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A home away from home: Why Trump wishes America was more like the Gulf

President Donald Trump speaks during the Saudi-U.S. investment forum at the King Abdul Aziz International Conference Center in Riyadh on May 13, 2025. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

President Donald Trump speaks during the Saudi-U.S. investment forum at the King Abdul Aziz International Conference Center in Riyadh on May 13, 2025. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

CNN — President Donald Trump would plainly like America to be more like the Gulf states he’s touring on the first big foreign trip of his new term.
 
He got a purple-carpeted welcome fit for a king in Saudi Arabia from Mohammed bin Salman, the ruthless and modernizing crown prince, that outstripped the showers of personal adulation from his top officials back home. More spectacle is on tap in Qatar Wednesday after Trump lands in his aging Air Force One jet – rather than the newer 747-8 his hosts want to gift him.
 
“We’ve launched the Golden Age of America,” Trump said in a major speech in Riyadh. “The Golden Age of the Middle East can proceed right alongside of us.”
 
His trip, which also includes a stop in the United Arab Emirates, is already a window into his second term.
 
The soliciting of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign investment shows “America first” is as much an economic strategy as a foreign policy. And as Trump palled around with MBS, as the Saudi crown prince is widely known, it was clear the president is right at home with rich authoritarian leaders who head nations where the line between politics and personal enrichment is blurred. No one in Riyadh was complaining that his visit is also serving as a tacit endorsement of business deals his sons have clinched in countries along his route.
 
But Trump’s lavishing of attention on Gulf states is also highlighting the region’s rise to geopolitical and economic might. The financial muscle of oil-rich Saudis, Qataris and Emiratis is engineering a power shift from the West to the East.

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Author: Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

Source: CNN:::

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