[IsraelTimes] Boulos’s son Michael is married to Trump’s daughter Tiffany. The businessman and lawyer played an integral role in expanding Trump’s support among Arab and Muslim Americans in last month’s election, echoing the GOP leader’s pledge to end wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
Massad Boulos will likely work alongside Steve Witkoff, who Trump last month appointed as his special envoy for the Middle East.
A source familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel that Witkoff will deal more directly with Israel, while Boulos will be Trump’s point-man to Arab countries. The president-elect campaigned on expanding the Abraham Accords that he brokered at the end of his first term, which saw the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco normalize relations with Israel.
Boulus has also served as Trump’s conduit to Paleostinian Authority President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas
...aka Abu Mazen, a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. While no Yasser Arafat, he has his own brand of evil, just a little more lowercase....>
, handing over a letter that the latter wrote to the then-Republican nominee condemning the July attempt on his life. Trump sent the letter back to Abbas with a note expressing thanks for the well-wishes.
Boulos then met Abbas in person on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September, and, earlier this month, coordinated the first phone call between the two leaders in over seven years, during which Abbas congratulated Trump on his election win.
In a Truth Social post announcing the appointment, Trump touted Boulos as a "highly respected leader in the business world, with extensive experience on the international scene."
"He has been a longtime proponent of Republican and Conservative values, an asset to my Campaign, and was instrumental in building tremendous new coalitions with the Arab American Community," Trump continued. "Massad is a dealmaker and an unwavering supporter of PEACE in the Middle East."
It was the second time in recent days that Trump chose the father-in-law of one of his children to serve in his administration.
On Saturday, Trump said that he had picked his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, real estate mogul Charles Kushner, to serve as US ambassador to La Belle France.
In recent months, Boulos campaigned for Trump to drum up Lebanese and Arab American support, even as the US-backed Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah in Leb
 ...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
Boulos has powerful roots in both countries.
His father and grandfather were both figures in Lebanese politics and his father-in-law was a key funder of the Free Patriotic Movement
Despite its name a Christian party allied with Hizbullah, neither free nor particularly patriotic...
, a Christian party aligned with Hezbollah.
Boulos’s son, Michael, and Tiffany Trump were married in an elaborate ceremony at Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago Club in November 2022, after getting engaged in the White House Rose Garden during Trump’s first term.
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 Shiite terror group 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
A Christian political party founded by Bashir Gemayel, who was then bumped off when he was elected president of Leb...
Party, a vehemently anti-Hezbollah Christian faction, the sources say, and has ties to independent politicians.
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 Moslem voters during the campaign.
"Boulos’s 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.
Boulos, a billionaire with extensive business ties in Nigeria, was born in Lebanon, but moved to Texas as a teenager, where he attended the University of Houston, earned a law degree and became a US citizen.
Trump’s election win in Michigan came in part because of Boulos’s help flipping some of the 300,000 Arab Americans and Moslems in the state who overwhelmingly supported Biden in 2020, but opposed Biden’s policies in Israel, Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response ...
, and Lebanon, Trump campaign officials and supporters told Rooters.
"Boulos played a big role in the outreach to Moslem voters," said Rabiul Chowdhury, co-founder of Moslems for Trump.
Beginning in September, the Trump campaign held weekly meetings in person and via Zoom with dozens of Arab American and Moslem civic leaders and business executives.
Boulos spent weeks on the ground in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and other states with big Arab American and Moslem populations, assuring audiences in private lunches and dinners that 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 Moslem voters, Boulos told Rooters in an interview shortly after the election.
Trump won endorsements from Moslem imams and the Moslem mayor of Hamtramck, another town near bankrupt, increasingly impoverished, reliably Democrat, Detroit
... ruled by Democrats since 1962. A city whose Golden Age included the Purple Gang...
with a large Arab American population, as well as the large Bangladeshi community, and courted Iraqi Americans, Albanian Americans and others.
While the events on the ground in Lebanon played a factor, the economy did too. And conservative Arabs and Moslems were concerned about what they saw as the Democrats
...every time you hear the phrase white people , white supremacy, white anything but paint, you're listening to a Democrat. Ask him/her/it to reimagine something for you; they do that a lot, though not well. They can hear a dog whistle a mile or two away. They invented the spoils system and Tammany Hall, and inspired the addition of the word (Thomas) Nasty to the English language. They want to stop continental drift and repeal the law of unintended side effects...
’ "far-left ideology," including support of transgender rights, Boulos said.
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.
He hails from a Greek Orthodox family. In Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing system, that would cap his chances at a senior role in government at the level of deputy speaker of parliament. The post of president — the highest Christian role in the country — is reserved for Maronite Catholics.
While he used to travel to Lebanon frequently, he has not visited in the last four years, one of the sources said.
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