Trump receives a royal welcome in Saudi Arabia

President Trump arrives in Saudi Arabia
(Image credit: Mandel Ngan/Getty Images)

President Trump arrived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, around 10 a.m. local time on Saturday, beginning his first tour abroad since taking office.

His arrival was fêted with a brass band, cannon booms, and jets painting the sky with red, white, and blue smoke. Saudi King Salman was on the tarmac to greet the president and first lady Melania Trump, who, like former first lady Michelle Obama, did not cover her hair in the traditional Saudi style. President Trump's daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, join him on the trip, as do many senior members of the White House staff.

On Sunday, Trump is due to give a speech on the subject of Islam. A leaked draft of the speech the White House says is authentic but not finalized has Trump urging Arab leaders to "drive out the terrorists from your places of worship," casting the war on terror as a "battle between good and evil." The draft does not include "radical Islamic terrorism," a phrase Trump on the campaign trail attacked Democrats for failing to speak.

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After his Saudi stay, Trump will visit Israel, Italy, and Belgium. The agenda includes the NATO and G7 summits; meetings with world leaders; and tours of historical landmarks.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.