No one should be surprised by Trump's love-in with Middle East monarchs
Washington: While Donald Trump was shaking hands in the Gulf states – 'more hands than any human being is capable of doing', he said – back home in Washington, the US Department of Agriculture was marking its 163rd birthday.
Straddling the great neoclassical columns of the Jamie L. Whitten building are two giant banners: one of president Abraham Lincoln, who created the agency in 1862, and another of – no prize for guessing – Trump.
It's difficult to get away from the US president these days. Whether it's the front page of the newspaper, the board of the Kennedy Centre or the facade of downtown buildings, he is everywhere. (Portraying Trump on Saturday Night Live last weekend, James Austin Johnson entered the stage and said: 'Hello, it's me again, invading all aspects of your life'.)
The banner, which appeared on Wednesday morning, would not have been out of place in one of the Middle East monarchies the president was visiting – nor, as some commentators noted, in the dictatorship of North Korea.
No one should be surprised by Trump's Gulf love-in. From the disdain for democratic checks to a fondness for ostentatious wealth and the mixing of business with politics – not to mention public and private benefit – they are his people, through and through.
Indeed, international affairs professor Gregory Gause says when Trump began sending his son-in-law Jared Kushner to handle Middle East peace talks during his first term, Gulf states thought: 'Finally, an American government we can understand.'
This trip took the president to Riyadh, Doha and Abu Dhabi. At each stop, the ceremonies were lavish, the pleasantries superlative and the 'deals' eye-watering: $US600 billion ($937 billion) from Saudi Arabia, an 'economic exchange' with Qatar supposedly worth $US1.2 trillion and another $US200 billion squeezed from the United Arab Emirates.
Of course, these are not deals – they are memoranda of understanding which may one day yield a deal.
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