Watch Trump Defend MBS Over the Murder of Jamal Khashoggi
Sitting next to Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office, Donald Trump claimed the Saudi crown prince 'knew nothing about' the brutal killing of the US-based journalist in 2018, contradicting US intel.
Donald Trump’s vile rhetoric reached new lows on Tuesday when he was asked about the journalist that, according to US intelligence, his guest of honor, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had ordered dead seven years ago.
“Whether you like [Jamal Khashoggi] or didn’t like him, things happen, but [MBS] knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that,” Trump said when an ABC reporter asked about the murder of Khashoggi, a prominent US-based journalist who was killed in Turkey in 2018, and about the US president’s family business ties with Saudi Arabia.
“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Trump said, ridiculing the ABC reporter for asking questions and calling her network “fake news” in yet another example of the US president’s utter disrespect of and deep-seated aversion to a free press.
Trump said he had “nothing to do” with his family’s business, but what they do “is fine.”
He also labelled Khashoggi, who wrote a monthly column for the Washington Post, “extremely controversial,” claiming “a lot of people didn’t like” him, despite saying in 2019, he was “extremely angry and unhappy” about his murder.
Famed former Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward wrote on social media that when he pressed Trump on Khashoggi’s killing in January 2020, Trump claimed he knew “everything about the whole situation” and that he “saved [MBS’s] ass.”
“They [Congress] were coming down on him very strongly. But I was able to get Congress to leave him alone,” Woodward quoted Trump as saying.
Dismembered With a Bone Saw
Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi journalist based in the US, was critical of some of MBS’s autocratic policies. In his first Washington Post column in September 2017, he wrote that he feared being arrested in the crown prince’s crackdown on dissent.
Thirteen months later, he was killed.
One of Khashoggi’s last TV appearances in English was with Mehdi, when the Zeteo editor-in-chief hosted Al Jazeera’s ‘UpFront.’ They discussed whether the crown prince was truly the anti-corruption reformer that MBS supporters claimed he was.
“As we speak today, there are Saudi intellectuals and journalists jailed,” Khashoggi told Mehdi in March 2018. “Now nobody will dare to speak and criticize the reform … It would be much better for him to allow a breathing space for critics, for Saudi intellectuals, Saudi writers, Saudi media to debate.”
Seven months after the interview, on Oct. 2, 2018, Khashoggi was assassinated. A team of 15 Saudi agents arrived in Istanbul days earlier and removed security cameras from the Saudi consulate, according to Turkish officials. Istanbul’s chief prosecutor said Khashoggi was suffocated when he entered the consulate, and his body was dismembered with a bone saw.
The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence confirmed that bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul to “capture or kill” Khashoggi.
“We base this assessment on the Crown Prince’s control of decisionmaking in the Kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammad bin Salman’s protective detail in the operation, and the Crown Prince’s support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi,” the report, declassified and released to the public in 2021, read.
For his part, MBS has rejected the US intelligence community’s conclusion, and on Tuesday, said in the Oval Office that it’s “really painful” to hear someone lose his life for “no real purpose.”
“We did all the right steps of investigation, etcetera, in Saudi Arabia, and we’ve improved our system to be sure that nothing [happens] like that.”
Tuesday’s meeting marked MBS’s first visit to Washington since the assassination of Khashoggi. The crown prince will likely be leaving with a satisfied wish list after Trump announced the US will sell the kingdom F-35 fighter jets, which could change the defense landscape in the Middle East.
For journalists, however, Trump’s defense of MBS and his comments minimizing Khashoggi’s killing could “have real-world consequences,” the National Press Club warned Tuesday. Statements like Trump’s “can embolden those who wish to silence reporters, and they can undermine the essential principle that journalists must be able to work without fear of violence or retribution.”
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