{"id":436091,"date":"2026-09-15T00:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T00:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/436091\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T00:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T00:24:11","slug":"trump-taps-houston-republican-wesley-hunt-to-be-ambassador-to-saudi-arabia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/436091\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump taps Houston Republican Wesley Hunt to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump on Monday nominated U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt<\/a> to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia, positioning the Houston Republican to manage diplomatic relations with a close ally amid the war with Iran.<\/p>\n

The nomination comes months after Hunt’s failed bid<\/a> to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in the state’s Republican primary. Hunt will need a simple majority vote in the Senate to be confirmed.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Houthis seize 2 strategic Red Sea islands, and other Mideast developments<\/p>\n

In a statement, Hunt said he understands “the strategic importance of the partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia and the profound responsibility of this position.”<\/p>\n

Before being elected to Congress in 2022, he served in the U.S. Army as an Apache helicopter pilot for eight years after graduating from West Point. He said his service included two deployments to Saudi Arabia, where he worked as a diplomatic liaison officer.<\/p>\n

The U.S.-Iran war has been underway for nearly seven months with no clear end in sight, despite the president’s promise that it will “soon” be over. Iran has been firing on Saudi Arabia and blockading its energy shipments since February. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has reportedly asked<\/a> Trump to strike the Iran-backed Houthis, but has been turned down by the president.<\/p>\n

Hunt said if confirmed, he plans to advance Trump’s “vision of peace through strength and deepen this vital partnership.”<\/p>\n

On the campaign trail earlier this year he drew on his past experience in Saudi Arabia to criticize Sharia law, which Republicans say poses a threat to the U.S. legal system. Muslims say Sharia is a spiritual framework, and it’s not codified anywhere in Texas.<\/p>\n

“I’ve seen what the system looks like in real life, not on cable news,” Hunt said on social media<\/a> in January. “Public beheadings happened there not long ago. Women couldn’t even drive when I was stationed there. That is not America, that’s not Texas, and it never will be.”<\/p>\n

As a close ally to Trump, Hunt has also supported the president’s mission of reducing U.S. aid abroad, including voting on amendments<\/a> to a defense spending bill that cut $300 million in funding for Ukraine and prohibited U.S. security assistance there.<\/p>\n

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This article originally published at Trump taps Houston Republican Wesley Hunt to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia <\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump on Monday nominated U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia, positioning the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[145,56,58,57,3309,87196,151142,6474],"class_list":["post-436091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-donald-trump","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-john-cornyn","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-texas-youth-summit","tag-wesley-hunt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}