Seek him out early and shower him with praise. Offer political transactions and promise to help make America great. Arm yourself with hard facts and, above all, avoid irritating him because he’s easily provoked.
That’s the kind of the advice I heard Americans sharing with their Middle Eastern friends as the battle for Donald Trump’s heart and mind gets under way. The US president-elect’s policies are still a mystery but his character and love of the deal are well documented.
Like much of the world, the Middle East was stunned by the election of a political neophyte with no foreign policy experience, and no links to the Washington establishment they have courted for decades. A foreign policy forum I attended in Abu Dhabi underlined how confident officials in the region were about a Hillary Clinton victory. Just before the election, in fact, some of her advisers had held talks in the Gulf as they plotted her Middle East strategy.