Tiffany Trump’s husband Michael Boulos and his Lebanese billionaire father are helping Arab-Americans root for Donald Trump, using their backgrounds to woo the voting bloc enraged by Joe Biden to support his Republican rival.
Boulous and his father Massad Boulos joined former Trump Ambassador Ric Grenell on Tuesday night at a meeting with Arab-Americans in Michigan to make the case for the former president.
They each addressed the crowd of about 40 Arab-American activists from different backgrounds.
“They talked about the elections and the need for unity,” Sam Asaad Hanna, a Syrian-American activist based in Texas, told DailyMail.com. “The focus was on the upcoming elections and they focused on their Middle Eastern backgrounds.”
Hanna, who attended the two-and-a-half-hour meeting, said attendees asked for more such events and that Michael was open to attending more. Additional meetings are planned in other theaters.
Tiffany Trump and Michael Boulous in Italy in July 2023
The Boulos family is Lebanese, but Michael was born in Houston and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, where his father has various business interests.
Massad Boulos was involved in politics in Nigeria. He stood as a candidate for the 2018 parliamentary elections before withdrawing his nomination.
The family is now focusing on their business interests in the African country.
Boulos Enterprises and SCOA Nigeria is a multi-billion dollar conglomerate that deals in vehicles, equipment, retail and construction.
But they are enthusiastic supporters of Donald Trump.
After Michael and Tiffany got engaged in 2021, Massad Boulous told DailyMail.com that Trump is “the best president in recent American history; and the one with by far the greatest achievements.’
Boulos, along with his wife Tiffany, serves as Florida’s delegate to the Republican National Committee meeting in July. Tiffany increased her involvement in the campaign during the last election cycle by speaking at the 2020 convention.
The couple lives in Miami, not far from Tiffany’s half-siblings Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner and Don Jr. and his fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle.
Biden is losing support among Arab-American voters because of his support for Israel in the war in the Middle East. The voting bloc is essential in key battleground states like Michigan.
A New York Times/Siena College poll last week showed Trump leading Biden 57%-25% among Arab and Muslim voters in five battleground states. It’s a dramatic turnaround from four years ago, when Biden won the same group 56%-35%.
Biden won Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary in February, but more than 100,000 Democratic primary voters in Michigan cast their votes as “uncommitted,” which was enough to pick up two delegates. Many of those disenfranchised voters were Arab-Americans.
After Michael and Tiffany got engaged in 2021, Massad Boulous – seen above with son Michael – told DailyMail.com that Trump is “the best president in recent American history; and the one with by far the greatest achievements’
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators protest as President Joe Biden attends the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Detroit, Michigan this weekend
The private dinner on Tuesday evening was held in Oakland Hills, Michigan, and hosted by Grenell and Yahya Basha, a Syrian-American doctor who is politically active.
Grenell is not formally part of the Trump campaign but is considered a candidate for a top national security post if Trump wins the November election.
The Trump campaign told DailyMail.com that “the meeting was not requested, sanctioned or authorized on behalf of the campaign.”
“However, the campaign recognizes that Biden’s failed Middle East policy has brought death, chaos and war to the region. That failure prompted tens of thousands of Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in Michigan’s recent primary. The campaign has and will continue to communicate with those voters and remind them that President Trump’s policies in the Middle East have brought historic levels of peace and stability to that region,” spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement.
As president, Trump pushed for the Abraham Accords, normalization deals that Israel signed with the UAE and Bahrain in 2020.
Some grumbling came out of the meeting, mostly about Grenell.
One participant told NOTUS about Grenell: “To be honest, the guy – I don’t want to say bad things – has no idea about the Middle East.”
An Abandon Biden movement led by Arab Americans is targeting the president in the battleground states where withholding the vote could hurt him most: Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and Florida.
Hanna said at Tuesday night’s rally in Michigan that there were Arab-Americans from all different backgrounds, including those who have supported Trump and those who have supported Biden, but they all wanted change.
“We need to see something different than what we saw in 2020,” he said, adding, “I liked the unity in the room and listening to each other and opening bridges with the potential next administration.”
Tiffany Trump and Michael Boulos with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office
Trump has his own problems with the Arab-American voting bloc.
In 2017, then-President Trump signed an executive order banning people from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the US, which became known as the Muslim Ban.
He called Nigeria and other African countries ‘s***hole countries’.
Trump also promised to “immediately deport” foreign students at American universities who protested in Gaza if he is re-elected.
But Michael Boulos could serve as a bridge in that area.
Michael Boulos and Tiffany started dating in 2018. They got engaged in January 2021 after he proposed in the White House Rose Garden. with a 13-carat diamond worth $1.2 million.
They married on November 12, 2022 at Mar-a-Lago in front of 250 guests.
The couple met while on holiday in Mykonos in 2018, when Tiffany Trump was studying law at Georgetown Law and Boulos was studying project management at City, University of London.