MEDIA/SAUDI ARABIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “In a comment that could give Saudi officials a route to climb down from outright denials, President Donald Trump suggested Monday [01-15-18] that ‘rogue killers’ could be responsible for the disappearance and presumed murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who hasn’t been seen since entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago. Trump’s comment came after a 20-minute phone call with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman in which Trump said the king adamantly denied any knowledge of what happened to Khashoggi. Trump announced he’d dispatched Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to the kingdom — and anywhere else necessary — to get to the bottom of the apparent demise of Khashoggi, a Saudi who had been living and working in the United States…The comments marked a break from the Trump administration’s strenuous refusal to speculate over what happened to Khashoggi and came as the U.S. president is under growing pressure to take action on the case of the Saudi writer, who was a contributor to The Washington Post and wrote columns critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Turkish officials say they believe Saudi agents killed and dismembered Khashoggi and say Turkey has audio and video recordings of it. The kingdom has called the allegations of foul play ‘baseless’ but has offered no evidence the writer left the consulate.”
–The Associated Press, “Trump Suggests ‘Rogue Killers’ Murdered Journalist Khashoggi,” The New York Times online, October 15, 2018