“I like the Saudis; they are very nice. I make a lot of money with them. They buy all sorts of my stuff — all kinds of toys from Trump. They pay me millions and hundreds of millions.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by CNN at a July 2015 campaign rally.
“For the record, I have no financial interests in Saudi Arabia (or Russia, for that matter). Any suggestion that I have is just more fake news (of which there is plenty)!”
— Trump, on Twitter yesterday.
8 Comments
Eric is repeating the latest lie.
Oh, I am so glad you are back.
EBDOUG, what lie Eric (Trump?) is repeating?
Hassan: the most recent one: That he has no financial ties to Saudi Arabia.
Let me help:
https://thinkprogress.org/eric-trump-saudi-arabia-khashoggi-fox-friends-6134edaff499/
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/412010-eric-trump-trump-org-has-zero-investments-in-russia-or-saudi-arabia
https://thehill.com/policy/international/412071-saudi-lobbying-in-the-us-has-tripled-since-trump-took-office
I’m just so astonished a country that beheads and crucifies people in public would have the audacity to dismember a Washington Post journalist and US resident in private.
And my tweet of the day: “We can’t let the murder of one person stop us from selling $110 billion of weapons that will murder many persons.” – John Fugelsang
Greg, US has no moral authority to condemn Saudi Arabia, nor liberals have any moral authority to criticize Trump. Barack Obama has killed at least 3 US citizen (that I know of) with drone without any due process. Anwar Al Awlaki, Samir Khan in one attack (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki). They were accused of hostility towards US, and of course without trial, we may never know. Not only that, just for the fun Obama killed 17 years old US citizen AbdulRahman Al-Awlaki for no reason given (except that he did not chose his father wisely). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki
And then Trump finished off his 8 year old younger sister as well. Now of course Americans will find excuses for these actions and twist and turn to justify it. Liberals will find excuses to justify their lord and savior Obama. Saudi media and some government paid journalist already floating ideas within Saudi to justify killing by accusing Jamal Khashoqgi of ties with muslim brotherhood (to this date I have yet to find out what is so terrible about muslim brotherhood, perhaps I dont know their past history).
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On personal note, last 2 weeks or so were quite depressing for me, as I grew up reading Jamal Khashoqgi opinion/articles. (I spent first 18 years of my life in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as foreigner). He seemed very reasonable and moderate person. No sane government leader should have felt threatened by him. Yet MBS being an asshole and reckless he is, did what he wanted to. MBS was portrayed as modernist liberal. He is autocratic authoritarian who wants to decide what freedom should people have. He wants to distract people with freedom that they can busy themselves with, as long as no body can question their governance and competence
IK, thanks, I was thinking of Trump rogue killer theory (which is lie ofcourse)
Hassan, thank you for your perspective on this.
I agree that there is very little moral authority anywhere to be found. But at the same time the use of “whataboutism” (the “my guy may have done X, but what about thing Y that your guy did”) just serves to make things worse.