Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to be caught off guard by a reporter asking why President Donald Trump's son-in-law tagged along to a high-level meeting with foreign officials.
Michael Boulos, the husband of Tiffany Trump, sat beside the secretary of state during a meeting on Wednesday with UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, and Rubio stammered when asked Thursday in Kuwait about the president's family member's presence.
"Michael Boulos?" Rubio said, after a brief pause. "Oh, he was there to see – his brother lives here. He was just there to see me and catch up."
Another reporter followed up and asked whether the meeting was a working lunch.
"There was, but he wasn't, the conversations around him had to do with – he was just here because his brother lives here and I'm a good friend of Michael's, so we had a chance to catch up," Rubio said, before thanking reporters and taking his leave.
The 28-year-old Boulos, a Lebanese-American businessman who married the president's younger daughter in 2022, is the son of Massad Boulos, Trump’s senior adviser for Arab and African Affairs.
Rubio posted a photo on social media Wednesday showing Boulos seated next to him across from Emirati leaders, and he said they had discussed Trump’s peace plan with Iran, shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and the stability of the Middle East.
The Boulos family and their associates have seen their financial fortunes improve dramatically since his 2021 engagement to Tiffany Trump, and his first deal involved pitching an investment in a superyacht to another globe-trotting Trump son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Michael Boulos, who was working at the time for his cousin’s yacht brokerage, received a prenegotiated finder’s fee in the deal, but Kushner reportedly agreed to the deal without realizing the company had overcharged him by $2.5 million.