U.S. President Donald Trump visited multiple countries during his recent visit to the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar. Trump is drawing a great deal of criticism from Democrats and Never Trump conservatives for alienating some of the United States' closest allies — including Canada — and his steep new tariffs are a source of tension between Trump and countries in the European Union (EU). But in Saudi Arabia, Trump made it clear that he values the United States' relationship with the Saudi royal family.

The New York Times' Vivian Nereim, in an article published on May 16, stresses that the Saudi officials Trump met with during his visit feel they have shared values with the U.S. president.

"Mr. Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday and Wednesday — the initial stop of his first major foreign trip of his second term — made a splash in the kingdom, where he heaped praise on the de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, said that he had secured hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in the United States and then surprised nearly everyone by announcing he would end American sanctions on Syria," Nereim explains. "Citizens of the conservative Islamic kingdom say that Mr. Trump feels familiar to them."

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Nereim continues, "His family's fluid melding of business and politics is the norm in Saudi Arabia — a country in which the Trump Organization has significant business interests and where government officials sit on the boards of listed companies. His reliance on relatives and friends to advise him and shape policy is unremarkable in Riyadh. And the conservative rhetoric he has adopted — in particular, his attacks on transgender people and reassertion of traditional gender norms — resonates with many in the kingdom."

According to Nereim, Fahad al-Yafei — a gold salesman the Times interviewed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — "liked" Trump's "domestic policy, citing what he believed were shared values." And he voiced support for Trump's social conservatism.

Al-Yafei told the Times, "From way back, I feel like he gets us. There's affection…. The best thing he did is he stopped homosexuals."

Ali Abu-Raddad, a 60-year-old clothing salesman in Riyadh, praised Trump as well and told the Times, "He's the type of man who’s a straight shooter — he doesn’t go this way and that way."

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But not all Saudis have a favorable view of Trump's alliance with the Saudi royal family.

Abdullah Alaoudh of the Washington, DC-based Middle East Democracy Center and the son of an Islamic cleric who is imprisoned in Saudi Arabia, criticizes Trump for "whitewashing" the reputation of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) — who Alaoudh describes as an "authoritarian leader who has brutally silenced all dissent."

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Read the full New York Times article at this link (subscription required).


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