The United States and Middle East autocracies do not make for the most natural of allies. One of the most common rhetorical tactics used to defend these alliances is to portray the ruler in question as a reformer who is steering his country into alignment with American political norms. Performing a historical-critical rhetorical analysis, we argue that this tactic provides a uniquely meaningful lens through which to analyze the rhetorical evolution of the public image of Mohammad bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. First, we situate the popularity of the “reformer tactic” as an outgrowth of realist assessments of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) deployed this tactic successfully during the Trump presidency, but the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi brought an abrupt end to these efforts. In response to the outrage over Khashoggi’s murder, the Trump administration ignored criticism of its close relationship with MbS and defended the U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia on loosely realist grounds. During the 2020 campaign soon-to-be President Biden labeled MbS a pariah, exposing Trump’s relationship with Saudi Arabia as an electoral liability. This outcome, we argue, highlights how increased information access across international boundaries makes it more difficult for U.S.-allied autocrats to maintain the public image of a reformer and signals the need for such leaders to develop new rhetorical strategies to legitimize American alliances with Middle Eastern autocracies if they wish to maintain a positive public image with western audiences. Second, we argue that MbS’s response to the Israel-Hamas War demonstrates the adaptation of a new tactic to legitimize the U.S.-Saudi alliance by framing the prince as a peacemaker, thus responding to the decay of the “reformer tactic” as an effective rhetorical strategy for Saudi Arabia. Among its other implications, the war has furnished an opportune moment for MbS to rhetorically reinvent himself. To do so, MbS has begun casting himself as an agent with the requisite authority and willingness to engineer a peace agreement to end the war in Gaza, thus demonstrating his utility as a U.S. ally. While this tactic is not as replicable as the reformer image, it represents an opportunistic, innovative shift by MbS to adapt to the balance of realism and idealism in U.S. foreign policy discourse.