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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Trump's Mideast tour: Opulence, business deals and a $400M plane

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57 days ago
20250519
President Donald Trump arrives with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the group photo with Gulf Cooperation Council leaders during the GCC Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump arrives with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the group photo with Gulf Cooperation Council leaders during the GCC Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Alex Brandon

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump used the first ma­jor for­eign trip of his sec­ond term to out­line a vi­sion for restor­ing glob­al sta­bil­i­ty that is ground­ed in prag­ma­tism and self-in­ter­est rather than val­ues, hold­ing out U.S. ties to wealthy Gulf coun­tries as a mod­el for Amer­i­ca’s long­time foes.

His four-day swing through Sau­di Ara­bia, Qatar and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, which ends Fri­day, put a spot­light on Trump’s trans­ac­tion­al ap­proach to for­eign af­fairs as he was fet­ed by au­to­crat­ic rulers with a trio of lav­ish state vis­its where there was heavy em­pha­sis on eco­nom­ic and se­cu­ri­ty part­ner­ships.

His trip played out against the back­drop of stub­born glob­al con­flicts, in­clud­ing Gaza and Ukraine, that showed the lim­its of his in­flu­ence. But Trump in­sist­ed he was turn­ing the page on Amer­i­can “in­ter­ven­tion­al­ism” in the re­gion as he moved to recog­nise the new gov­ern­ment in Syr­ia for the first time and prod­ded Iran to en­gage on nu­clear talks be­fore it’s too late.

Trump mar­velled at Gulf state op­u­lence but held his tongue on hu­man rights

Pres­i­den­tial trips to the Mid­dle East usu­al­ly fea­ture at least some pub­lic calls for au­thor­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments to im­prove their hu­man rights ef­forts. Not this one, as Trump cel­e­brat­ed his busi­ness deals with Gulf roy­als and ad­mired their wealth.

Trump toured the mar­ble and gild­ed palaces of Gulf rulers and deemed them “per­fec­to” and “very hard to buy.” He praised the “gleam­ing mar­vels” of the sky­line in Sau­di Ara­bia. And he groused about the “much less im­pres­sive” Air Force One.

In Trump’s re­marks at a VIP busi­ness con­fer­ence in Riyadh, he went out of his way to dis­tance him­self from the ac­tions of past ad­min­is­tra­tions, the days when he said Amer­i­can of­fi­cials would fly in “in beau­ti­ful planes, giv­ing you lec­tures on how to live and how to gov­ern your own af­fairs.”

Rights ad­vo­cates took that as a pledge of non­in­ter­ven­tion, swear­ing off some of the pres­sure past U.S. pres­i­dents have brought to bear on part­ners to vary­ing de­grees to ease up on de­ten­tions, sup­pres­sion of crit­ics and oth­er is­sues.

“It’s ab­solute sup­port for ab­solute monar­chy,” said Sau­di ex­ile Ab­dul­lah Alaoudh. His fa­ther, a Sau­di cler­ic with a wide fol­low­ing there, is im­pris­oned in the king­dom.

Some rights ad­vo­cates said Trump of­fi­cials gave them pri­vate as­sur­ances the ad­min­is­tra­tion was work­ing on be­half of de­tained Amer­i­cans and rights ad­vo­cates. Tom­my Pig­ott, a deputy spokesman at the State De­part­ment, de­clined to say whether Trump raised those or oth­er rights is­sues in dis­cus­sions with Gulf roy­als.

Thwart­ed by Putin

While Trump was in the Mideast, Vladimir Putin opt­ed to skip di­rect peace talks with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy de­spite the U.S. pres­i­dent’s strong calls for them to meet face to face.

Trump has been push­ing Putin and Ze­len­skyy to move with greater haste to end Rus­sia’s grind­ing war in Ukraine.

But af­ter it be­came clear Putin wouldn’t be at­tend­ing talks in Turkey this week and would in­stead be send­ing un­der­lings to Is­tan­bul, an an­noyed Trump in­sist­ed he knew all along that it was high­ly like­ly Putin would be a no-show.

“I don’t be­lieve any­thing’s go­ing to hap­pen whether you like it or not, un­til he and I get to­geth­er,” Trump said. “But we’re go­ing to have to get it solved be­cause too many peo­ple are dy­ing.”

As he wrapped up his vis­it on Fri­day, Trump said the face-to-face would hap­pen “as soon as we can set it up.”

Trump was sched­uled to fly back to Wash­ing­ton on Fri­day, but tried to keep peo­ple guess­ing un­til the end. He teased late Thurs­day that he would be head­ing to a “des­ti­na­tion un­known” — “prob­a­bly” Wash­ing­ton, he added. His opaque lan­guage stoked spec­u­la­tion that he might make a drop-by to Turkey.

But on Fri­day morn­ing, he told re­porters he need­ed to get back to Wash­ing­ton. His daugh­ter Tiffany had her first child while the pres­i­dent has been away.

“I would ac­tu­al­ly leave here and go,” Trump said. “I do want to see my beau­ti­ful grand­son.”

On Syr­ia sanc­tions, Trump takes a leap of faith

Just two months ago, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion wasn’t sold on Syr­ia’s in­ter­im gov­ern­ment led by Ah­mad al-Sharaa, the one­time al-Qai­da-af­fil­i­at­ed in­sur­gent. They wor­ried the Syr­i­an pres­i­dent didn’t have the le­git­i­ma­cy to gov­ern the coun­try’s eth­ni­cal­ly di­verse pop­u­la­tion.

Clash­es broke out in ear­ly March, killing hun­dreds and tar­get­ing many more mem­bers of the Alaw­ite re­li­gious mi­nor­i­ty to which the oust­ed Syr­i­an leader Bash­er As­sad be­longs.

The mo­ment gave the Trump White House pause about eas­ing sanc­tions on Syr­ia. But Trump sig­nalled Mon­day that he was hav­ing a change of heart and was mov­ing to­ward lift­ing the Syr­ia sanc­tions. A day lat­er, he an­nounced the move dur­ing an ad­dress to Gulf lead­ers.

Trump then took it an­oth­er step by agree­ing to meet al-Sharaa.

Trump said he was im­pressed with al-Sharaa, who not that long ago had a $10 mil­lion U.S. boun­ty on his head. The pres­i­dent called him a “young, at­trac­tive guy” with a “very strong past.”

Trump said it was rec­om­men­da­tions from Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Re­cep Tayyip Er­do­gan and Sau­di Crown Prince Mo­hammed bin Salman that nudged him to take a chance on al-Shar­ra.

“Pres­i­dent Er­do­gan called me and said: ‘Is there any way you could do that? Be­cause if you don’t do that, they don’t have a chance,’” Trump said. “So, I did it.”

Trump’s fuzzy math on dis­play

Through­out the trip, Trump felt more than com­fort­able dish­ing out ex­ag­ger­a­tion and hy­per­bole.

“This has been an amaz­ing trip.” Trump told re­porters Thurs­day as Air Force One was about to land in Qatar. “We’ve raised tril­lions of dol­lars of in­vest­ment for our coun­try.” A lit­tle lat­er he put the fig­ure at $4 tril­lion.

That fig­ure is about two times the com­bined gross do­mes­tic prod­ucts of Sau­di Ara­bia, Qatar and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, mean­ing that any an­nounced in­vest­ments would like­ly ac­crue over sev­er­al years — if at all — in ways that might not show up in over­all U.S. eco­nom­ic growth num­bers.

Boe­ing con­firmed that Qatar’s $96 bil­lion pur­chase of its 787 and 777X jets was the largest or­der for 787s and wide body jets in the com­pa­ny’s his­to­ry. Trump en­thused it was “the biggest or­der in the his­to­ry of, I think, avi­a­tion, cer­tain­ly of that size” of jets.

Trump al­so went over­board in run­ning down the eco­nom­ic record of his pre­de­ces­sor, De­mo­c­rat Joe Biden, at one point de­clar­ing, “The days of eco­nom­ic mis­ery un­der the last ad­min­is­tra­tion are rapid­ly giv­ing way to the great­est econ­o­my in the his­to­ry of the world.”

The U.S. econ­o­my grew at 2.8% last year. It de­clined at an an­nu­al­ized rate of 0.3% dur­ing the first three months of this year.

In­tractable con­flicts re­main just that

While Trump’s trip ini­tial­ly was con­ceived as a vis­it to re­ward coun­tries that in­vest in the Unit­ed States, Trump at one point hoped it al­so would her­ald sig­nif­i­cant steps to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. Pos­i­tive news on both fronts proved elu­sive.

Trump bare­ly men­tioned ei­ther con­flict on his trip – and when he did, it was gen­er­al­ly in the con­text of his as­ser­tion that they wouldn’t have oc­curred had he won re­elec­tion in 2020.

As Is­rael stepped up an of­fen­sive in Gaza — a pre­lude to a promised full takeover of the ter­ri­to­ry if Hamas doesn’t re­lease the re­main­ing hostages in its cap­tiv­i­ty — Trump was again mus­ing about the cre­ation of a “free­dom zone” in its ter­ri­to­ry. It’s a no­tion re­ject­ed by Pales­tini­ans and the broad­er Arab world be­cause Trump’s plan would re­lo­cate civil­ians from Gaza to al­low for re­build­ing.

Is­rael con­duct­ed sig­nif­i­cant airstrikes all week in Gaza as Trump was in the re­gion and the fight­ing on the ground ap­peared to es­ca­late Fri­day morn­ing even be­fore Trump left the UAE.

Mean­while, Trump said “a lot of peo­ple are starv­ing” in Gaza, a rare ac­knowl­edge­ment of the hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in the ter­ri­to­ry. Speak­ing to re­porters at a busi­ness fo­rum in Abu Dhabi on the fi­nal day of his trip to the Mid­dle East, Trump said, “We’re look­ing at Gaza.”

“And we’ve got to get that tak­en care of. A lot of peo­ple are starv­ing. A lot of peo­ple are — there’s a lot of bad things go­ing on.”

Ethics is­sues fol­low along as Trump trav­els the Mideast

Trump was al­ready fac­ing ques­tions about con­flicts of in­ter­est for trav­el­ling to the Mid­dle East to shape U.S. pol­i­cy at a time when his fam­i­ly’s busi­ness in­ter­ests in the re­gion have boomed. He at­tempt­ed to qui­et wor­ries about na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tions by in­sist­ing he’s smart to ac­cept a $400 mil­lion lux­u­ry plane from Qatar and use it as Air Force One.

“Why should our mil­i­tary, and there­fore our tax­pay­ers, be forced to pay hun­dreds of mil­lions of Dol­lars when they can get it for FREE,” Trump post­ed on his so­cial me­dia site dur­ing his Mid­dle East swing.

The pres­i­dent al­so dodged ques­tions about a state-backed in­vest­ment com­pa­ny in Abu Dhabi us­ing a Trump fam­i­ly-aligned sta­ble­coin for a $2 bil­lion in­vest­ment in the world’s largest cryp­tocur­ren­cy ex­change.

“I don’t know any­thing about it,” he said.

Be­yond that, the Trump fam­i­ly has piled up deals to li­cense its brand for re­al es­tate projects, and to build Trump tow­ers and golf cours­es, around the Mid­dle East. White House press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt says it’s “frankly ridicu­lous” to won­der if those prof­its might in­flu­ence Trump’s gov­ern­ing de­ci­sions.

___

Mad­hani re­port­ed from Dubai. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Josh Boak, Will Weis­sert and Ellen Knick­mey­er in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed to this re­port.

ABU DHABI, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (AP) —

Saudi ArabiaMiddle EastInstagramDonald TrumpInternational


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