By Summary
- Boulos campaigned for Trump to sway Arab American vote.
- He has contacts across political divide in Lebanon.
- Boulos’ son is married to Tiffany Trump, the daughter of Donald Trump.
WASHINGTON/BEIRUT, Dec 1 (AfrikTimes) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced on Sunday that Lebanese-American businessman Massad Boulos would serve as senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs. Trump made the announcement on Truth Social.
Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany, met repeatedly with Arab American and Muslim leaders during Trump’s election campaign. This marked the second time in recent days that Trump selected the father-in-law of one of his children for a position in his administration. On Saturday, Trump announced that he had chosen Charles Kushner, the real estate mogul and father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, to serve as U.S. ambassador to France.
In recent months, Boulos played a key role in bolstering Trump’s support among Lebanese and Arab-American communities, even as the U.S. backed Israel’s military operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Boulos’s strong ties to both Lebanon and the U.S. position him as a notable figure for the role. His father and grandfather were prominent in Lebanese politics, and his father-in-law was a major financial supporter of the Free Patriotic Movement, a Christian party allied with Hezbollah.
His son Michael and Tiffany Trump were married in an elaborate ceremony at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida in November 2022, after getting engaged in the White House Rose Garden during Trump’s first term.
MANHATTAN, NY – SEP 4 : Dr. Massad Boulos, Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law, sits for a portrait at the Wall Street Hotel in New York on Sep 4, 2024. (Photo by Jeenah Moon for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Boulos has been in touch with interlocutors across Lebanon’s multipolar political world, three sources who spoke to him in recent months say, a rare feat in Lebanon, where decades-old rivalries between factions run deep. Particularly notable is his ability to maintain relations with Hezbollah, they say.
The Iranian-backed Shi’ite Muslim party has a large number of seats in Lebanon’s parliament and ministers in the government. Boulos is a friend of Suleiman Frangieh, a Christian ally of Hezbollah and its candidate for Lebanon’s presidency. He is also in touch with the Lebanese Forces Party, a vehemently anti-Hezbollah Christian faction, the sources say and has ties to independent lawmakers.
Aron Lund, a fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, said Boulos was well-placed to influence Trump’s Middle East policy after playing a small but significant role in expanding Trump’s appeal to Arab American and Muslim voters during the campaign.
“Boulos’ Lebanese political past gives no real indication of a geostrategic or even national vision, but it demonstrates ambition and a set of political allies that will stand out in Trump’s circle like a sore thumb,” Lund wrote.
Eric Trump, Tiffany Trump and Michael Boulos, Washington, D.C., August 27, 2020. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque.
MICHIGAN WIN
Massad Boulos, a billionaire with extensive business ties to Nigeria, was born in Lebanon but moved to Texas as a teenager. There, he attended the University of Houston, earned a law degree, and eventually became a U.S. citizen.
Boulos’s son, Michael, and Trump’s daughter Tiffany—whose mother is Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples—met on the Greek island of Mykonos, at actor Lindsay Lohan’s club, People magazine reported in 2022.
Trump’s election win in Michigan came in part due to Boulos’ help in flipping some of the 300,000 Arab Americans and Muslims in the state, who had overwhelmingly supported Biden in 2020 but opposed his policies on Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon, according to Trump campaign officials and supporters.
Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump embraces Tiffany Trump as Lara Trump, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr look on at his campaign rally, at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., November 4, 2024.
“Boulos played a big role in the outreach to Muslim voters,” said Rabiul Chowdhury, co-founder of Muslims for Trump.
Beginning in September, the Trump campaign held weekly meetings, both in person and via Zoom, with dozens of Arab American and Muslim civic leaders and business executives. Boulos spent weeks on the ground in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and other states with large Arab American and Muslim populations, assuring audiences at private lunches and dinners—where he tapped his own connections to Lebanese American businessmen—that Trump was committed to ending the wars in the Middle East.
The Trump campaign spent tens of millions of dollars on the effort to mobilize Arab American and Muslim voters, Boulos told Reuters in an interview shortly after the election.
Trump’s outreach efforts included endorsements from Muslim imams, the Muslim mayor of Hamtramck—a Detroit suburb with a sizable Arab American population—and members of the Bangladeshi community. The campaign also actively courted Iraqi Americans, Albanian Americans, and others.
Lebanese American Albert Abbas, left, is seen with Trump campaign advisor Massad Boulos, center, and former President Donald Trump at Great Commoner restaurant in Dearborn, Michigan, on 1 November 2024 (Supplied)
While the events on the ground in Lebanon played a factor, the economy did too. And conservative Arabs and Muslims were concerned about what they saw as the Democrats’ “far left ideology,” including support of transgender rights, Boulos said.
Boulos also met with representatives of Michigan’s 150,000-strong Albanian community, further broadening Trump’s appeal among diverse ethnic and religious groups.
POLITICAL AMBITIONS?
The new role could offer Boulos the kind of political clout he could not achieve in Lebanon. He had a brief run for Lebanon’s parliament in 2018 alongside pro-Hezbollah candidates, but since then he has not consistently aligned himself with any particular party, sources in Lebanon said.
Boulos comes from a Greek Orthodox family, which, under Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing system, limits his prospects for senior government roles to positions like deputy speaker of parliament. The presidency—the most senior position available to Christians—is reserved exclusively for Maronite Catholics.
Rola Makki, of Dearborn, vice president of outreach for the Michigan GOP, was at a Donald Trump rally on Feb. 17, 2024, in Waterford, Michigan, wearing a red pullover that read in white letters: ‘Arab Americans for Trump.’ People waited in lines for hours outside the event as temperatures held in the mid-20s and a strong wind cut through the crowd.
While Boulos was once a frequent visitor to Lebanon, he has not visited in the last four years, one of the sources said.
Even before the Sunday announcement of his appointment, some in Lebanon expressed hope about having someone with Lebanese roots in Trump’s inner circle.
“It’s a nice thing – and hopefully he will work for Lebanon. And Trump maybe is of the type who makes a promise and could possibly be more loyal to it than others,” said Hamdi Hawallah, a Lebanese man in his late 70s.
“So we’re optimistic about him. These days we hold on to a piece of driftwood just to be optimistic.”
Smoke rises from the smoldering rubble as people gather at the scene of Israeli air strikes in the Haret Hreik neighborhood of Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sept. 27, 2024. | Ibrahim Amro/AFP via Getty Images.
