President Trump with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia in Riyadh on Tuesday.
Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

‘He Gets Us’: Trump Makes a Splash in Saudi Arabia

Many Saudis say they are big fans of President Trump, calling him a “straight shooter” who shares their values. Others were not impressed.

by · NY Times

As he waited for President Trump to arrive in a gilded ballroom in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, Mohammad Bahareth was beaming.

The “Trump 2028” cap perched on his head stood out in the crowd, where Saudi men in traditional red-and-white checkered headdresses mingled with Americans in suits.

Mr. Bahareth, a Saudi self-help influencer, used to be reluctant to step into the spotlight — until, he said, Mr. Trump’s “ruthless pragmatism” and bold confidence inspired him. Now, he has 1.5 million followers on Instagram, owns a Tesla and considers himself a proud Trump supporter.

“He says what’s on his mind, and he doesn’t care about what people think,” Mr. Bahareth said on Tuesday, when Mr. Trump addressed a Saudi-U.S. business forum during a state visit to Riyadh. “Trump is about being yourself.”

Mr. Bahareth, 40, is not the only Saudi enamored of the American 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.

Citizens of the conservative Islamic kingdom say that Mr. Trump feels familiar to them. 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.

“From way back, I feel like he gets us,” said Fahad al-Yafei, 30, a gold salesman in Riyadh’s bustling Taibah market. “There’s affection.”

Mr. al-Yafei said he approved of Mr. Trump’s Middle East policy, including the removal of sanctions on Syria and his rhetoric about ending wars. But he also liked his domestic policy, citing what he believed were shared values.

“The best thing he did is he stopped homosexuals,” he said.

The authoritarian kingdom lacks reliable opinion polling, so it is impossible to accurately determine what proportion of Saudis has positive views of Mr. Trump. Cultural norms favor public conformity, and Prince Mohammed has intensified political repression while expanding social freedoms. As a result, many Saudis are reluctant to share their true views in public.

Some who did expressed a decidedly unfavorable view of the president.

Abdullah Alaoudh, senior director for countering authoritarianism at the Washington-based Middle East Democracy Center and the son of a prominent cleric imprisoned in Saudi Arabia, castigated Mr. Trump for what he described as “whitewashing” the reputation of Prince Mohammed, who he said was “an authoritarian leader who has brutally silenced all dissent.” Mr. Alaoudh lives outside the kingdom.

Still, the fondness professed by many Saudis for Mr. Trump appeared genuine.

“He’s the type of man who’s a straight shooter — he doesn’t go this way and that way,” said Ali Abu-Raddad, 60, a men’s clothing salesman in Riyadh’s Souk Al Zal.

“His visit was so good that he’s ready to come to the kingdom every month or two,” Mr. Abu-Raddad joked, sipping tea in a quiet corner of the market.

Muzna al-Muzaini, a women’s clothing vendor, said that she was overjoyed with Mr. Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on Syria, calling it a “brave step.”

Nearby, tourists shopped for gold jewelry — a sign of how much Saudi Arabia has changed since Mr. Trump visited in 2017, during his first term. Men on electric scooters zoomed past a square where prisoners used to be beheaded, now a few blocks away from a gleaming new metro station. And a specialty coffee shop served matcha and cold brew with a menu in Chinese, English and Arabic.

Inside, as a song by an acclaimed Saudi musician played — a decade ago, music was effectively forbidden in public — Nawaf al-Omar, 21, said that as much as Saudi Arabia had changed over the past eight years, so had Mr. Trump.

Before, he said, “he was really racist.” But now “I think he knows his interests,” he added, explaining that he thought the president’s Middle East policy was much better in his second term.

Hussain Saleh, 23, a barista in the cafe, was less impressed.

“I mean, politically, he’s better than his competitors, maybe, but economically, in America, he’s lost,” he said, criticizing Mr. Trump’s tariff policies.

“Americans always think they’re the strongest, but in the coming period, it won’t be like this,” Mr. Saleh said, predicting that the world’s superpower was on its way out.

Half an hour’s drive north, Abdulraheem al-Buluwi, a 22-year-old college student, was hanging out beside a row of high-end cafes guarded by bouncers in black suits.

He, like Mr. Saleh, said he was not a fan of Mr. Trump’s economic policies.

“I personally feel like he’s harmed the people of America,” Mr. al-Buluwi said. Any positive steps Mr. Trump took in the Middle East, he added, were simply “acting in his interests.”

Fahad al-Sahali, 17, said he did not like Mr. Trump for a simpler reason: “He’s American. That’s it.”

“I hate America, all of it, honestly,” Mr. al-Sahali said. “The culture and the politics. The Americans are harming Arabs, Palestine, Syria. They destroyed Iraq.”

Ms. al-Muzaini, though, insisted that Mr. Trump was a “dear guest in his second country,” echoing the warm hospitality that is central to Saudi culture.

Like many other Saudis, Ms. al-Muzaini, who covers her face with a black niqab, said she was not particularly bothered by Mr. Trump’s negative remarks about Islam and Muslims — or the fact that during his first term he had barred citizens of several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

“We only deal with what’s in front of us,” she said. “What we see is that he came and he appreciated us, and his visit is valued. If he didn’t want to, he wouldn’t visit us.”

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