Given all the crap that Trump spews out of his lying mouth every day, it takes something especially disgusting to make my Trumpian Outrage Meter rise into the red alert zone.
That happened to me today when Trump not only failed to condemn the horrific 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi (shown above) at the order of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — who Trump was meeting with at the White House — he excused the killing in an inexcusable fashion.
This is how a Washington Post editorial about Trump’s comments starts out.
The United States government often advances its national interests by working with nasty people, and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is one of the nastiest. It’s one thing, however regrettable, to deal reluctantly with him. President Donald Trump’s performance at the White House Tuesday was something else entirely: weak, crass and of no strategic benefit to America.
While meeting with the Saudi leader, Trump held forth with journalists in the Oval Office, as he often does. One reporter asked about the murder of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018. “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about,” the president responded. “Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.” He added that the crown prince “knew nothing about it.”
These distortions dishonor Khashoggi’s legacy, stand at odds with the facts and are beneath the office of the president.
That’s putting it mildly. Trump flat-out lied, since the CIA concluded that Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi to be killed. You know, the CIA in Trump’s first term in office, the CIA under the control of the Trump administration. So says a 2018 Washington Post story, “CIA concludes Saudi crown prince ordered Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination.”
The CIA has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month, contradicting the Saudi government’s claims that he was not involved in the killing, according to people familiar with the matter.
The CIA’s assessment, in which officials have said they have high confidence, is the most definitive to date linking Mohammed to the operation and complicates the Trump administration’s efforts to preserve its relationship with a close ally. A team of 15 Saudi agents flew to Istanbul on government aircraft in October and killed Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate, where he had gone to pick up documents that he needed for his planned marriage to a Turkish woman.
Khashoggi was strangled, then dismembered with a bone saw. That’s what Trump refers to as “things happen.” What a despicable asshole.
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