OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
1:01 PM – Tuesday, November 18, 2025
In a spectacle of military pageantry and billion-dollar handshakes, President Donald Trump gave Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) a red-carpet embrace at the White House on Tuesday, capping the visit with an announcement that Riyadh will nearly double its planned U.S. investments to almost $1 trillion over the coming decade.
Though the Saudi Crown Prince is not the kingdom’s official head of state, the occasion carried all the trappings of one at the White House. The 40-year-old prince has effectively run Saudi Arabia’s daily affairs while his 89-year-old father, King Salman, deals with ongoing health issues. Nonetheless, he was still accorded rare honors typically reserved for heads of state.
Rather than the usual brief driveway drop-off at the West Wing, Crown Prince MBS, accompanied by the Saudi prime minister, was greeted with a full arrival ceremony on the South Lawn — complete with honor guards and national anthems.
President Trump personally welcomed the crown prince before giving him a tour of the newly installed Presidential Walk of Fame along the West Wing colonnade, where gold-framed portraits of past presidents now line the walkway.
The two leaders then proceeded to a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office, followed by a working luncheon in the Cabinet Room.
Trump is scheduled to bid the crown prince farewell on the South Lawn in the afternoon, only to return there later alongside First Lady Melania Trump to receive him again ahead of a formal dinner in the East Room.
Adding a touch of star power to the visit, Portuguese soccer icon Cristiano Ronaldo, who now plays for Al-Nassr in the Saudi Pro League, is also expected to be at the White House on Tuesday, according to a White House official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity.
This is the Crown Prince’s first official trip to Washington, D.C., since 2018.
Breaking with customary protocol, MBS arrived in his own motorcade — rather than dispatching a junior official first — a gesture the White House called a sign of deep mutual respect. Moments later, U.S. Air Force F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters roared overhead in tight formation, a symbolic preview of the blockbuster defense deal that would dominate the day’s headlines.
Meanwhile, the centerpiece of Tuesday’s agreements was Saudi Arabia’s commitment to raise its U.S. investment target from the $600 billion pledged during Trump’s May visit to Riyadh to “almost $1 trillion,” according to the crown prince.
The funds, largely channeled through the kingdom’s sovereign Public Investment Fund, will flow into artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors, energy, rare-earth materials, and infrastructure projects across the United States.
In exchange, the Trump administration green-lit the long-delayed sale of F-35 stealth fighters to the kingdom — a deal previously blocked under the Biden administration. Additional frameworks were signed for civil nuclear cooperation and joint ventures in next-generation energy technologies as well.
In a moment of on-camera flattery, Saudi Prince MBS declared the United States the “hottest country on the planet” for investment.
“What you’re creating is not about an opportunity today. It’s also about long term opportunity,” Prince Mohammed began.
Trump also acknowledged the major deal to reporters, first speaking cautiously before looking to MBS—who then confirmed it.
“You’ve agreed to invest $600 billion into the United States, and because he’s my friend, he might make it a trillion, but I’m going to have to work on him. But it’s 600 [billion]. We can count on 600 billion. But, that number could go up a little bit higher … That means investments in plants, in companies, money on Wall Street. And what it really means for everybody, what really counts is jobs. A lot of jobs. We have a lot of jobs,” Trump said Tuesday, leading the Crown Prince to respond by saying: “We are going to increase that, that $600 billion to almost $1 trillion of investment, real investment and real opportunity in many areas,” MBS added.
The warm optics stood in sharp contrast to the colder relations of recent years.
U.S. intelligence agencies previously assessed that the crown prince approved the 2018 operation that led to the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. However, when an ABC News reporter pressed MBS on the killing on Tuesday, Trump chimed in with great frustration.
“He knew nothing about it [at the time] and you don’t have to embarrass our guest,” Trump said after the reporter directly asked MBS about the murder.
MBS also expressed that, after learning of the incident, his country eventually took “all the right steps” to investigate the death — noting that Saudi officials have implemented internal reforms to prevent future incidents from occurring. He described the incident as “painful” for Saudi Arabia and reiterated that his government “did all the right steps of investigation.”
Later, in relation to pushing for more peace in the Middle East, the Saudi leader also detailed Riyadh’s interest in normalizing relations with Israel under an expanded Abraham Accords framework, but only if “meaningful progress” is made toward a Palestinian state — a condition Trump described as “very fair” and “something we can work with together.”
Meanwhile, many hailed the visit as proof of President Trump’s deal-making prowess and a return of “global respect” for the United States. Critics, however, including left-wing human-rights organizations and some congressional Democrats, condemned the administration for “embracing an authoritarian leader” while “sidelining accountability” for the reporter’s death.
With billions in new commitments on the table and F-35s now cleared for Riyadh, the Trump-Saudi partnership appears stronger than ever.
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