In a move that has caught both newsrooms and politicos off guard, King Salman of Saudi Arabia abruptly canceled his announced plans to attend a summit to be hosted by President Obama this week at Camp David.
Yet, both the Saudis and the White House insist that the king’s surprise absence is not a “snub.”
The U.S. media, however, doesn’t appear convinced.
“[T]his snub is so in your face to not only not come, to say you’re coming and then not come, but to have reconfirmed at the highest levels. It’s embarrassing to Kerry. It’s embarrassing to the White House. And I don’t see any way that they can spin it,” MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell said Tuesday on “Morning Joe.”
Earlier, on Monday, the Peacock Network’s chief foreign affairs correspondent said that, “the White House is trying to claim this is not a snub, certainly the Saudis are saying this is not a snub, but there is no other way to interpret it.”
MSNBC’s Julie Pace agreed with Mitchell, saying at the time that it’s a “really confusing” situation. Pace also noted that it was just last Friday when the White House announced that the king would attend the meeting of U.S. and Gulf Arab officials. The Saudis also said that the king had planned to meet privately with the president for “bilateral talks.”
Later that same day, however, the Saudi government announced that King Salman would neither meet with President Obama nor attend the Camp David summit. In fact, they said, the king will not be traveling at all.
“It’s hard to really understand how the White House could get really confused on this, how they could’ve gotten wrong information about the king’s plan, but they say that this is not a matter of substance. There are Saudi officials who are coming. They have good relations with the White House,” Pace said.
But even with the White House insisting that it was merely a scheduling conflict, media figures and politicos are asking whether the king’s absence has anything to do with nuclear negotiations between Washington, D.C., and Tehran.
At CNN, Chris Cuomo suggested this week that the king’s absence is “likely in a show of frustration over Washington’s overtures to Iran.”
CNN’s Michelle Kosinski said, “What we might see this morning is a call between the new Saudi King Salman and President Obama. Both sides are insisting that this is not a snub. The Saudis are saying it is merely a scheduling issue.”
“What is weird about this,” she said, “is that now, very few actual leaders are going to show up for this summit that the president invited them to at the White House and Camp David.”
