CIA/INTELLIGENCE/MEDIA/SAUDI ARABIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Shortly before 1 p.m. on Tuesday [12-4-18], having just received a classified briefing from the director of the CIA in the basement of the Capitol, two Republican senators stepped to a crowd of cameras and reporters. With a few pointed words, the pair blew up the Trump administration’s efforts to minimize the political damage stemming from journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder…The South Carolina Republican took aim at the White House’s insistence that U.S. intelligence agencies had no direct evidence linking the murder to Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, even though it was carried out by members of his inner circle. ‘You have to be willfully blind not to come to the conclusion that this was orchestrated and organized by people under the command of MBS.’ Nearby, Republican Sen. Bob Corker told reporters there was ‘zero question in my mind’ that MBS was behind the killing…From the early leaks of its gruesome details to President Donald Trump’s muted responses to Tuesday’s full-throated rebuke from Republican senators, the Khashoggi murder has been an exercise in political mismanagement and discord. What could have been an opportunity to craft a unified American response has devolved into a political standoff, laying bare divisions among the White House, the intelligence community and Congress.”
–Zachary Cohen and Phil Mattingly, “The slow-motion disaster of Trump’s Khashoggi strategy,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, December 5, 2018 12:25 pm