declared aboard Air Force One, dismissing a reporter’s question on whether he was disappointed with the talks.
That face to face, which would have been their first since 2018, wasn’t the only talked-up development that failed to materialize.
Reams of headlines were devoted to the expected announcement in Qatar of a gift to Trump: a $400 million luxury jet to be used as a presidential plane.
Trump kept saying he’d be “stupid” not to accept a free present — despite security and ethical concerns. In the end, the Qataris said they would buy as many as 210 Boeing Co. planes. The timing of the official transfer lingers, and might even be abandoned because of the backlash, some of which came from Trump supporters in the US.
Trump’s tour also snubbed Israel — an ally that looks to the US as its biggest benefactor. In 2017, Trump also made his first scheduled overseas trip to the Middle East and stopped in Israel after Saudi Arabia. This time, Israel was left off his itinerary.
Benjamin Netanyahu was left on the sidelines, as Trump soaked up the hospitality of Gulf leaders while pushing ahead with decisions that didn’t take Israel into account.
The tour began with Trump having just declared a ceasefire with Yemen’s Houthi militants, who are still attacking Israel. That was followed by the Syria announcement and Trump saying the US is closer to a nuclear agreement with Iran.
As Israel prepares for a larger-scale military escalation in Gaza, Trump revived a proposal for the US turn the strip into a “freedom zone.”
Trump-Style Diplomacy
Trump leaned into campaign-style atmospherics on the trip and gave a speech to uniformed US military service members that carried hallmarks of his political rallies. Country singer Lee Greenwood performed God Bless the USA, the president’s signature introduction song, like he did often during the 2024 race. Trump even renewed talk of seeking a third term in defiance of the US Constitution.
“We won three elections, OK?,” Trump said, repeating the false claim that he beat Joe Biden in 2020. “And some people want us to do a fourth. I don’t know. We’ll have to think about that.”
As Trump returns home on his flying Oval Office, one he loves to deride as small, old and outdated, he can bask in the afterglow of his Arabian sojourn, and how he was feted.
A personal gesture that was no doubt appreciated: a mobile McDonald’s food truck that was rolled in Riyadh for the fast-food chain’s most famous fan.
– With assistance from Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Matthew Martin, Fiona MacDonald and Paul Wallace.
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