Tiffany Trump's Father-in-law Discovers The Limits Of His Family Ties

Massad Boulos arrived at Joint Base Andrews in early April as the Trump administration’s newest official on Africa policy and waited to fly out for his inaugural trip to the continent. And waited. And waited.

After several hours, he and his small State Department delegation were told their flight out wasn’t happening; the government wouldn’t pay for the U.S. military to fly him to central Africa. President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, called Boulos directly to relay that he would not have access to a government plane. He’d have to trim down his multi-country trip by cutting a stop in Angola, and fly commercial the next day instead.

Boulos, the father-in-law of Tiffany Trump, had telegraphed during the transition that he would hold significant sway on the Trump administration’s foreign policy. But the plane incident, described by three people familiar with the episode, shows how he struggled from the start to attain much influence, even as he has found some unexpected success along the way.

Boulos’ mixed reputation also illustrates how power works in Trump’s inner circle. While family ties are valuable to the president, that appears to be true only to a point.

POLITICO spoke to 10 people familiar with Boulos’ interactions, all of whom were granted anonymity to speak freely about internal administration workings. They described a man who has been given formal titles without clear responsibilities and kept out of key discussions, or been brought into negotiations after much of the work has already been completed. Four of them said the White House and State Department have been frustrated by his freelancing efforts, and a number of cumulative incidents have soured Boulos’ relationships across parts of the administration.

Since joining Trump’s team, Boulos has also taken actions that overstate his responsibilities in the administration, according to the people POLITICO interviewed.

He has handed out business cards that inflate his job title, declined to notify the State Department in advance about sensitive meetings and repeatedly implied his remit is broader than it is.

Reports that Boulos misrepresented his wealth and the size of his business holdings before entering government also didn’t sit well with some, one of the people said.

Trump named Boulos as a senior adviser on the Middle East during the transition last year and he began taking informal meetings with Lebanese officials and other diplomats. But some in the administration say he was overstepping.

“The job was more symbolic, but he didn’t know that,” said an administration official. “Everyone knew it but him.”

While Boulos was appointed as Africa adviser in early April, he continues to hold the title of senior adviser of Arab and Middle Eastern affairs. The administration official and another person familiar with the situation said he is not meant to actively work on Middle East issues.

Boulos declined to comment, but administration spokespeople and other defenders praised his role in Trump’s Africa policy.

National Security Council spokesperson James Hewitt said Boulos “is a valuable member of the president’s foreign policy team and has already made great progress in strengthening U.S. ties with African nations.”

In the case of the April trip, a senior government official confirmed that Boulos and his traveling party did wait at Andrews and for technical reasons made changes to the trip and took commercial flights. They traveled to Congo, Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda on that trip and Boulos is expected to travel to Angola and other places in the Great Lakes region as soon as May, the official said.

Boulos is currently Trump’s top Africa adviser by default. The administration has yet to name its top Africa official, the assistant secretary of state, at the State Department or on the NSC. A State Department press release on Boulos’ appointment offered scant details about his responsibilities in the role.

The arrangement does not give Boulos the wide berth that other Trump allies, who have established roles beyond traditional power hierarchies, have in government.

“He’s not Ric Grenell, he’s not Steve Witkoff,” said a GOP foreign policy operative, referencing two close Trump confidantes and special envoys with broad global remits who report directly to Trump. Boulos, by contrast, sits in an office within the Africa bureau of the State Department and operates under the authority of senior diplomats.

He has had some foreign policy wins, including liaising with African heads of state and pushing to clinch the first steps in a deal between the Congo and Rwanda to quell violence in eastern Congo.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday praised Boulos during a Cabinet meeting in the White House and said he did “something really great last week” by helping to bring about the signing of the deal with the Congolese and Rwandan foreign ministers. His role was also confirmed by four of the people POLITICO spoke to — all of whom were familiar with the U.S. efforts to secure the deal.

“Mr. Boulos is doing an exceptional job, as evidenced by the deal … between the DRC and Rwanda,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

But even when Boulos has success on Africa policy, he does so largely out of the limelight and without the profile that other Trump envoys receive. Witkoff, for example, speaks frequently on behalf of the president and is received as the most senior member in traveling delegations, such as when he met last month with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

Boulos was weakened by a spate of early media interviews asserting himself as a dominant voice on Lebanon policy, irking Trump’s inner circle in the process, as well as a New York Times story that exposed he had for years misled the public about the source of his wealth. Two of the people familiar with Boulos’ interactions said he had developed an unfavorable reputation for talking too much.

His move away from Middle East work stemmed also from concerns within the administration about some of his political and social connections in the region.

Boulos is originally from northern Lebanon and immigrated to the United States as a teenager. His son Michael is married to Tiffany Trump and they are expecting their first child this year.

Questions about Boulos’ political associations in Lebanon also concerned some in the administration. Boulos has said he is not affiliated with any political party in Lebanon but has close ties across Lebanon’s Christian political class, including with Hezbollah’s preferred candidate for president earlier this year, Suleiman Frangieh.

He has continued to try to influence Middle East policy, and has spoken about Lebanon and Syria in interviews with Arab media. His efforts to go beyond his brief have caused confusion in the Middle East, officials said.

“He publicly speaks on issues and topics he is not responsible for or involved in, causing confusion in the region. It's been an issue,” the administration official said.

The senior government official argued that Boulos still does some work on the Middle East from his office in the Africa affairs bureau and coordinates with the secretary of State and the president.

Boulos hands out a business card — viewed by POLITICO — that lists his State Department email and phone numbers and describes him only as “senior advisor to the president” — significantly inflating his official title and adding to confusion about what he is responsible for.

Some in the White House and State Department have been unhappy with times that he took initiative, seeing it as counterproductive freelancing.

Boulos gave an interview in Arabic where he questioned the U.S. recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara territory — throwing into doubt a key feature of U.S. negotiations with Morocco during the first Trump administration to get Rabat to formally start diplomatic ties with Israel. His interview infuriated the Moroccan government, according to a person who was informed of Morocco’s reaction to the episode. Afterward, he issued a post on X about Rubio “unequivocally reaffirming U.S. recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.”

Boulos also held a private meeting with Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu during his recent visit to Paris without notifying the State Department in advance, which caught the U.S. embassies in both France and Nigeria off guard when they learned about the meeting in the media, two people briefed on the meeting said.

The senior government officials said the meeting was coordinated with the State Department and noted that the U.S. embassy in Abuja posted about the meeting afterward as proof that the mission was aware of it.

Boulos sells trucks and heavy machinery in Nigeria for a company his father-in-law controls.

Boulos has told people that his current job is a temporary one that he will hold for six months, one State Department official said. The senior government official denied that Boulos has told colleagues this.

Still, despite the missteps, some U.S. officials have welcomed Boulos’ eagerness to dive into tough foreign policy issues that rarely get attention in Washington. That includes his work to end the fighting in eastern Congo and lobbying to keep a Biden-era infrastructure project meant to counter China’s infrastructure and rare earth minerals access in central Africa.

“In only a few short weeks of serving as the president’s senior adviser for Africa, Mr. Boulos has done tremendous work to advance our America First diplomacy throughout the continent,” the State Department said in a statement.

Boulos also helped finalize a deal to secure the repatriation of three Americans from the Congo, where they were facing death sentences for their purported role in a botched coup attempt, according to three of the people, though all added that the negotiations over their release were ongoing before Boulos entered the picture.

Boulos has met with over a dozen senior officials, including ministers and heads of state such as Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame. That has been welcomed by those who work in Africa policy who were disappointed when Rubio’s planned trip to the continent was cancelled earlier this month.

“He’s done what others haven’t been doing. But also because there’s no one else in to do it,” said a person briefed on Boulos’ actions on Africa policy. “He’s a nice person with a good demeanor and Lord knows the administration needs someone, anyone in the field to work on Africa policy since the bench is so shallow.”

Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.