In Qatar, he took home an investment pledge of billions of dollars in American goods and services.
In the United Arab Emirates, he was awarded the country’s highest civilian honor. If President Donald Trump has been dogged at home by backlash over his tariff policies, protests over his immigration crackdown and questions over his ethics, a week in the Arabian Peninsula produced nothing but wins for the president.
“The last four days have been really amazing,” Trump said Thursday, as he was leaving a palace in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where he had just been feted. He added, looking rueful, “Probably going back to Washington, D.C., tomorrow.”
On Friday, the president reflected on his trip on Air Force One: “The respect shown to our country was incredible. Nobody’s treated like that. Nobody’s treated well like that.” At every step of Trump’s whirlwind tour of the Middle East, he was treated with the kind of honor and respect he has long desired. Escorts of fighter jets. Extravagant welcoming ceremonies. Red and lavender carpets. Arabian horses. Glitzy chandeliers. Camels. Sword dancers. White marble palaces. In the United Arab Emirate of Dubai, the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, lit up with an image of the American flag. All in his honor. “As a construction person, I’m seeing perfect marble. This is what they call perfecto,” Trump said at one point, admiring the royal court in Doha, the capital of Qatar. “We appreciate those camels. I haven’t seen camels like that in a long time.”
Such a welcome would have been unlikely in most other corners of the world, where governments, including the United States’ closest allies, are reeling from Trump’s aggressive tariffs and bellicose rhetoric toward Canada, Greenland and Panama.
But in the Gulf, Trump’s every move was lauded.
Trump was able to announce what he said was more than $2 trillion in economic investments between the United States and the three nations he visited: Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, each longtime purchasers of American military equipment.
Trump said that the investments from those three nations could reach as high as $4 trillion — roughly the size of all their sovereign wealth funds combined. While much of that total comes in the form of long-term pledges that may or may not materialize and counts some deals that were already underway, leaders of the Gulf nations were all too happy to supply Trump with the eye-popping figures.
At a business event in Abu Dhabi on Friday, Trump was treated to a tour of deals underway between American and Emirati companies, including purchases of Boeing jets and General Electric engines.
Trump marveled at the wealth of his hosts, who can pay upfront for whatever deals they undertake.
“They don’t say ‘subject to financing,'” Trump said. “They have no problem.”
At each step of the trip, Trump surrounded himself with friendly audiences and often turned his events — such as a stop at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest U.S. military facility in the Middle East — into campaign-style rallies: blasting his favorite playlists (“Gloria,” of course), bashing Democrats and falsely claiming he had won the 2020 election.
Speaking to U.S. troops as their commander in chief, he was greeted with chants of “USA.”
“We won three elections, OK? And some people want us to do a fourth. I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it,” Trump told the troops, yet again floating the idea of an unconstitutional third term in office. “The hottest hat is, it says, ‘Trump 2028.’ We’re driving the left crazy.”
If Trump hoped to avoid controversy about his family’s business dealings in the region, the Gulf leaders helped with just that — highlighting deals with private firms that are unrelated to Trump’s personal business interests. There was no visit to the site of the Trump Organization’s deal with a Saudi real estate company to build a residential high-rise in Jeddah; no presentation of a $400 million luxury jet that Trump is seeking as a gift from Qatar; and no promotion of the Abu Dhabi-backed fund that is making a $2 billion business deal using the Trump firm’s digital coins.
On Air Force One, taking questions from reporters, Trump denied knowledge of the crypto deal.
“I really don’t know anything about it,” he said. “But I’m a big crypto fan, I will tell you.”
If a Democratic president did what Trump has done — praising a former jihadis, welcoming Qatar’s friendship with Iran and accepting a “gift” of a $400 million airplane — Republicans would have been howling in protest and ordering up congressional investigations. What transpired, instead, was mostly an uncomfortable silence.
A few Trump allies, like Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and far-right activist Laura Loomer made clear they did not like the plane gift, but contorted themselves to express their discomfort in ways that would be least likely to offend Trump. Loomer preceded her criticism by saying she would “take a bullet” for the president, and Hawley avoided the implication of corruption and simply said he would prefer “if Air Force One were a big, beautiful jet made in the United States of America — that would be ideal.”
Trump’s declaration that the United States was shifting its policy toward the Middle East away from judgment and confrontation toward peace and profit was praised repeatedly.
“It’s crucial for the wider world to note this great transformation has not come from Western interventionists or flying people in beautiful planes, giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs,” Trump said at a gathering of Saudi royalty and business elites in Riyadh.
Even back home in the United States, Democrats and Republicans approved of Trump’s announcement that he was removing sanctions from Syria in an effort to give the war-torn country a fresh start.
“We commend President Trump’s decision to lift all sanctions on Syria,” the leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jim Risch, R-Idaho, and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said in a joint statement.
The trip was intended to deliver a series of economic, diplomatic and public relations wins for the countries involved, said Andrew Leber, an assistant professor at Tulane University in Louisiana, who focuses on the U.S.-Saudi relationship.
Saudi Arabia got the opportunity to highlight the changing nature of its society and economy, and present itself as a leader in global affairs, both in terms of business opportunities and diplomacy. Trump got a trip that essentially could not go wrong for him, Leber said.
“This was the one place that’s guaranteed to give him a very enthusiastic, warm and tightly controlled welcome,” Leber added. “If he went anywhere in Latin America, there would be protests. If he went anywhere in Europe, there would be protests. This is a place that’s going to speak with him and deal with him on very transactional terms, that’s going to put on a big show and where there’s not going to be any domestic protests whatsoever.”
That was indeed the case, as Gulf leaders adopted Trump’s favorite phrases. Each nation talked about their trade deficits with the United States and how they buy more from the United States than they sell — a favorite topic of the president’s.
At a business forum in Saudi Arabia, panelists talked of “making aviation great again,” playing off Trump’s campaign theme.
At the meeting in Abu Dhabi on Friday, Trump walked into a large rotunda where five large screens showed various kinds of investment — starting with “Making Energy Great Again.” There, he was gifted a box containing a drop of oil.
In Doha, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the emir of Qatar, adopted Trump’s energy slogan, “Drill, baby, drill.”
“The U.S. and Qatar are feeding and fueling the world,” the emir said, before turning to Trump. “Glad to have you back on board.”
Trump is also a relief for Gulf leaders: They now have a U.S. president who breezes past their human rights records as he chases high-dollar deals.
“Governments and publics throughout the Gulf like Trump a lot,” said Jon B. Alterman, a global security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“They feel Western liberals want to shame them on their domestic issues, everything from LGBT rights to abuse of migrant workers,” Alterman added. “While there certainly are rising liberal voices in the Gulf, most people there see Trump as a common-sense, like-minded leader.”
As he ended his trip in Abu Dhabi on Friday, Trump worried aloud to the news media that whoever becomes president after him would get credit for the deals once they reach fruition.
“I’ll be sitting home, who the hell knows where I’ll be, and I’ll say, ‘I did that,'” he said. “Somebody’s going to be taking the credit for this. You remember, press,” he said, pointing to himself, “this guy did it.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
