After receiving the final report on the brutal, premeditated assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a legal resident of the United States whom the CIA has determined was murdered on the orders of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Donald Trump issued a long, rambling factless statement!
This statement did not flow through the normal channels, as is evidenced by the rambling ridiculous and logic-free nature of the thing.
It begins with this affirmation: "The world is a dangerous place!"
After some required Iran-bashing, he moved to the crux of things: Money.
After my heavily negotiated trip to Saudi Arabia last year, the Kingdom agreed to spend and invest $450 billion in the United States. This is a record amount of money. It will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous economic development, and much additional wealth for the United States. Of the $450 billion, $110 billion will be spent on the purchase of military equipment from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and many other great U.S. defense contractors. If we foolishly cancel these contracts, Russia and China would be the enormous beneficiaries – and very happy to acquire all of this newfound business. It would be a wonderful gift to them directly from the United States!
Oh! I wonder if Jamal Khashoggi's fiancée thinks that some money is a fair trade for the life of her dead husband-to-be. And what money is worth the murder, dismemberment and disposal of a human?
But you know there's more. There's always more. In TrumpWorld, journalists deserve what they get.
"Representatives of Saudi Arabia say that Jamal Khashoggi was an 'enemy of the state' and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but my decision is in no way based on that – this is an unacceptable and horrible crime," he wrote.
"King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman vigorously deny any knowledge of the planning or execution of the murder of Mr. Khashoggi. Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event – maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!"
No, there's no maybe. They did. And Trump as much as admitted it in the paragraph preceding this one, where he said, "After great independent research, we now know many details of this horrible crime. We have already sanctioned 17 Saudis known to have been involved in the murder of Mr. Khashoggi, and the disposal of his body."
Are we clear that 17 Saudis didn't go to an embassy, lure Khashoggi there, brutally murder him and then dispose of his body parts as if he were nothing more than roadkill?
This statement is a disgrace, and it is not lost on me that Trump's money obsession isn't just about Rockwell, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. After all, Trump himself declared that he loves the Saudis because they buy apartments from him, as the video at the top illustrates.
