Trump pulling out all the stops to welcome Saudi crown prince for first White House visit since Khashoggi killing

President Donald Trump is planning to receive Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House this week with all the trappings of a state visit, sources familiar with the matter said, including a welcome ceremony in the morning and a formal dinner in the evening.

“We’re more than meeting,” Trump said late Friday as he flew to Florida for the weekend. “We’re honoring Saudi Arabia, the Crown Prince.”

While the White House has decided to pull out all the stops, the visit cannot be classified as an official state visit as Prince bin Salman is not Saudi Arabia’s head of state. That position is occupied by his 89-year-old father, King Salman. But the crown prince has assumed almost all day-to-day responsibility for ruling the kingdom, and attends summits and other diplomatic engagements as the country’s leader.

The meetings Tuesday will mark Prince bin Salman’s first visit to the White House in more than seven years. Trump has worked to cultivate a close relationship with the kingdom’s de facto ruler in the hopes he will decide to establish diplomatic ties with Israel, which would be a major advancement of the president’s signature Abraham Accords — a longtime goal of the president’s.

“The Abraham Accords will be a part we’re going to be discussing,” Trump said Friday. “I hope that Saudi Arabia will be going into the Abraham Accords fairly shortly.”

The prince last visited Washington in 2018, months before the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Turkey. A CIA assessment released afterward found the prince had likely ordered the assassination, though he has long denied any involvement.

Trump never entirely cut off ties with the crown prince during his first term, though he wasn’t invited back to the White House. Even Trump’s successor President Joe Biden, who vowed as a candidate to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” for its human rights record, visited Riyadh while in office and fist bumped Prince bin Salman.

With Tuesday’s visit, any semblance of a rupture in US-Saudi ties appears to have disappeared. The plans include a welcome ceremony involving military bands, a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office and a black-tie dinner in the evening.

The first tranche of invitations has been sent out and the guest list includes largely chief executives, as well as lawmakers and governors — some of whom Trump himself called to invite to the dinner, people familiar with the plans said. The event will be coordinated by first lady Melania Trump, as all state visits are planned through the first lady’s office.

Trump has yet to hold a state visit in his second term, which is typically put on as a sign of friendship and to display the close relationship the US shares with its allies, during his second term. Trump broke with tradition during his first administration by opting not to hold a state dinner during his first year in office, though he went on to host the president of France and prime minister of Australia in 2018 and 2019 respectively.