President Donald Trump has officially absolved Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman regarding responsibility for the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Not atypically, the president used dismissive rhetoric in a hostile reaction to historically anti-Trump ABC reporter Mary Bruce, who asked a question about Mohammed’s involvement with the killing of Khashoggi.
“Your Royal Highness, U.S. intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist,” Bruce asked the Saudi ruler. “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.”
After ascertaining her employer, Trump angrily attacked ABC and Bruce and said, “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 [Mohammed] 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.”
Khashoggi, as described by the Washington Post, “was dismembered in a Saudi consulate in Turkey.” Mohammed claimed to have no culpability for Khashoggi’s killing, saying that “we’ve improved our system to be sure that nothing happened like that … and it’s painful and it’s a huge mistake. And we are doing our best that this doesn’t happen again.”
Under former President Joe Biden, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that Mohammed “approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.” The Biden administration took no action pursuant to the finding.
Such alliances with leaders and states whose ethics are questionable are not only not unheard-of in political history, they are sometimes inarguably critically necessary.
No one argues that the Allies’ alliance with the Soviet Union was not necessary in defeating Germany in World War II. Public opinion in the United States opposed our entering the war.
The Soviets were not only evil and totalitarian, but they were comparable in some of the same political malignancies as the Axis Powers, including Stalin’s infamous purges of Jews, who were murdered or exiled in the mid-1930s, and his open scorn of Zionism, which he claimed to differentiate him from antisemitism.
Thus, political expediency in the service of what President Richard Nixon used to call “a full generation of peace,” an always exaggerated achievement, must be debated on the basis of what is being excused.
The newly close relationship between the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia, including the putative sale to the kingdom of our advanced F-35s and the stylistic closeness accorded to the visiting of the Saudi crown prince to America to see the president, is all part of Trump’s Pax Americana in the Middle East, which still needs some final movement toward Israel by the prince.
To even untrained eyes, the formation of ties between Mohammed and Trump was undeniable and undeniably fruitful. On camera, it appeared as if policy was being made in real time, as the crown prince in response to the president’s suggestion that the Saudi investment might rise to $1 trillion said indeed it would be so. The investment will be significant, the president has said, in fomenting plants, companies, jobs and more, including peace in the Middle East, and will benefit both countries. If, as is hinted, the ties will lead to the richest Middle Eastern country becoming part of the Abraham Accords, the benefits seem to be undiluted.
Even the U.N., with two abstentions (China and Russia: no surprise, but significant) has unanimously supported Trump’s Gaza peace plan.
Trump summarized the situation thusly: “The crown prince and I are making an alliance stronger and more powerful than it’s ever been before.”
To journalists, however, especially at the Washington Post, the absolution of Mohammed is criminal heresy, committed by a president who has his priorities out of whack.
But to President Trump and those who see a possible end — possible end — to the everlasting Middle East Wars, it is an eminently worthy and acceptable effort to permanently cease what seems like endless conflict at a time when our and Israel’s one inveterate major state enemy, Iran, is on its heels.
Let’s not get overly confident, but the risk of clearing Mohammed and the Saudis seems one worth taking for a stable peace.
Richard E. Vatz is professor emeritus of political communication at Towson University and was political editor of USA Today Magazine from 1985 to 2022; he is author of “The Only Authentic Book of Persuasion: The Agenda-Spin Model.”