to increase oil production until after the election. Then OPEC can have a field day.”176 Trump’s theory of a clandestine Obama-Saudi conspiracy is substantially enlivened by the businessman’s concurrent claim that the purpose of the conspiracy is, in part, a war with Iran that will make for good domestic politics for whichever American president starts it. “In order to get elected, Barack Obama will start a war with Iran,” Trump tweets on November 29, 2011.177
While Trump’s 2009, 2010, and 2011 tweets about Saudi Arabia and the White House are public libels against President Obama—just a few of the many Trump will author, online and off, in the run-up to his own presidential campaign—his words also betray a conviction that, if a U.S. presidential candidate can convince the royal family in Riyadh that doing so is in their best interest, secretly colluding with the Saudis is a possibility. Indeed, as the 2012 election nears, Trump’s tweets about U.S.-Saudi collusion become even more melodramatic and oddly specific, with the then-businessman tweeting on October 11, 2012, again without evidence, that President Obama has collected “illegal donations” from the Saudis as an incumbent presidential candidate.178 Several weeks later, on Election Day, Trump reiterates in a tweet what he imagines Obama’s end of a collusive quid pro quo with the Saudis to be: the presidential candidate is permitting Saudi Arabia to get the better end of energy deals with the United States in exchange for an oil production schedule that keeps domestic oil prices low—a state of affairs that would be considered favorable to the U.S. political party then in power.179 Trump’s awareness, even if fanciful at the time it is expressed, of the benefits of covert pre-election collusion with Saudi Arabia will come to seem prescient in the years ahead, when Trump himself appears to engage in all of the behaviors he has falsely attributed to President Obama.
Shortly after Mitt Romney loses the 2012 presidential election, Trump makes the decision to run for president in 2016—revealing his plans to his close friend Roger Stone on January 1, 2013—and ceases tweeting conspiracy theories about Saudi Arabia’s ties to powerful U.S. politicians.180 He will not resume doing so for nearly a year. Thereafter, between October 2013 and October 2014, Trump’s ten tweets about the Saudis abandon accusations of collusion in favor of Trump’s long-standing policy complaint about the kingdom, which is that it does not pay enough for its own military defense.181 Trump’s focus in these ten tweets is on the presence of U.S. forces in Syria to fight ISIS, an effort Trump believes helps the Saudis more than their financial contribution to the effort would suggest.
As Trump nears the official announcement of his presidential candidacy, a shift in his tone toward Saudi Arabia is evident, with a number of his tweets being generally positive in tone beginning in January 2015. On January 29, 2015, for instance, Trump admonishes Michelle Obama for, in his view, not respecting Saudi culture enough to wear a headscarf in-country; “we have enuf [sic] enemies,” he tweets.182 Less than two months later, he warns that “Saudi Arabia is in big trouble” if the United States doesn’t move away from Obama’s Saudi policy—an expression of concern for the future of the Saudi people and their rulers that stands in contrast to his prior tweets on the subject.183 Nevertheless, Trump continues to demand that the Saudis pay more for their own defense. The calls for this that he makes in 2015, however, are more insistent and oddly personal, suggesting that he is trying to appeal to a domestic electorate. In March 2015 he tweets that Saudi Arabia “must pay dearly” if it wants “our help and protection.”184 Just a few weeks later he tweets, “We are getting ready to protect Saudi Arabia against Iran and others.… How much are they going to pay us toward this protection.”185 And in his final tweet about Saudi Arabia before announcing his presidential candidacy, Trump declares on May 11, 2015, that a better leader than Obama would be able to get the Saudi king to meet with him, given the “billions of dollars” that “we spend … protecting Saudi Arabia.”186
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Throughout 2012, in the midst of Trump’s criticism for Saudi Arabia on Twitter, a future Trump adviser, George Nader, spends much of his time developing closer ties with Russian interests. In the run-up to the Obama-Romney tilt, Nader begins developing “a substantial record of dealing with Russian elites,” including “help[ing] broker a $4.2 billion arms deal