Turned on a dime

US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have pointedly asked the [Saudi] kingdom’s de facto ruler [Mohammed bin Salman] to explain what happened inside its [Istanbul, Turkey] diplomatic mission nine days ago, as evidence continues to mount that [journalist Jamal] Khashoggi was killed [there] and dismembered.

Trump suggested that US investigators had been dispatched to look into the disappearance. “We’re being very tough. And we have investigators over there and we’re working with Turkey, and frankly we’re working with Saudi Arabia. We want to find out what happened,” Trump told Fox News on Thursday morning.

  The Guardian

Is that so?









'Human rights?  I'd rather have money.  Besides, it's a fucking journalist.'

What is both striking and telling is how halfhearted and generally uninterested the Saudis have been in countering evidence that they assassinated Khashoggi. (Take, for example, the Saudi ambassador’s suggestion to Senator Bob Corker that the consulate surveillance video only “live-streams.”) But this is precisely what makes Saudi Arabia’s behavior in this episode even more reckless than the ongoing crackdown on even its milder critics or its increasingly callous disregard for human life in the Yemen war. Trump has invested political capital and extended unprecedented goodwill to MbS, drawing considerable criticism in the process. In a sense, this has been Trump’s “big bet,” perhaps his biggest one in the Middle East. As Axios’s Jonathan Swan put it, “The Trump administration, led by Jared Kushner, made about as big a bet on MbS the visionary-reformer and the Saudis as it’s possible for a US admin to make.” The goodwill has not been reciprocated. Rather, MbS is, in effect, taunting Trump, gloating in his ability to get away with anything.

  The Atlantic

A man after Trump's own heart.

UPDATE: Here's a little fact from Decmeber 2016 that just might have come into play:

A Saudi Arabian journalist and commentator has been banned by his country for criticising US President-elect Donald Trump.

Jamal Khashoggi has been banned from writing in newspapers, making TV appearances and attending conferences, Middle East Eye reports.

After Mr Khashoggi criticised Mr Trump's Middle East policies at a Washington think-tank on 10 November, an official Saudi spokesman said he did not represent the Kingdom in a statement to the Saudi Press Agency.

  UK Independent