What did Donald Trump do today?
He said it was rude to ask his "guest" Mohammed bin Salman about the murder he's implicated in.
Trump met today with Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince and de facto leader of Saudi Arabia. MBS, as he is often known, orchestrated the torture and murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist and American permanent resident. Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen by birth, had written columns critical of the Saudi ruling family. He was murdered at the Saudi embassy in Turkey, where he'd been lured on a pretext, and tortured. After he died, his body was dismembered and smuggled.
American and Turkish intelligence agencies quickly linked bin Salman to the murder and identified him as the person who had ordered and overseen it. Trump, who was privy to this information long before it became public, deliberately lied about the status of the investigation to protect the Saudi regime. When details began to come out, Trump ran interference for them by saying he believed their preposterous cover story that the 59-year-old Khashoggi started a fight with more than a dozen men and then dying of unrelated causes.
During a press availability, bin Salman was inevitably asked by a reporter about the Khashoggi murder. Trump interrupted and said this:
You're mentioning someone that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about. Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happen. But he knew nothing about it. You don't have to embarrass our guest.
It's certainly true that "a lot of people" didn't like Khashoggi—like, for example, Mohammed bin Salman, who had him tortured and killed. But that is why the reporter asked hin Salman about him.
Trump is financially beholden to the Saudi ruling family. As WTDT put it in 2018:
Trump has already allowed himself to be compromised by the Saudi government. His faltering U.S. hotels have been propped up by Saudi government patronage, and the Saudi royal family bailed him out on several occasions during the 1990s. Trump himself admitted the conflict of interest on the campaign trail in 2015: “They [Saudis] buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Later in the day, Trump tried to suggest that other Americans would benefit from association with MBS too, claiming that "he's investing one trillion dollars into the United States." This is a lie, as it always is when Trump makes this kind of claim: a trillion dollars is roughly the entire economic output of Saudi Arabia.
Why does this matter?
- A billionaire who can still be bought is just hopelessly corrupt.
- No amount of money is worth the integrity of the United States of America.
- There's nothing more American than exercising freedom of speech to question the actions of a dictator, "guest" or otherwise.