After 16 months in the office, President Donald Trump is still a big enigma to other world leaders, and not in a good way. Even a bigger problem is that his moves are often so out of the book that most of his closest associates don’t have a clue what will happen next day let alone the next month. Some of the biggest u-turns made by the POTUS were related to foreign policy, and that includes his sudden shift from longtime allies Qatar.
This small, yet oil-rich Middle East country, is the host of one of the U.S. bases which have Air Force Central Command and about 10,000 American troops set there. The big turn came roughly a year ago when Trump, just like POTUS always does, used his Twitter account to conduct his job and give statements about what is next to come. In that tweet, he pointed to Qatar as one of the funders of terrorism which was a big surprise for the entire world but also for some high officials of the US government like Defense Secretary James Mattis and now ex-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
After the tweet, it seemed like Trump was supporting Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as they imposed a political and economic blockade. It is pretty hard to explain these moves made by POTUS, but a few months later, few new things emerged, and we got a better insight into the whole situation.
If you think that now comes the part where we will say something that will completely change your mind about a decision that was made and justify those moves, we will have to disappoint you. Possibly the main reason for a 180-shift towards Qatar was the meeting between Trump’s son-in-law Jared and Qatar officials about possible them funding bailout of 666 Fifth Ave. Because of the debt related to this skyscraper, it is possible that the Kushner family real estate empire will collapse. Unfortunate for all sides in this deal, Qataris didn’t agree with the proposal.
All this happened during the last spring, and about a year later things are starting to look a lot better for Qatar. You might think that it is because US administration has been persuaded that they have no ties to terrorists, like Trump previously claimed, but the truth might be slightly different.
It has been reported that the Gulf state has decided to help Kushner with 666 Fifth Ave problem. Even all this is done under a veil of secrecy, information leaked point out that a firm called Brookfield Asset Management is making a deal regarding the aforementioned skyscraper. This might not be anything strange if the company that will help Kushner isn’t heavily backed by Qatari money.
Is the US for sale? Did Trump offer it to the highest bidder?
Source: philly.com