President Donald Trump boarded Air Force One and headed to the Middle East for the first substantial trip abroad of his second term.
Trump is set to visit the capitals of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, where he will spend three and a half days across these Arab nations.
The Daily Mail reported last week that first lady Melania Trump is skipping the trip.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, announced that Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Ivanka Trump’s husband Jared Kushner, who have business interests in the region, will not be accompanying him.
Nonetheless, CNN reports that Kushner is still discreetly providing remote advice to Trump regarding the trip. He has played a significant role in dialogues with Saudi Arabia concerning potential agreements to ‘normalize’ relations with Israel, as noted in the report.
‘Jared is an ‘expert when it comes to the Middle East,’ a senior administration official told CNN.
‘He knows all the players and is one of the few people who has the ear of the Arab leaders, as well as the Israelis,’ the source added.
The White House added that Kushner was critical to some of Trump’s first administration successes including the historic Abraham Accords.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told CNN there is ‘no question’ Trump values Kushner’s expertise and ‘welcomes his advice on all areas where he is willing to be helpful.’
Ivanka Trump, who accompanied her father to Saudi Arabia on his previous presidential trip there in 2017 when she was as White House adviser, is also sitting this one out.
She previously said she would be taking a step back from formal involvement in her father’s second term to focus on her family.
But she has been spotted at the White House recently for several glitzy events including one with the Philadelphia Eagles.
Eric Trump, the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, was in Qatar in April, but he also will not be on his father’s Middle East swing.
Eric signed the Trump family’s first development deal in Qatar to build a golf course and residential villas near the capital Doha, including an 18-hole Trump International Golf Course and Trump Villas.
Instead, Trump has filled the trip with top Cabinet members and senior staff including Leavitt, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Deputy chief of staff James Blair, deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich, deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, communications director Steven Cheung and staff secretary Will Scharf round out the aides.
Fox News star Sean Hannity also announced he’s traveling onboard Air Force One with the president to Saudi Arabia teasing ‘huge interviews.’
In all three countries Trump will aim, at a minimum, to announce economic deals – with hopes that progress can be made on some complicated geopolitical issues as well.
Trump’s first stop will be in Riyadh where he’ll be meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or ‘MBS.’
The long-term goal is to have Saudi Arabia join the Abraham Accords – one of the biggest foreign policy achievements of Trump’s first administration.
The Abraham Accords normalized relations between Israel and the UAE, and Israel and Bahrain.
Hamas’ terror attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 – and the ongoing war in Gaza – threw a wrench in the Biden administration’s, and now the Trump administration’s, push to have Saudi join the accords.
MBS has pushed that the Saudis would need there to be a pathway to Gaza becoming a Palestinian state for them to join the pact now.
But first, the war in Gaza would need to end.
Hamas said Sunday that the group would release the final American hostage, Israeli American Edan Alexander, as part of an effort to reach a ceasefire deal with Israel, which would allow humanitarian aid flow into Gaza.
Israel has refused a ceasefire while negotiations are ongoing and are primed to strike Gaza with more force – using Trump’s trip to the region as a deadline.
Trump sees a ceasefire and moving on from the war as a win – and White House envoy Steve Witkoff has been engaged in negotiations with Qatar, Egypt and Hamas in recent days, Axios reported, in hopes that a new Gaza deal could have been announced ahead of the trip.
Witkoff is also handling the current negotiations with Iran.
Saudi Arabia has also played host for the recent Russia-U.S. talks to negotiate an ending to the war in Ukraine.
While movement has been made on that, the White House said last week that a Trump meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin wouldn’t be happening on the Middle East trip.
Several Arab newspapers have reported that Trump will meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun while on the ground with Saudi.
Reuters reported Sunday that Sharaa – who remains a designated terrorist over his al-Qaeda past – planned to woo the American president by proposing a Trump Tower in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
Sharaa also planned to pitch a detente with Israel and U.S. access to Syria’s oil and gas, if Trump agrees to remove sanctions on the country after the Assad regime was toppled in December.
The White House has yet to confirm these meetings.
Trump will jet to Doha on Wednesday, for a quick 24 hours spent in Qatar, a country that has helped facilitate the Hamas-Israel ceasefires and was a major staging area during the U.S.’s pullout of Afghanistan during the Biden administration.
On Sunday, ABC News reported that during this portion of the trip, Trump would accept a luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar to use as a new Air Force One – as the two Air Force One replacements have been mired in delays and cost overruns.
Trump toured the opulent aircraft when it was parked in West Palm Beach in February.
The plane – which would likely be painted in Trump’s desired color scheme – would be transferred to the Pentagon, to ready it to be used by the president, and then later transferred to Trump’s presidential library foundation.
That means Trump could continue to fly the ‘palace in the sky’ after leaving office.
Ethics experts have raised the alarm about the transaction.
Trump confirmed the deal in a Truth Social post Sunday night.
‘So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane,’ the president wrote. ‘Anybody can do that! The Dems are World Class Losers!!!’
For the Secret Service, however, the president using a plane gifted to him by a foreign government is considered a ‘security nightmare,’ a law enforcement source told CNN.
The president’s final stop will be Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, where the Trump Organization already has one real estate project, with two more in the making.
The White House has yet to release a schedule for the back-half of the trip, but Trump will likely play up UAE’s participation in the Abraham Accords.
