President Trump was greeted like royalty during his four-day trip to the Middle East.
There were opulent palaces, fighter jet escorts, a parade of camels and much more.
It was exactly the kind of pomp that makes Trump, with his love of a gold-plated lifestyle, envious.
His focus, he said, was on securing money and deals for the United States. The Gulf states obliged, trying to curry favor with the president through investments, arms deals and buying Boeing planes while giving a very lavish one away.
Here are five takeaways from Trump's trip:
1. A trip that played to Trump's ego
Trump is someone who values fealty, power and glitz. He has gotten the fealty from staff and Cabinet appointees in this second term. He has ogled at the power of autocrats, like Viktor Orban of Hungary and Russia's Vladimir Putin. He spends lots of time at his glitzy Palm Beach, Fla. home, Mar-a-lago, and redecorated the Oval Office with lots of gold.
"You see the new and improved Oval Office," Trump boasted earlier this month during a meeting with Canada's new prime minister, Mark Carney. "As it becomes more and more beautiful with love, you know, we handle it with great love and 24-karat gold — that always helps, too."
He got much the same during this trip to the Middle East — genuflecting, leaders who rule with iron fists and marbled, golden glamour.
2. A trip focused on deals, but overshadowed by a plane
There were lots of financial agreements struck between the United States, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, including: Qatar's state-backed airline buying Boeing jets, Qatar taking billions in U.S. arms, UAE building an artificial intelligence campus, Saudi Arabia investing in medical and military research, as well as other deals on oil.
But Qatar's gift to Trump of a 747 to replace Air Force One has been the thing that has gotten the most attention and drawn criticism — for different reasons — left, right and MAGA.
Described as a "flying palace" worth some $400 million, Trump is enamored with the jet. He called it a great "gesture," noted, "I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer" and said: "I could be a stupid person, saying, 'No, we don't want a free, very expensive airplane.'"
Trump called it a gift to the Defense Department, but it's not a plane that would be sticking around after Trump leaves office. He said it would be decommissioned and sent to his presidential library.
There are already newly designed Air Force One jets that Boeing is building, but Trump has been frustrated with delays.
"I've been doing this for four days," Trump said on his last day of the trip. "I leave now and get onto a 42-year-old Boeing. But new ones are coming, new ones are coming."
3. Even many Republicans think accepting the plane would be a bad idea
Accepting the plane would seem to violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution that bars such gifts from foreign leaders and could also only get a couple years of use.
It would also need to be refurbished to check for listening devices, as well as broken down and put back together to meet the security requirements of a presidential aircraft. That could take years and has a significant additional cost.
Trump may just ignore all that and fly it anyway — above strenuous objections even from within his own party.
"There are lots of issues around that that will attract serious questions," Senate Republican leader John Thune of South Dakota told reporters of the plane.
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D. used an ancient metaphor on CNN, warning against the gift. "It seems to me the Greeks had something like that a long, long time ago," he said, "and somebody happened to bring a golden horse inside of a community."
The ever-colorful Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana delivered this on Fox News: "I trust Qatar like I trust a rest stop bathroom. … With those guys, trust in God, but tie up your camel."
Trump is coming back from his trip facing lots of pushback for many reasons about the gift, including for wanting to accept a $400 million plane while urging doll-and-pencil austerity on other Americans.
4. Trump got what he wanted — without any public conversations about democracy or human rights
Normally, American presidents who visit the Middle East talk of forging new relationships, but also are closely watched for how they talk about encouraging democracy. Trump, though, talked about a Middle East he sees as evolving beyond "tired divisions" and "defined by commerce not chaos," "technology not terrorism."
"The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called nation-builders, neocons or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Kabul, Baghdad, so many other cities," Trump contended in remarks from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
"Instead, the birth of a modern Middle East has been brought by the people of the region themselves. The people that are right here, the people that have lived here all their lives, developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions and charting your own destinies in your own way," Trump continued. It's really incredible what you've done."
Trump's reductive and sanitized version of the region ignores, for example, the "sportswashing" of countries like Qatar, which won the right to host the 2022 FIFA soccer World Cup, through bribes, according to the U.S. government. It also built stadiums with international workers that saw dangerous working conditions and deaths.
It ignores the UAE trying to show itself as progressive on the world stage, while suppressing dissent and imprisoning dissidents, as well as its treatment of migrant workers and more.
It ignores that a Washington Post columnist disappeared from a Saudi embassy in Turkey. It was later discovered he had been killed in a gruesome attack that U.S. intelligence says was ordered by the country's de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman.
That's to say nothing of women's rights, the lack of free elections and concentrations of wealth passed down through a select few royal families.
For Trump, it seems that none of that matters. It's transactions over principle, a pivot away from American moral leadership.
Taking a shot at former presidents, Trump said, "In recent years, far too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it's our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use US policy to dispense justice for their sins."
5. The trip's focus was deals — with a little learned about his stances on Syria, Iran, Gaza and Ukraine
Trump was on this trip to get signatures on the dotted line at the bottom of the page. But it was impossible to totally escape some of the major international flashpoints.
He made news by lifting sanctions against Syria that have been in place for decades. He gripped and grinned with the country's new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, someone who until recently had a $10 million bounty on his head for his arrest by the United States for his past association with Al Qaeda.
Though Trump was critical of past American presidents, who have gauged foreign leaders by looking into their "soul" — a reference to George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin — Trump heaped praise on Syria's new leader.
He judged him to be "attractive" and "tough" with a "very strong past. Fighter."
"He's got a real shot at holding it together," Trump surmised. "He's a real leader. He led a charge, and he's pretty amazing."
On Iran, Trump continued to be eager to forge a nuclear deal, saying the U.S. was "in very serious negotiations with Iran for long-term peace." He added, "It'll be taken care of 100%, it'll be done nicely or not nicely and the not nicely is not a good thing for them. We're talking to them and I think they've come a long way."
Publicly, there was no serious in-depth discussion of Gaza, and Trump again floated the idea of the U.S. taking over the strip and making it a "freedom zone." But it also seemed that Gulf leaders may have said something behind closed doors, because Trump noted, "We have to help also out the Palestinians. You know, a lot of people are starving in Gaza, so we have to look at both sides."
Trump also talked about the Ukraine-Russia talks taking place in Turkey. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Turkey, Trump wanted to attend, but Putin was a no-show. Not only that, but Russia sent a low-level diplomatic delegation.
Russia watchers see what Putin is doing as another delay tactic, as he continues to try and advance in Ukraine.
At some point, Trump has to make the choice — whether he will continue this dance with Putin or if he loses patience.
The fact is Trump made a lot of big promises about ending the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, but has so far not been able to deliver. He's running into some big personalities with Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, so far, are not bending to Trump's will.
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