At this point, it may be fair to say President Joe Biden’s criticisms of his predecessor have nothing to do with principles. It was all politics, all the way down.
From flip-flops on immigration to vaccines, it has become clear that most positions Biden staked out against former President Donald Trump during the 2020 election were not Biden’s positions at all. Biden stood where he stood because standing against Trump was his only guidepost.
Now that Trump is defeated, those past Biden stances mean nothing. And also, those past Trump “offenses” no longer offend Biden anymore. Biden has shown already he’s perfectly happy to maintain the exact same policies as Trump, policies Biden condemned just a matter of months ago as barbaric and regressive, so long as they’re politically advantageous.
The latest example of the president flip-flopping on a campaign-year talking point comes in the form of a little-publicized event involving a member of the Saudi royal family.
To wit, the State Department and the Pentagon hosted private meetings with the brother of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman.
The Associated Press described the politics:
“US still has their back, no matter how awfully they terrorize their citizens,” Sarah Leah Whitson, who leads the Arab rights group Democracy for the Arab World, tweeted Tuesday in a criticism of Biden administration policy.
Prince Khalid bin Salman met this month with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl, and national security adviser Jake Sullivan. It’s an impressive roster.
The meetings themselves are not exactly scandalous, but it’s a bit rich considering Biden’s election year foreign policy pitch.
Recall that the then-Democratic primary candidate said explicitly in 2019 that he’d make Saudi Arabia pay for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
“I would make it very clear we were not going to, in fact, sell more weapons to them,” Biden said. “We were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are.” Biden also said there is “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia,” and, in reference to Yemen, said he would “end the sale of material to the Saudis, where they’re going in and murdering children.”
Later, he promised during the 2020 presidential campaign that he’d center his administration’s foreign policy on “human rights and American values,” stating explicitly that the Saudi royal family had violated both of those principles when it had Khashoggi assassinated.
Things must have changed, huh? Apparently.
Biden has gone from threatening to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” to having members of his administration explain the White House’s position is that there’s “no precedent for the U.S. punishing a top official of a country with which it has a partnership.”
Again, it seems the stuff Biden said on the campaign trail was just a lot of talk. If Trump did it, Biden opposed it, regardless of the situation, the context, or whether it was the realistic thing to do. Critics said Trump wasn’t hard enough on Saudi Arabia, so, by God, Biden said he would make a “pariah” of the country. How’s that for tough? Here’s a word of advice: Tough usually looks better when you follow through.
Biden talked a big game, but now he is president. Things are just different, OK? Saudi Arabia represents several strategic interests in the Middle East. We can’t just make a “pariah” of the crown prince now, can we?
That’s a good question for the guy who promised to do just that.
