Who is Lebanese-American billionaire businessman Massad Boulos, Trump’s pick for Mideast adviser?

Boulos has used his strong ties within Arab-American community to sway support for Trump

Dubai: President-elect Donald Trump announced on Sunday that Lebanese-American billionaire businessman Massad Boulos would serve as senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs.

Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany, had been a key figure during the campaign, meeting with Arab-American and Muslim leaders to boost Trump’s appeal among these communities, a demographic traditionally less aligned with the Republican Party.

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Boulos has leveraged his deep connections within the Arab-American community to shift support toward Trump, especially in battleground states like Michigan, where frustration with the Biden administration’s handling of Palestinian and Lebanese issues has been growing.

His personal connection to Trump, through his son Michael Boulos’s marriage to Tiffany, adds a unique dimension to his political advocacy.

Trump often promised on the campaign trail to bring a swift end to the wars in Gaza, Ukraine and elsewhere, without specifying how he would do so.

Speaking to UK-based broadcaster Sky News in October, Boulos said it was important to finish the war “quickly.”

“What do we mean by finishing it quickly is, I mean, you have some military targets that you have to accomplish, which is to get rid of the Hamas infrastructure and ability to launch new attacks and so on,” he said.

“Let’s move to peace, and let’s move to rebuilding Gaza and rebuilding Lebanon,” he added.

“We want Gaza to be prosperous. We want the Palestinian people to be prosperous, to live in peace, to live in harmony, side by side with the Israelis and full security on both sides.”

Influential Lebanese family

A naturalised US citizen and University of Houston law graduate, Boulos hails from an influential Lebanese family and currently serves as CEO of Boulos Enterprises. He hails from a Greek Orthodox family.

He has long-standing ties with key Arab-American figures, particularly in Michigan, which boasts a diverse Arab-American population of Yemeni, Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese and Egyptian descent.

Boulos’s efforts in Michigan played a critical role in Trump’s victory in the state, flipping some of its 300,000 Arab-American and Muslim voters who had supported Biden in 2020 but were disillusioned by his policies on Israel, Gaza and Lebanon. In a pre-election interview, Boulos described spending months engaging with Michigan’s Arab-American community.

“I’ve probably spent five or six months with them,” he said, reflecting on his outreach efforts. “The relationship is based on trust.”

Ties to influential Christian Lebanese parties

Boulos’s connections extend beyond the US to Lebanon, where his family has ties to influential Christian Lebanese parties, including the Marada Movement and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), both of which maintain political alliances with Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group with close ties to Iran.

Despite his personal connections to Lebanon’s complex political landscape, Boulos has denied any ambitions for a Lebanese parliamentary seat, though he did run for office in 2009 and again in 2018. Boulos’s influence in the Arab-American community aligns with his broader goal of steering conservative Arabs and Muslims away from the Democratic Party.

He has spent over three decades as a lifelong Republican and sees expanding his role in Trump’s administration as an opportunity to further engage Arab-American communities. The marriage of his son Michael to Tiffany Trump in 2022 — at a lavish ceremony in Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago Club — has only strengthened Boulos’s position within the Trump family’s orbit.

Fostering relationships

​​​​​​Before the election, Boulos’s efforts included weekly meetings with Arab-American and Muslim leaders in key states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, and others with large Arab-American populations.

He played a major role in fostering relationships with Muslim voters, including endorsements from imams and the Muslim mayor of Hamtramck, a Detroit suburb with a significant Arab-American population. Boulos’s outreach strategy centred around private events with business leaders and community influencers, assuring them that Trump was committed to ending US involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts.

“We’re building trust with these communities,” Boulos said. While his frequent trips to Lebanon have become less regular in recent years, the Lebanese community, particularly in Lebanon, has expressed optimism about his new role. “It’s a nice thing. Hopefully, he will work for Lebanon,” said Hamdi Hawallah, a Lebanese man in his late 70s. “We hold on to a piece of driftwood just to be optimistic,” he told Reuters.