By Andrea Shalal and Maya Gebeily
WASHINGTON/BEIRUT (Reuters) – US President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday said Lebanese-American businessman Massad Boulos will serve as a senior adviser on Arab and Middle East affairs.
Trump made the announcement on True Social. Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany, met several times with Arab American and Muslim leaders during the election.
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It was the second time in recent days that Trump has chosen the father-in-law of one of his children to serve in his administration.
On Saturday, Trump said he had nominated the father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, real estate mogul Charles Kushner, to serve as US ambassador to France.
In recent months, Boulos has urged Mr. Trump to enlist the support of Lebanon and Arab America, even as the Israeli military has backed the fight against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Boulos has strong roots in both countries.
His father and grandfather were both politicians in Lebanon and his father-in-law was a major supporter of the Free Patriotic Movement, a Christian party affiliated with Hezbollah.
His son Michael and Tiffany Trump were married in a lavish ceremony at the Florida Mar-a-Lago Club in November 2022, after entering the White House Rose Garden during Trump’s first term.
Boulos has been cooperating with insiders in Lebanon’s political world, three sources who have spoken to him in recent months say, a rare occurrence in Lebanon, where decades-long rivalries between factions have run deep.
Most notable is his ability to maintain ties with Hezbollah, they say. The Iranian-backed Shi’ite Muslim party holds many seats in Lebanon’s parliament and ministers in the government.
Boulos is a friend of Suleiman Frangieh, a Christian associate of Hezbollah and its representative as president of Lebanon. He is dating the Lebanese Forces Party, an anti-Hezbollah Christian party, sources say, and has ties to independent lawmakers.
Aron Lund, who works at the Century Foundation think tank, said Boulos was put in charge of overseeing Trump’s Middle East policy after playing a small but important role in expanding Trump’s appeal to Arab American and Muslim voters during the campaign.
“Boulos’ Lebanese political past does not provide a real indication of the geostrategic or even national vision, but it shows the ambition and set of political allies that will stand out in Trump’s circle like a sore thumb,” Lund wrote.
MICHIGAN WIN
Boulos, a billionaire with extensive business connections in Nigeria, was born in Lebanon, but moved to Texas as a child, where he attended the University of Houston, earned a law degree and became a US citizen.
His son and Trump’s daughter, whose mother is Trump’s second wife Marla Maples, met on the Greek island of Mykonos, at the club of actress Lindsay Lohan, People Magazine reported in 2022.
Trump’s victory in the Michigan election came in part because of Boulos’ help to dislodge some of the state’s 300,000 Arab Americans and Muslims who overwhelmingly supported Biden in 2020 but opposed Biden’s plans in Israel, Gaza and Lebanon, Trump officials and supporters told Reuters.
“Boulos did a great job in speaking to Muslim voters,” said Rabiul Chowdhury, Trump’s Muslim aide.
Beginning in September, the Trump campaign held weekly meetings in person and via Zoom with many Arab American and Muslim government officials and business leaders.
Boulos has spent weeks on the ground in Michigan, Pennsylvania and other states with large Arab American and Muslim populations, assuring audiences at secret meetings and dinners that showcased his ties to Lebanese Americans that Trump is committed to ending the war in the Middle East.
Trump’s campaign spent tens of millions of dollars in an effort to recruit Arab American and Muslim voters, Boulos told Reuters in an interview shortly after the election.
Mr Trump won endorsements from Muslim imams and the Muslim mayor of Hamtramck, another town near Detroit with a large Arab American population, as well as a large Bangladeshi community, and ruled Iraqi Americans, Albanian Americans and others.
While events on the ground in Lebanon played a role, so did the economy. And conservative Arabs and Muslims were worried about what they saw as the Democrats’ “far-left ideas,” including support for transgender rights, Boulos said.
Boulos met with members of the 150,000 strong Albanian community in Michigan.
WHAT ARE THE THINGS?
A new job could give Boulos a kind of political presence that he could not find in Lebanon. He briefly served in the Lebanese parliament in 2018 alongside Hezbollah representatives, but since then has not been affiliated with any party, Lebanese sources said. He comes from a Greek Orthodox family. In Lebanon’s sectarian powersharing system, that would give him a chance at a top government job at the level of deputy speaker. The position of president – the highest Christian post in the world – is reserved for Maronite Catholics.
Although he used to travel to Lebanon often, he had not visited in the past four years, one of the sources said.
Some people in Lebanon were optimistic about the prospect of friendly relations in Trump’s inner circle even before Sunday’s announcement.
“It’s a good thing – and the hope is that he will work in Lebanon. And Trump is probably the type that makes promises and may be more honest about it than others,” said Hamdi Hawallah, a Lebanese man in his 70s.
“So we have hope for him. These days we hold on to a piece of wood to have hope.”
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal in Washington and Maya Gebeily in Beirut, additional reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Heather Timmons and Alistair Bell)