"Trump Never Handles Anything Right": He Is Acting Like Saudi Arabia's Lawyer in Khashoggi Affair

Worth reading.



Kyle Griffin Verified account @kylegriffin1
44m44 minutes ago

"Trump Never Handles Anything Right": The President Is Acting Like Saudi Arabia's Lawyer in the Khashoggi Affair

Link to tweet

“Trump Never Handles Anything Right”: The President Is Acting Like Saudi Arabia’s Lawyer in the Khashoggi Affair

By Susan B. Glasser

October 19, 2018

President Trump’s ardent embrace of Saudi Arabia’s young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has made the Khashoggi affair about much more than the disappearance of a single man.
Photograph by Mark Wilson / Bloomberg / Getty

On Monday afternoon, I received an e-mail that was short and to the point. “Please be advised that the reception for the National Day of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on Thursday, October 18, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm has been cancelled,” it read. It was signed by Fatimah Baeshen, a spokesperson for the Saudi Embassy. No explanation for the cancellation was given, but, of course, none was needed: this was no time for the Saudis to throw a party for themselves, amid the furor over the disappearance and apparent gruesome murder of the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The basic facts have not changed much since Khashoggi, a Washington Post editorial columnist living in self-imposed exile in Virginia, entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, on October 2nd, never to reëmerge. But the story, fed by a stream of leaks from Turkish officials with ever more grisly details of what they say was Khashoggi’s capture, killing, and dismemberment by a team of fifteen Saudis, has turned into an international crisis, fuelled by the Saudis’ implausible denials and by President Trump himself. Until Thursday, well into the third week since Khashoggi’s disappearance, Trump never even admitted the obvious fact of Khashoggi’s likely death, and he continues to act more like the Saudis’ lawyer in the court of world opinion than the aggrieved defender of human rights and free speech that an American President is supposed to be at such a moment. The belated announcement, late Friday evening, by the Saudis that Khashoggi was dead, and their new claim that he died in a scuffle with Saudi agents, will hardly quell the controversy. Nor will Trump’s near-instant pronouncement that the Saudi excuse was credible. Instead, thanks to Trump and his ardent embrace of Saudi Arabia’s brutal young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, it’s about much more than the murder of a single man.



In an era when Trump’s tweets and constant commentary produce news cycles of shorter and shorter duration, the Khashoggi affair may turn out to be the longest-running Washington plotline of this midterm-election season. The Times’ revelation that Trump was a decades-long tax cheat came and went. The September plea deal by Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort receded from the headlines. The national uproar over allegations of sexual misconduct by the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh lasted just under three weeks. Yet here we are, a full seventeen days and counting as I write this, with no end in sight as the Trump Administration blusters and blunders about in a search, so far unsuccessful, for a way to end the saga that does not involve a serious rupture with an ally central to its entire Mideast strategy.

I’m not surprised by Washington’s obsession with the story: it’s the Trump Presidency distilled to its morally compromising, press-bashing, truth-denying essence. At a time when many question American leadership in the world, Trump’s combination of credulity and cynicism in response to the brutal murder of a dissident who sought refuge here gives the world’s bad guys yet another reason to cheer. Even many Republicans in Congress are furious at Trump, with the senators Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio reëmerging as the tribunes of American virtue that they used to be, demanding Trump take tough action against the Saudis in response. Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, told me that this particular outrage, in a world full of them, has resonated because “it’s a spy thriller, a page-turner.” He believes that dynamic will continue. Of the Saudis, he said, “Every day that goes by they don’t try to explain what happened is another day their credibility starts to evaporate in Congress.”

Already, it’s clear on Capitol Hill that American politics toward Saudi Arabia have shifted dramatically.