Trump’s Middle East adviser pick is a small-time truck salesman

US President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Middle East adviser, Mr Massad Boulos, has enjoyed a reputation as a billionaire mogul at the helm of a business that bears his family name.

Mr Boulos has been profiled as a tycoon by the world’s media,

telling a reporter in October that his company is worth billions. Trump called him a “highly respected leader in the business world, with extensive experience on the international scene”.

The President-elect even lavished what may be his highest praise: a “dealmaker”.

In fact, records show that Mr Boulos has spent the past two decades selling trucks and heavy machinery in Nigeria for a company his father-in-law controls. He is chief executive of the company, SCOA Nigeria, which made a profit of less than US$66,000 (S$88,000) in 2023, corporate filings show.

There is no indication in corporate documents that Mr Boulos, a Lebanese-American whose son is married to Trump’s daughter Tiffany, is a man of significant wealth as a result of his businesses. The truck dealership is valued at about $865,000 at its current share price. Mr Boulos’ stake, according to securities filings, is worth $1.53.

As for Boulos Enterprises, the company that has been called his family business in The Financial Times and elsewhere, a company officer there said it is owned by an unrelated Boulos family.

Mr Boulos will advise on one of the world’s most complicated and conflict-wracked regions – a region that Mr Boulos said this week that he has not visited in years. The advisory position does not require Senate approval.

The confusion over Mr Boulos’ background – and his failure for years to clear up misunderstandings until questioned this week by The New York Times – raises questions about how thoroughly Trump’s team vetted his nominees. The team was caught by surprise by allegations of sexual misconduct against Mr Pete Hegseth, the pick for defence secretary.

A spokesperson for the Trump transition team declined to comment.

Mr Boulos, a Christian from northern Lebanon who immigrated to Texas as a teenager, has risen in prominence since 2018, when his son Michael began dating Ms Tiffany Trump.

In 2024, Mr Massad Boulos helped Donald Trump woo Arab American voters, and in the fall served as a go-between for Trump and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas.

In October, the Times asked him about his wealth and business dealings.

“Your company is described as a multi-billion-dollar enterprise,” a reporter said. “Are you yourself a billionaire?”

Mr Boulos said he did not like to describe himself that way but that journalists had picked up on the label.

“It’s accurate to describe the company as a multi-billion-dollar?” the reporter followed up.

“Yeah,” Mr Boulos replied. “It’s a big company. Long history.”

Versions of this history have been recounted in the Times, The Economist, CNN and The Wall Street Journal.

But in a subsequent interview on Dec 10, Mr Boulos said that he had only meant to confirm that other news outlets had written – incorrectly – that he runs such a company.

In another call, on Dec 11, he said he was referring to his father-in-law’s companies, which he said were collectively worth more than US$1 billion, though the company he runs is not.

“I’ve never really gone into any details like that about the value,” he said.

He confirmed that he has no relationship with Boulos Enterprises. Asked why he had never corrected the record, he said that he made a practice of not commenting on his business.

Mr Boulos has a history of small business ventures. Corporate records in Nigeria tie him to a restaurant, some inactive construction companies and to Tantra Beverages, a now-defunct company that was set up to sell an “erotic drink” that “gives men and women the ultimate stimulating push”, according to its manufacturer.

Mr Boulos said an associate runs the restaurant, and that he did not recall the drink venture. After this article was published, Mr Boulos said he did recall Tantra and that it was part of an attempt to sell energy drinks that never got off the ground.

Any significant wealth, he said on Dec 10, comes from the family of his wife, Ms Sarah Fadoul Boulos.

She is the daughter of Mr Michel Zouhair Fadoul, a citizen of France and Burkina Faso who spent decades assembling a patchwork of logging, construction and automobile distribution companies throughout West and Central Africa.

The Times could find no indication, either in company documents or records from the corporate data provider Sayari, that Mr Boulos has a direct stake in these businesses – other than the truck dealership.

An origin story

Mr Massad Boulos met Ms Sarah Fadoul through family in Lebanon and married young, she has said. Both studied in Texas, she has said in interviews on podcasts targeting the elite in Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria.

Trump has referred to Mr Boulos as a lawyer, and ABC News has reported that he graduated with a law degree from the University of Houston. But the school said it has no record of that. Instead, he graduated from a separate school, the University of Houston-Downtown, in 1993 with a bachelor’s in business administration.

The couple had planned a move to New York, where she said he had been offered a job at a law firm. But her father intervened, she said, and invited the young couple to work for his business holdings in Africa.

In 1996, the couple moved to Lagos, where Ms Fadoul Boulos said they became known as trust fund kids. “We were called the golden children,” she told the Listed Lagosian podcast.

Ms Fadoul put the couple in charge of a truck and machinery dealership in Nigeria. Corporate filings show the company has not grown much over the years.

Business was slow when a reporter visited its Lagos headquarters in December. A few dozen heavy machines and trucks sat in a lot by a highway, and a handful of staff sat behind desks inside the office. Mr Boulos used to come in regularly, staff members said, but since July, he had been in the United States campaigning for Trump.

SCOA’s branch in the Nigerian city of Kano closed four years ago because of lack of customers, a former employee, Mr Kamal Ishaq, said on Dec 11.

Ms Fadoul Boulos has said that she worked alongside her husband for a time. But then, after an evangelical awakening, she said, God called her to dance. She set up the Society for the Performing Arts in Nigeria, where she calls herself the “visioneer”. The society teaches dance to young Nigerians, runs summer camps and puts on performances.

Ms Fadoul Boulos frequently posts videos of herself on social media doing pirouettes and waving flags to worship music – including at her favorite Pentecostal church in Lagos, the House on the Rock, whose lead pastor gave a blessing at Ms Tiffany Trump’s wedding in 2022.

Tiffany Trump’s million-dollar ring

Mr Michael Boulos, the couple’s younger son, reportedly met Ms Tiffany Trump at actress Lindsay Lohan’s club in Greece in 2018, when he was about 22 and she 25.

Soon after their engagement, reports began to circulate describing Mr Michael Boulos as the son and heir of a billionaire. Mr Massad Boulos said in an interview this week that Michael was an heir to the family business, but independently confirming its value was impossible.

The diamond ring that Mr Michael Boulos gave Ms Tiffany Trump, with its reported US$1 million price tag, seemed to confirm great wealth.

Ms Michael Boulos was associate director of the truck dealership when they married and has worked for a US private equity firm and a yacht rental company, according to PitchBook.

In Nigeria, the most famous member of the Boulos family is Michael’s brother Fares, who used to perform reggae music on YouTube under the name Farastafari. Now he posts TikTok skits under the name Oyibo Rebel – oyibo meaning white person. His recurring characters include a caricature of a black woman, Mama Thank God. He wears a large false bosom and a brightly coloured cloth tied around his head and mocks Nigerian women.

His LinkedIn page says he is also a director at the truck dealership.

A White House introduction

In the October interview, Mr Massad Boulos said that he first met Donald Trump at a White House Christmas party in 2019.

“He was very, very warm, very welcoming,” Mr Boulos said.

Mr Boulos appeared on Trump’s behalf in Arabic language media before the 2020 election. He played a more significant role in 2024 as an unofficial emissary to Arab American voters.

In Michigan, home to the largest-percentage Arab American population in the country, Mr Boulos pitched Trump as the candidate best positioned to bring peace to the Middle East.

“He was a superstar,” said Dr Yahya Basha, a Syrian American doctor and political donor in Royal Oak, Michigan. “People loved him.”

Trump carried the state, helped by heavily Arab American precincts in the Detroit area.

Trump will take office at a time when the Middle East is as unstable as it’s been in decades. Israel remains at war with Hamas, and Lebanon is devastated by fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. Syrian rebels toppled Bashar Assad, the longtime dictator.

What role Trump intends for Mr Boulos is unclear.

In an interview, Mr Boulos said that his White House responsibilities would involve “advising on the Middle East and Arab countries” but declined to elaborate.

“The position is private,” he said. “It’s an adviser position.” NYTIMES