President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly tapped Massad Boulos, the Lebanese-American father-in-law of Trump’s daughter, Tiffany, to lead U.S. negotiations with Lebanon to end the war between Hezbollah and Israel.
Boulos is the father of Michael Boulous, who married Tiffany Trump in 2022. She is currently pregnant with the couple’s first child. The Boulos family has Christian Arab roots and is part of a global business empire.
The Times of Israel reported:
Lebanese-American businessman and Donald Trump surrogate Massad Boulos revealed in a recent interview days before the election that he will serve as the US point man for Lebanon in the incoming administration, tasked with negotiating with Beirut to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
“I will be responsible for negotiating with the Lebanese side in order to reach an agreement, and Trump will appoint someone familiar with the Israeli file to negotiate with the Israelis,” Boulos told the Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed in what appears to be one of the first revelations regarding now President-elect Trump’s personnel.
Boulos joined the Trump inner circle after his son Michael married the former president’s daughter Tiffany in 2022. He helped Trump make significant inroads in the Arab American in yesterday’s election.
Trump has a history of tapping relatives and friends for diplomatic roles — often with great success, as with his own son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who helped forge the Abraham Accords and the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Asked to respond on Thursday, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said that he had not seen reports of Boulos’s involvement, but said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looked forward to working with whomever the new administration appoints. Mencer also described a congratulatory phone call Wednesday between Netanyahu and Trump as the expression of “two great democratic nations once again reaffirming their partnership.”
Asked about reports that Trump wanted Israel to wrap up the war before the new president takes office, Mencer replied: “The war will continue … until all of our goals are met. It is Hamas that is holding our hostages.”
He added that Israel nonetheless looked forward to working with President-elect Trump in finding ways to bring about peace: “Israel wants peace. We search for peace … President-elect Trump, we would very much welcome his efforts, as he has done in the past, he has an excellent track record in normalizing this country’s relations with its neighbors.”
The Biden administration has relied on professional diplomats, often to poor effect. The current U.S. envoy to Lebanon, Amos Hochstein, pushed Israel to give away offshore gas fields to Lebanon in a 2022 deal that was meant to dissuade Hezbollah from future wars. That failed, and Israel is thinking about abrogating the deal altogether.
Hochstein also failed to craft a deal to end hostilities between Hezbollah and Lebanon that have exploded into war.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
