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intuitive understanding of family, ceremony, and ritual and propriety, truly scored. The foreign policy establishment had a long and well-honed relationship with MBS’s rival, the crown prince, Mohammed bin Nayef (MBN). Key NSA and State Department figures were alarmed that Kushner’s discussions and fast-advancing relationship with MBS would send a dangerous message to MBN. And of course it did. The foreign policy people believed Kushner was being led by MBS, whose real views were entirely untested. The Kushner view was either, naively, that he wasn’t being led, or, with the confidence of a thirty-six-year-old assuming the new prerogatives of the man in charge, that he didn’t care: let’s embrace anybody who will embrace us. The Kushner/MBS plan that emerged was straightforward in a way that foreign policy usually isn’t: If you give us what we want, we’ll give you what you want. On MBS’s assurance that he would deliver some seriously good news, he was invited to visit the White House in March. (The Saudis arrived with a big delegation, but they were received at the White House by only the president’s small circle—and the Saudis took particular note that Trump ordered Priebus to jump up and fetch him things during the meeting.) The two large men, the older Trump and much younger MBS—both charmers, flatterers, and country club jokers, each in their way—egrandly hit it off. It was an aggressive bit of diplomacy. MBS was using this Trump embrace as part of his own power play in the kingdom. And the Trump White House, ever denying this was the case, let him. In return, MBS offered a basket of deals and announcements that would coincide with a scheduled presidential visit to Saudi Arabia—Trump’s first trip abroad. Trump would get a “win.” Planned before the Comey firing and Mueller hiring, the trip had State Department professionals alarmed. The itinerary—May 19 to May 27—was too long for any president, particularly such an untested and untutored one. (Trump himself, full of phobias about travel and unfamiliar locations, had been grumbling about the burdens of the trip.) But coming immediately after Comey and Mueller it was a get-out-of-Dodge godsend. There couldn’t have been a better time to be making headlines far from Washington. A road trip could transform everything. Almost the entire West Wing, along with State Department and National Security staff, was on board for the trip: Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus, Stephen Bannon, Gary Cohn, Dina Powell, Hope Hicks, Sean Spicer, Stephen Miller, Joe Hagin, Rex Tillerson, and Michael Anton. Also included were Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy press secretary; Dan Scavino, the administration’s social media director; Keith Schiller, the president’s personal security adviser; and Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary. (Ross was widely ridiculed for never missing an Air Force One opportunity—as Bannon put it, “Wilbur is Zelig, every time you turn around he’s in a picture.”) This trip and the robust American delegation was the antidote, and alternate universe to the Mueller appointment. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020056