Donald Trump keeps giving the middle finger to international law by blowing up boats and their occupants on the high seas. He’s still hating on reporters who ask hard questions, too.
So naturally Trump rolled out the White House red carpet for a fellow authoritarian-kleptocrat — a guy widely suspected of shooting the bird at international law by ordering the brutal slaying of a journalist he didn’t like. Of course, the president gushed that his special guest was doing an “incredible” job promoting “human rights and everything else.”
Trump’s visitor was Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, AKA “MBS.” The CIA and United Nations investigators found credible evidence that MBS dispatched a 15-man hit squad to Turkey to murder Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S.-based Saudi citizen. After reportedly suffocating him, the assassins cut up his body, possibly while he was still alive, with a bone saw and destroyed his remains by fire or acid.
Following an Oval Office photo op, MBS and DJT, beaming at each other, fielded questions from a press gaggle. Several of the scribes and TV talking heads are administration-picked toadies from the rightwing media echo chamber. So maybe the president expected softball queries.
Real-deal reporter Mary Bruce of ABC News brought the heat. She “asked Trump whether it was ‘appropriate’ for the president’s family to do business in Saudi Arabia while he was in the White House,” wrote Edith Olmsted in The New Republic.
Bruce uncorked a high hard one at the crown prince, too: “And your royal highness, the U.S. intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 9/11 families are furious that you are here in the Oval Office. Why should Americans trust you, and the same to you, Mr. President?”
Trump, his orangey mug reddening, tried to shut her up.
“No, who are you with?” the president butted in. “I’m with ABC News, sir,” Bruce answered.
“Fake news. ABC fake news,” Trump chanted. “One of the worst, one of the worst in the business.”
Trump groused that he had no connection “with the family business,” which he claimed had done “very little with Saudi Arabia, actually.” Thus, the Big Liar keeps on lying bigly. The prince maintained “that Osama bin Laden had used Saudi citizens in his attacks in order to destroy the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia,” Olmstead also wrote. MBS is no slouch at dissembling either.
Bin Salman kept on grinning, but you could almost read his mind: “Poor Donald. He’s jealous because in my country we don’t put up with journalists like her. Ask Khashoggi. Oh, wait, you can’t.”
What might the dyspeptic DJT have been thinking? How about “I’m really jealous.”
Anyway, Trump shifted gears to shrug off Khashoggi’s killing. He said the journalist 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 [MBS] knew nothing about it. And we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”
“‘Things happen,’” wrote The Guardian’s Jodie Ginsberg. “Just two words. That’s all it took for Donald Trump to effectively dismiss what is probably the most infamous journalist killing of the last decade – and in so doing plumbed a new low in his contempt for journalists, for journalism, and for the truth.”
One of the UN investigators said Trump’s remarks left her “astonished, shocked, and angry.” NBC News reported. She added, “What’s controversial is flying 15 operatives from Saudi Arabia to a foreign country to commit a murder.”
The investigator said there was “no doubt whatsoever” that MBS was behind Khashoggi’s murder. “And frankly, there is no doubt in the mind of anyone who knows Saudi Arabia.”
Even the Washington Post, owned by Trump truckler Jeff Bezos, didn’t buy what the president and his pal were hawking. “No doubt other dictators took note,” warned a Wednesday Post editorial. “Legitimizing and defending Mohammed this way will embolden him and his ilk to mistreat not just journalists but any Americans — knowing that they’ll probably face no real consequences.”
The prince, the Post noted, acknowledged the murder [of Khashoggi] but denied responsibility. “We’ve improved our system to be sure that nothing happened like that,” he said. “It’s painful and it’s a huge mistake. And we are doing our best that this doesn’t happen again.” MBS is no slouch at dissembling either, and actual violent death hurts a helluva lot more than fake remorse.
The Post characterized the prince’s remarks as “offensive and insufficient yet somehow better than Trump’s response.”
Elsewhere, the editorial argued that Trump’s “distortions dishonor Khashoggi’s legacy, stand at odds with the facts, and are beneath the office of the president.
“Exiled in Virginia, Khashoggi wrote on these pages about the Saudi regime’s repressiveness at home and recklessness abroad. This got under Mohammed’s skin. So, the CIA concluded in 2018, the crown prince ordered Khashoggi’s assassination. He was lured into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, where a hit team, including members of Mohammed’s personal security detail, used a bone saw to dismember him.”
Khashoggi’s assassins were caught, tried, and convicted, but in custody evidently have enjoyed the Saudi version of the Ghislaine Maxwell club fed treatment. “At least three are living and working ‘in seven-star accommodation’ inside a government-run security compound in Riyadh, according to a source connected to senior members of Saudi intelligence,” Martin Chulov wrote in The Guardian nearly five years ago.
“The assassins are believed to be staying in villas and buildings run by Saudi Arabia’s State Security agency – far from the walls of its infamous prisons. The source has spoken to two witnesses who claim to have seen the men. They said family members frequently visit the men, who are able to use a gym and workspaces on the site.”
“All were sentenced before a Saudi court, in a trial broadly condemned as a sham – though only one of them, Salah al-Tubaigy, was named. Some received death sentences, which were later commuted to life terms.”
Anyway, authoritarian wannabe Trump is at least consistent. He fawns over thugs from MBS and Orban to Erdogan, Kim, and Putin.
“President Trump frequently demonstrates his disdain for journalists,” wrote CNN’s Brian Stelter. “He expresses his admiration for authoritarians almost as often. Tuesday showed how intertwined those two instincts really are.”
He added that Reporters Without Borders, which monitors press freedom globally, says “‘independent media are non-existent in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi journalists live under heavy surveillance, even when abroad. Despite societal reforms, journalists are still being detained and media outlets operate under strict state control,’ the organization says.”
Concluded Stelter, “Trump has no such control over the American media, but he acts like he wants to have it.” You think?
Authoritarian governments, rightwing, leftwing, sectarian or secular, all forbid a free press. By word and deed, Trump is not a big fan of press freedom. Thus, on the eve of our 250th national birthday bash, it would be wise to heed the words of Thomas Jefferson, chief author of the Declaration of Independence and our third president:
The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
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