President Trump mused about being able to insulate Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from Congress following the killing of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, according to Bob Woodward’s new book.
The veteran journalist wrote in his book Rage, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Examiner in advance of its Sept. 15 publication, that when he discussed bin Salman’s widely believed role in Khashoggi’s death, the president emphasized the crown prince’s denials.
“He will always say that he didn’t do it,” Trump said of bin Salman, known by the acronym MBS. “He says that to everybody, and frankly I’m happy that he says that. But he will say that to you, he will say that to Congress, and he will say that to everybody. He’s never said he did it.”
When Woodward pressed Trump if he personally believed MBS was behind the killing of Khashoggi, who was also a Washington Post columnist, Trump replied, “No, he says that he didn’t do it. … He says very strongly that he didn’t do it.”
Khashoggi was killed and dismembered by a team of more than a dozen Saudi operatives in the kingdom’s Turkish consulate in October 2018. His slaying prompted immediate backlash from Congress and the international community, and the CIA soon determined that MBS personally ordered Khashoggi’s murder.
“I saved his ass,” Trump told other people following outcry over the dissident’s death, Woodward reported in his book. “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.”
Woodward also wrote that Trump “had sarcastically told members of Congress, ‘Let them trade with Russia instead. Let them buy a thousand planes from Russia instead of the United States. Let them go to China and buy all of their military equipment instead of the United States. Fellas, you’ve got to be smart.”
In May 2019, months after Khashoggi’s death, the president signed an emergency declaration that allowed him to circumvent Congress and sell arms to the Saudis. The administration used aggression from Iran to justify the declaration.
Woodward, who along with Carl Bernstein helped bring down President Richard Nixon through Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Watergate scandal in the Washington Post, said that Trump told him, “Bob, they spent $400 billion over a fairly short period of time.”
Woodward said Trump was referring to deals made in advance of his 2017 trip to Saudi Arabia, the first of his presidency. He quoted an Associated Press fact-check on the matter. “Actual orders under the arms deal are far smaller, and neither country has announced nor substantiated Trump’s repeated assertion that the Saudis are poised to inject $450 billion overall into the U.S. economy,” the fact-check said, as written in his book.
Woodward’s booked is gleaned from 18 on-the-record interviews with Trump in addition to “deep background” conversations with several people in the president’s orbit. Woodward’s book made waves when excerpts were released this week that showed Trump wanted to downplay the coronavirus threat and privately acknowledged how deadly it was early on in the pandemic.
It also reveals some of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s flowery letters to Trump, including one in which Kim fawned about “that moment of history when I firmly held Your Excellency’s hand at the beautiful and sacred location as the whole world watched with great interest and hope to relive the honor of that day.”
The book is set to be released on Sept. 15.
