American presidents have been visiting Saudi Arabia for many years, and the journeys have usually produced memorable moments — some dramatic, others downright odd.
As President Trump returns to Saudi Arabia, here’s a look again at 4 moments from previous presidential journeys to go to leaders of the oil-rich Gulf state.
2022: The Biden Fist Bump
The connection between the US and Saudi Arabia gave the impression to be wilting earlier than President Joseph R. Biden Jr. visited Jeddah in 2022.
Mr. Biden, as a candidate in 2019, had vowed to show Saudi Arabia right into a “pariah” over the killing of the Washington Submit journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which the C.I.A. mentioned had been ordered by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
However as Mr. Biden labored in 2022 to handle oil costs, which spiked after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the president took a special tack. Arriving on the Royal Palace, Mr. Biden, grinning barely, gave the crown prince a fist bump as a bank of cameras rolled.
The Saudi authorities rapidly posted an image of the fist bump on social media. Mr. Biden later advised reporters that he had privately confronted Prince Mohammed in regards to the killing, and that the prince “principally mentioned that he was not personally chargeable for it.”
Again in Washington, Mr. Biden turned impatient when pressed on the fist bump. “Why don’t you guys speak about one thing that issues?” he chided a reporter.
Inside months, Mr. Biden acknowledged that the journey had not produced the surge in Saudi oil manufacturing that he had sought.
2017: Trump and the Orb
It seemed like one thing from a kids’s film.
Throughout a go to to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, early in his first time period, Mr. Trump discovered himself laying hands on a glowing white orb.
Beside him, King Salman of Saudi Arabia and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt additionally positioned their palms on the sphere. A picture of the boys touching the orb — with the primary girl, Melania Trump, wanting on — circulated broadly on social media, with memes multiplying in brief order.
One meme likened the picture to that of Saruman, the “Lord of the Rings” villain, tapping right into a seeing stone.
However the orb in Riyadh was not, it turned out, magical.
The sphere was a translucent globe, apparently ornamental, at a facility stuffed with pc terminals and dedicated to combating extremist ideology.
1974: Nixon Says, ‘We Want Knowledge’
President Richard M. Nixon met a heat reception in Jeddah throughout a five-nation sweep via the Center East within the spring of 1974.
Nixon arrived hoping to encourage the nation to assist cut back oil costs, in accordance with passages of his memoirs revealed by the Richard Nixon Basis.
However he additionally got here with one other aim — pushing Saudi Arabia to make use of its appreciable regional affect to push for peace within the Center East.
In remarks on the State Palace, he emphasised to his hosts that he didn’t come simply to win cheaper oil.
“We are able to use oil, however we want extra, one thing excess of oil,” the president mentioned. “We’d like knowledge.”
1945: Roosevelt Provides a Wheelchair
Although he didn’t journey to Saudi soil, President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with the founding father of Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz al-Saud, on a U.S. warship within the Nice Bitter Lake, a part of the Suez Canal in Egypt.
Roosevelt charmed the king, who struggled to stroll, by presenting him with the gift of a wheelchair.
