FOREIGN POLICY/JARED KUSHNER/MEDIA/MIDDLE EAST/SAUDI ARABIA/TURKEY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump and Jared Kushner are learning that hyper-personalized family diplomacy and throwing in their lot with foreign strongmen can come at a damaging political price. The disappearance and possible murder of the US-based dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul is primarily a searing individual tragedy wrapped in an international criminal mystery. It also has profound geopolitical consequences in a torn region bristling with tensions. But the saga is resonating so broadly in Washington because of what it reveals about the idiosyncratic and gut-level calls that drive the Trump administration’s approach to wielding US power. The saga, which has embarrassed Trump and exposed him to rising political heat, underlines the risk he and his son-in-law and Middle East fixer took in anchoring US foreign policy to the Saudi regime and the erratic and ruthless Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, as he is known.”
–Stephen Collinson, “Trump’s Saudi embrace was always complicated,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, October 11, 2018 1:51 am