He that hath knowledge spareth his words,” says the biblical proverb. All of us can profit from these words, but perhaps Donald Trump needs to hear them more than most. His helter-skelter, self-exculpatory statement on his administration’s relationship with Saudi Arabia was Trump at his logorrheic worst.
Trump campaigned loudly in 2016 against the Iran nuclear deal, and he was right. The Obama administration, in its foolish conviction that America’s traditional alliances were mostly the result of narrow self-interest or defective ideology, had attempted to entice Iran to join the community of civilized nations—an unsuccessful venture that obliged the United States to distance itself from a longtime ally, Saudi Arabia. It was always a fool’s errand, and Trump reversed Obama’s reversal upon entering office.
The American rapprochement with the Saudis came at a crucial time. King Salman chose a new crown prince in June 2017—his son Mohammed bin Salman, known as MbS—and as the new heir to the throne gathered all the reins of state power, he expressed strong reformist aims. He saw that Saudi Arabia could not maintain its position in the world without allowing women more rights. Soon after MbS ascended, women were permitted to drive and to attend sporting events. More important for the Middle East and the world, MbS favored a cautious alliance with Israel and boldly stated that under his rule the kingdom would stop funding extremist interpretations of Islam that had fueled anti-Western radicalism and terrorism for generations.
When the world learned in early October of the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of government thugs inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, few seriously doubted that MbS had either permitted or ordered the killing. On November 16, the Washington Post reported that the CIA believes Khashoggi was murdered on the direct order of the crown prince. It was an evil and foolish act and a powerful reminder, if one were needed, that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy that has little regard for the individual freedoms of its citizens and frequently brutalizes its critics.
The original Saudi denials fell apart as quickly as they were offered. Subsequent explanations—from “rogue agents” to an interrogation gone wrong—changed almost daily, and all soon collapsed under the weight of their own contradictions. Nobody believed the Saudis because the evidence made it clear that they were lying.
The murder and cover-up put President Trump in a delicate position. With the openly hostile Iranian regime battling the Saudis for regional dominance, his instincts on renewing the alliance had been sound. But fair-minded critics were raising legitimate questions about whether the president had aligned himself too closely with Saudi Arabia and MbS. This was too much even for Trump, who is himself not opposed to lying and who had invested deeply in the Saudis. “They had a very bad original concept, it was carried out poorly, and the cover-up was one of the worst in the history of cover-ups,” he said to reporters at the White House on October 23. “Whoever thought of that idea, I think is in big trouble. And they should be in big trouble.”
But MbS is not in big trouble with Trump. That much is clear from the Trump’s rambling, incoherent statement of November 20, issued under the heading: “Standing with Saudi Arabia.” There have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of embarrassing moments for the country during the presidency of Donald Trump. This statement, with its characteristic Trumpian flourishes and bewildering non sequiturs, ranks high among them.
Trump notes, almost in passing, that the murder of Khashoggi was “an unacceptable and horrible crime,” but only after emphasizing that Saudi leaders believed Khashoggi was “an enemy of the state.” He accuses members of Congress who disagree with his approach to these issues of acting for “political or other reasons.”
In a single statement, then, the president contradicted the findings of the U.S. intelligence community; reversed his promise of accountability for those who directed the killing; amplified the reprehensible suggestion that the victim shares the blame for his fate; and attacked the motives of those who disagree with him.
If Trump’s statement was ugly and embarrassing for what it contained, it was equally disconcerting for what it left out: American values. There was nothing about the protection of human rights as a key component of our relations with other nations; nothing about freedom of speech; nothing about freedom of the press; nothing about the right to due process or the right to life.
Trump supporters have defended the statement as an expression of realpolitik. But as Trump’s apologists do frequently, they’re crediting to philosophy and policymaking something best understood as a reflection of flawed character. Trump isn’t embracing MbS and the Saudis because of some sophisticated understanding of the geopolitical risks of distancing the United States from a longtime ally. The fact that Khashoggi’s death gave the president’s critics reason to deride him was intolerable to a man who assesses every circumstance, great or small, by the degree to which it makes Donald J. Trump look good or bad.
It’s never easy in the conduct of foreign policy to find the right balance between the moral obligations of a world power and the frequent imperatives of doing diplomatic business with unsavory actors and problematic regimes. Trump, however, seems to prefer a foreign policy that neglects those moral obligations altogether. In that sense, his statement on the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi—an incoherent collection of platitudes and equivocations in which he managed to say everything but the truth—is a near-perfect expression of the man himself.
