Steven A. Cook
President Donald Trump addresses the audience at the King Abdul Aziz International Conference Center while attending a Saudi-U.S. business investment forum, on May 13, 2025, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.President Donald Trump addresses the audience at the King Abdul Aziz International Conference Center while attending a Saudi-U.S. business investment forum.
A few weeks after taking the oath of office in 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden appeared at the State Department to give the first foreign-policy address of his new administration. During his talk, the new president famously declared that “America is back.” In this not-so-subtle rebuke of his predecessor, Biden was signaling that he was placing American values at the forefront of his foreign policy. As he promised in his campaign, there would be “no more blank checks” for the likes of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (Donald Trump’s “favorite dictator”) and the Saudis, who he vowed to make “them the pariahs that they are” and in the process make them “pay a price.”
Students of U.S. foreign policy—and cynics more generally—understood that Biden was going to eat his words in time. In May 2021, he was on and off the phone with Sisi, who won the White House’s gratitude for helping broker a cease-fire during a round of violence between Israel and Hamas. The following summer, Biden visited Saudi Arabia, where he fist-bumped the previously unacceptable Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
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