Trump publicly embraced Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman despite U.S. intelligence concluding he approved journalist Jamal Khashoggi's 2018 murder in Istanbul. The White House prioritized economic and political ties over accountability for the killing.
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Trump's Saudi embrace and the Khashoggi murder. President Trump welcomed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the White House with military bans, jet flyover, talk of F35 sales, nuclear cooperation, and promises of a huge investment. When asked about U.S. intelligence findings, the crown prince ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump snapped at reporters and said they things happen.
Okay, here's the reality.
Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, paperwork so he could marry his fiance. He never walked out. Turkish intelligence obtained audio of his confrontation with a Saudi hit team and the sounds of his killing.
Specifically, he was hacked to death in a saw.
With a saw. He was murdered and cut up in little pieces here. His remains have never been recovered. A declassified US Intelligence report concluded that the Crown prince approved the operation. That's right. He signed off on the hit. Analysts pointed to his tight control over Saudi security services and the involvement of his close aide. So what's the real message here?
We have a United States President honoring a murderer with. We have a United States President who.
Is saying, forget what my own United States intelligence operations are telling me. I'm just going to say, stuff happens. It's okay to murder journalists as long as you give us oil and help me build new gold plated hotels in your country. That's the price. You want to murder people? You can get away with it. Just give me some more gold. Let's dig a little bit deeper here. So this is troubling to not just international rights groups, as you can imagine, they are apoplectic over this.
But to our own military, to our own intel.
What's the point of having an intelligence service if they tell you, okay, we have evidence that this person murders people.
And you then say, well, that's okay.
Let me put on my finest tuxedo.
Let me invite all my buddies like Elon Musk and Ronaldo and other fancy.
Wealthy famous people to the White House and let me toast and just have a big, big party for this murderer.
Hey, he wants to do business with me.
He wants to occasionally agree with me on foreign policy issues, and he'll help me get richer and let me build hotels in his country. That's what's happened here. And if you think this is normal, well, it may become the new norm, but it's never happened before in the history of the United States.
Am I saying the United States has never greeted a foreign leader who had some questionable baggage?
No, not saying that. Are there perfect leaders out there? No.
But there should be some line. And until recently, one of the lines was, you can't take a hacksaw and chop up a journalist you don't like.
Because they wrote things you don't like.
And kill them and get away with it. And yet now you can. It seems like you can murder journalists.
And the White House throws a gigantic fancy formal ball in your honor. That, my friends, is a sad state of affairs.
