This is an adapted excerpt from the May 13 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
For decades, going back to Ronald Reagan, when an American president makes their first visit to a foreign nation, they almost always go to Canada. It makes sense: They’re our top trading partner; we share a language and a very long border. But in 2017, Donald Trump did not do that.
Instead, Trump went to the oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where he joined in laying hands on a glowing orb. During that trip, he also forged a close friendship with the nation’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who would later invest $2 billion in a business owned by Trump’s son-in-law, against the advice of his own economic experts.
It’s worth noting that before that announcement, Syria’s leader offered to build a Trump Tower in Damascus.
Eight years later, Trump is president again. This time around, Trump, once again, decided he wasn’t going to Canada, the country he openly wants to annex. Instead, the president went back to the Middle East, landing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday, with plans to visit Qatar and the United Arab Emirates next.
The Saudis, the Qataris and the Emiratis all clearly understood the assignment. Take the crown prince: He greeted Trump on the tarmac and rolled out the royal purple carpet.
Not only did the Saudis welcome Trump with open arms, but they also welcomed his co-president, Elon Musk. However, Musk wasn’t the only billionaire on the trip. Trump and the crown prince joined forces to open a U.S.-Saudi investment forum for big-money players from the two nations, with speakers from U.S. firms like Citigroup, BlackRock and Palantir.
The White House claims Trump “secured $600 billion in deals with the Saudi government and firms.” But, according to The New York Times, “the details the White House provided were vague and totaled less than half that number. And a closer look at the projects the administration provided shows several were already in the works before Mr. Trump took office.” But Trump claimed a big win, and so the president responsible for the “Muslim ban” posed onstage in front of a massive Saudi flag and was applauded.
Trump had some other big gifts ready, too. The president announced a $142 billion arms agreement to provide the Saudis with U.S. weapons and defense contractors to maintain them. He also announced that he plans to lift sanctions on Syria, which Trump said was at the behest of the Saudis. “Oh, what I do for the crown prince,” he said from the stage.
While that announcement was a good one and those sanctions on Syria should be dropped, we should not drop them as a favor to the Saudi crown prince who threw $2 billion at your son-in-law.
It’s also worth noting that before that announcement, Syria’s leader offered to build a Trump Tower in Damascus and said he would give the U.S. mineral rights contracts in his country, according to several sources familiar with the efforts who spoke with Reuters.
Mideast diplomacy is one of the most complicated, fraught areas of American foreign policy, and out of the gate, Trump is basically just going down a list of policies that the Saudis and their allies wanted.
Policywise, some of those concessions are better than others; corrupt processes can sometimes accidentally create a decent policy here and there. But they’re not policies so much as presents for his overseas buddies, and, in return, those buddies are giving him what he wants.
Which brings us, of course, to the Qatari jumbo jet. A special Boeing 747 that has been called a “palace of the sky” and a “flying mansion.” A luxury item worth $400 million and gifted to Trump by the Qatari royal family over the weekend. It is full of leather, gold and burl wood accents. It sports at least three lounges, two bedrooms, nine bathrooms, five galleys and a private office. Trump is palpably stoked out of his shoes about this thing, like a very rich kid on Christmas morning getting the world’s most expensive toy. Accepting this jet would be the most shockingly corrupt act by a president in the history of the presidency. It violates not only the spirit of the Constitution, but literally the text. However, according to Trump, not taking it would be “stupid.” It seems the only thing that unites the policies Trump has announced on his Middle East tour so far is that they are exactly what the Gulf states wanted. The Gulf states don’t have huge armies, but they have a lot of oil and a lot of money, and they use it to extend their geopolitical dominance. It makes sense, this is the place Trump feels most at home because these countries get Trump in a way they never got any other American president. That’s because this American president openly admires despots and envies what they have. The Gulf states that are hosting Trump understand that. They recognize he is not there for 330 million Americans. He is there for himself, and they are there to indulge him. It’s not because Trump is a unique force of nature. He is not special; he is just easy. He’s not even the first foreign leader to be gifted a 747 by the Qataris. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan got a half-billion-dollar jumbo jet back in 2018. But this is the thing: The Gulf states have been doing this forever. They don’t have huge armies, but they have a lot of oil and a lot of money, and they use it to extend their geopolitical dominance. That only goes so far with a traditional, law-abiding American administration. However, with Trump, a man not just willing but thirsty to trade on the trappings of the office that American voters bestowed on him, the sky is the limit.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday on MS NOW. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” (Penguin Press).
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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