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PARIS – Donald Trump decided on Tuesday to give his approval to the leadership of an alleged Saudi assassin.
Speaking of accusations by the CIA and others that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the US president has returned to his usual fall-back position: the truth is unknowable.
"It could very well be that the crown prince was aware of this tragic event – maybe he did it and maybe he did not!" Trump said in a statement that gave the impression of having dictated full force and refused to allow corrections.
"We may never know all the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi," Trump said. "In any case, our relations are with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."
It's pitiful and fake.
Trump has reduced all international relations to monetary transactions and the personalities of the leaders he believes he trusts. In the Middle East, this meant that the Trump administration had only one policy and that it was called Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
MBS, as it has just been known, promised the Trump-Kushner regime's players all they could dream of: huge sums of money, victory as a warrior, honor as a factor of peace. He would have put the whole world in their hands, like the glowing globe they loved on their first trip abroad to his hometown in 2017.
Now all that is in doubt. The man who promised to Trump that everything promises to be a handicap while he is in power, and more: a murderous millennium leading to the throne of his decrepit father and having only 33 years in a family where, for better or for worse, many men live in their eighties.
When the CIA determined "with great confidence" that Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi – whose body was allegedly cut to pieces on October 2 at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul – he also made another decision. According to a report on the agency's findings in The Washington PostCIA analysts believe that despite the worldwide uproar around the murder, MBS "is likely to survive" and that it is "taken for granted", it will be king.
If this is the case, the question is not what will happen if MBS goes away, as some Washington experts ask, but what will happen when it does not? will stay?
RETURNING TO A MOMENT on a snowy day in March 2017, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to postpone a lunch at the White House and MBS stepped in after the morning meetings, thus sealing her links with Trump and the many State-loving men of the new administration.
One of the assistant advisers for national security, Derek Harvey, defended the idea that Iran was the ultimate enemy and that Saudi Arabia was the solution, according to Bob Woodward's book. Fear. Trump picked up this point in Tuesday's statement. But senior executives of the time – Chief of Staff HR McMaster, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (who had too often treated Saudis for contracts oil companies as CEO of Exxon) – thought this to be a disappointing exercise.
"When MBS offered himself to Kushner as his companion in the Saudi kingdom, it was like "meeting someone nice on your first day of internship"."
– Michael Wolff in "Fire and Fury"
"The Saudis are still talking a big game," said Tillerson, according to Woodward. "You are going to dance with them on the negotiations. When it comes time to put the signature on the page, you can not do it. "
It does not matter. In the spring of 2017, Trump was desperately looking for a "win". His big promises in the campaign on health care, infrastructure, and real tax reform did not materialize. Meanwhile, MBS was courting Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor. On this snowy day, MBS met Trump himself.
"The two great men, former Trump and a much younger MBS, charming, flattering and country club fans, each in his own way, were very impressed," writes Michael Wolff in Fire and fury, which aptly describes the Trump regime's approach to reality television in the Middle East. The idea in the White House that all the previous administrations were doing was stupid was actually based on an abysmal ignorance.
"There was something oddly aligned between the Trump family and MBS," Wolff wrote. "Like all Saudi leaders, MBS had virtually no education." Fortunately and sadly, it put Trump and MBS on a level playing field. "To know little made them strangely comfortable with each other. When MBS offered himself to Kushner as his companion in the Saudi kingdom, it was "as if you were meeting a friendly man on the first day of your internship," wrote Wolff, citing an anonymous friend of Kushner.
MBS promised indeed to be the one stop shop for solutions in the Middle East, and it had to look pretty compelling for people who had no idea of the region. He was going to deliver the Palestinians for the peace process and recognize Israel, dragging the UAE and others with him. He was going to shave the wall against the Iranian aggression and bring the war home to Tehran. He was going to manage oil prices in a way that would benefit the United States, particularly the Trump regime. And what about Yemen? This wildly ill-conceived war? No problem. Wrap this up in a few months or even weeks.
In the meantime, why not take the first Trump presidential trip to Riyadh, where the Trumpis and the Saudis could promote all these good ideas? In addition, the Saudis would engage again, at least verbally, in all those gun deals that Obama signed. 110 billion dollars. Trump could talk about jobs, jobs, jobs. Saudi Arabia would privatize Aramco. Money for nothing.
None of these promises has materialized. Tillerson was right.
Then comes the Khashoggi case and everything turns to shit. The guy behind the counter of Drive-Thru, Saudi Arabian policy of control in the Middle East Saudi, turns out to be a psychopath.
"The man who promised big wins to Trump in the Middle East makes him look like a loser. Or an idiot. Or both."
BUT … IF YOU ARE TRUMP, what are you going to do? We saw it on Tuesday. He clearly thinks that if he can whitewash the MBS enough, while playing Iran as the root of all evil, people could turn the page and assume, to paraphrase Franklin D. Roosevelt, talk about a dictator of the Banana Republic: "It's a psychopath, our psychopath. "
Unfortunately for Trump, this does not seem to work and the man who promised him great victories in the Middle East makes him look like a loser. Or an idiot. Or both.
Of course, we know that Trump is a jerk for authoritarian assassins: Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Rodrigo Duterte, to name a few. But MBS now appears in a class on its own, not for the amount of its murder (the crazy war of Yemen aside), but for the quality of its inaptitude. Trump has tried to cover up the crown prince in the Khashoggi case, hoping that all this will disappear, but he continues to be confronted with the growing awareness that this Saudi murderer who promised him so much is not only reckless, he is inept.
Barbara Bodine, a former ambassador with years of experience in the Arabian Peninsula, said: "The MBS may slip for the rest of this administration, but it will be corrupted permanently. Each action or non-action will be seen through Jamal Khashoggi's filter. Each act will be considered ruthless, reckless or shameless. And as he is increasingly unable to deliver: no victory in Yemen, no collapse of Qatar [which MBS tried to crush]and if oil prices fall, without a welfare state and without large projects, it could become the Hollow Prince. "
Effectively. And Trump, the defendant, exposes a hollow presidency.
