Trump puts on ‘unbelievable show’ for Saudi crown prince

At the Tuesday night gala, the president’s favorite tenor, Christopher Macchio, serenaded business executives. A band played “Ave Maria" and the Beatles’ “Let it Be," according to an attendee and another person familiar with the matter. Guests dined on honeynut squash soup, pistachio-crusted lamb and a pear chocolate mousse—served on gold-rimmed plates.

“The entertainment last night was incredible," Trump said on Wednesday, describing the dinner as an “unbelievable show."

Facing perhaps the lowest point of his second term, the president is finding ways to keep his spirits up, surrounding himself with chief executives and foreign leaders who have lavished him with praise and unveiled plans for high-dollar investment deals. In feting the crown prince this week, Trump has once again pivoted to foreign policy, an issue that has animated much of his presidency—and triggered concerns from some Republicans that he isn’t doing enough to address voters’ concerns about the high cost of living.

Just hours before Trump welcomed dozens of guests to the White House for the dinner, the House voted nearly unanimously to mandate the disclosure of a trove of government files related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a move that Trump had for months resisted. The Senate followed suit shortly thereafter.

Earlier in the day, Trump criticized Indiana politicians for not moving forward with a White House-backed plan to redraw the state’s congressional map. And a federal court blocked a Texas redistricting map that was designed at Trump’s request to favor Republicans in the midterms. Trump also this week had a public falling out with a Republican lawmaker who had once been one of his staunchest allies.

The president and his senior advisers are also grappling with the fallout from elections earlier this month in which Republican candidates performed poorly. The election results led prominent GOP lawmakers and strategists to warn that Republicans could face even deeper losses in next year’s midterms if they don’t convince voters they are serious about lowering prices.

White House officials said Republican critics are overlooking the president’s successes, adding that Trump plans to focus heavily on affordability in coming weeks.

“President Trump and the Administration have been delivering results since Day One, and the past two weeks have objectively been a continuation of this winning streak for the American people," said White House spokesman Kush Desai, pointing to recent trade deals and investment pledges.

On Wednesday, Trump expressed frustration that Democrats have used voters’ concerns about affordability against him. “That’s a new word that they’re using, affordability," Trump said of Democrats during a Saudi investment forum in Washington. He then criticized the Biden administration: “They had the worst inflation in history. They had the highest prices in history. The country was going to hell."

Trump welcomed Saudi Arabia’s crown prince to the White House with a procession of horses, a flyover of six jet fighters, a Marine band and troops holding ceremonial flags.

“We’ve always been on the same side of every issue," Trump said of the crown prince. At one point, he shook his hand, pulling him close. Taking a swipe at former President Joe Biden, who greeted the royal with a fist bump in 2022, Trump said, “I don’t care where that hand’s been, I grab that hand."

Trump lashed out at an ABC News reporter who asked about the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The U.S. president said the crown prince “knew nothing about" Khashoggi’s death, contradicting the CIA, which at the time assessed that the royal orchestrated the killing.

The president invited well-known chief executives to Tuesday’s dinner with the crown prince, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Another notable guest: billionaire Elon Musk, who made his first known trip to the White House since his high-profile falling out with Trump. Trump’s aides gave Musk a table assignment far from where the president was sitting, according to a senior White House official. The two men chatted briefly but didn’t have a formal sit-down meeting, people familiar with the matter said.

On Wednesday at the Saudi investment forum, Trump told Musk, “you’re so lucky I’m with you" and reminisced about his past conversations with the Tesla chief executive. Musk later thanked Trump in a social-media post.

During the cocktail hour ahead of Tuesday night’s dinner, U.S. business leaders talked to Saudi officials about potential deals with the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund wealth fund, its main pocket for foreign investments, according to people familiar with the matter.

Musk announced on Wednesday that his artificial-intelligence company xAI will work with chip maker Nvidia and a Saudi Arabian partner to develop a giant data center in the kingdom. Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman, who also attended Tuesday night’s dinner, said at the investment forum that his firm will start building AI data warehouses in Saudi Arabia, something it had never considered before.

The crown prince told the president that he would invest nearly $1 trillion in the U.S. economy, though he offered few details on the pledge.

“Trump took what is typically an internationally-focused event in diplomatic relations and made it about domestic priorities, which is what we need to be doing in every moment," said Jason Thielman, a Republican strategist and founding partner of S2R Public Affairs.

Trump, in his Wednesday speech at the investment forum, waded into another issue that is dividing Republicans: the president’s support for granting visas to foreign workers to help companies set up high-tech chip facilities in the U.S. Some conservatives have criticized Trump’s position on the issue, arguing that those jobs should go to U.S. workers.

“If you have to bring people to get those plants open, we want you to do that," Trump said, adding, “So my poll numbers just went down, but with smart people they’ve gone way up."

On Wednesday afternoon, Trump said that the U.S. would intervene to help end the bloody civil war in Sudan, at the urging of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince. “We will work with Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and other Middle Eastern partners to get these atrocities to end, while at the same time stabilizing Sudan," Trump wrote on social media.

Some Republicans have privately expressed frustration that Trump has focused on reaching peace deals abroad. After Trump called Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) a traitor for publicly criticizing him, Greene said the president is giving priority to foreign affairs over the interests of Americans. “Let me tell you what a traitor is: A traitor is an American that serves foreign countries," Greene said this week. “And themselves."

Write to Brian Schwartz at brian.schwartz@wsj.com and Natalie Andrews at natalie.andrews@wsj.com