INTELLIGENCE/MEDIA/SAUDI ARABIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump defied the nation’s intelligence agencies and a growing body of evidence on Tuesday [11-20-18] to declare his unswerving loyalty to Saudi Arabia, asserting that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s culpability for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi might never be known. In a remarkable statement that appeared calculated to end the debate over the American response to the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, the president said, ‘It could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!’ ‘We may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi,’ Mr. Trump added. ‘In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.’ His statement, which aides said Mr. Trump dictated himself and reflected his deeply held views, came only days after the C.I.A. concluded that the crown prince, a close ally of the White House, had authorized the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and columnist for The Washington Post. In 633 words, punctuated by eight exclamation points and written in an impolitic style that sounded like Mr. Trump’s off-the-cuff observations, the statement was a stark distillation of the Trump worldview: remorselessly transactional, heedless of the facts, determined to put America’s interests first, and founded on a theory of moral equivalence.”
–Mark Landler, “In Extraordinary Statement, Trump Stands With Saudis Despite Khashoggi Killing,” The New York Times online, November 20, 2018