Trump Dismissed MBS’ Role in Khashoggi Murder When It Happened, Too
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Demented Blast From the Past
There are few things that President Trump says that are shocking to me, or anyone else stuck in this warped doom loop that is paying attention to American politics in 2025. But Trump’s remarks today demonizing murdered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and defending the crown prince of Saudi Arabia from the Oval Office were an exception, and inspired a sense of déjà vu among those of us who covered the disturbing details of Khashoggi’s brutally violent murder in 2018.
While speaking to the press from the Oval Office alongside Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — whom U.S. intelligence found to be responsible for Khashoggi’s murder during Trump’s first term — on Tuesday, Trump shrugged off Khashoggi’s dismembering. He also was adamant that he doesn’t hold bin Salman responsible for the journalist’s death, despite U.S. intelligence and Senate Republicans’ assessments declaring the crown prince complicit.
“A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about,” Trump said in response to a question from ABC News about Khashoggi. “Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen, but [Mohammed] knew nothing about it. And we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”
He went on to chastise and threaten the reporter, ABC News’ Mary Bruce, for asking a “horrible, insubordinate and just a terrible question.”
“I think the license should be taken away from ABC, because your news is so fake and it’s so wrong,” Trump said.
It is obviously unclear what aspect of Bruce’s question was fake news. The Wall Street Journal reported in December of 2018 that the CIA had sufficient evidence to conclude that bin Salman ordered the killing of Khashoggi. From the original WSJ report:
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent at least 11 messages to his closest adviser, who oversaw the team that killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in the hours before and after the journalist’s death in October, according to a highly classified CIA assessment.
The Saudi leader also in August 2017 had told associates that if his efforts to persuade Mr. Khashoggi to return to Saudi Arabia weren’t successful, “we could possibly lure him outside Saudi Arabia and make arrangements,” according to the assessment, a communication that it states “seems to foreshadow the Saudi operation launched against Khashoggi.”
In 2018, as today, Trump was dismissive of his own intelligence community’s assessments. In a statement around the time of the WSJ piece, Trump said it was possible the Saudi 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,” Trump added at the time. “In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
Back in 2018, I and a few of my TPM colleagues spent a lot of time covering the moment-by-moment developments in the events surrounding Khashoggi’s murder. The Washington Post reporter and columnist was a known critic of Saudi Arabia’s royal leadership, particularly Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman, for its crackdown on dissent and the humanitarian crisis he created with his intervention in Yemen at the time. In one of his final columns he criticized the lack of free speech in Saudi Arabia and called bin Salman “impulsive.”
Khashoggi was murdered and his body was brutally dismembered by a team of 15 Saudi operatives after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018, according to later reporting. He had been living in the U.S. at the time, after self-exiling from Saudi Arabia. He entered the consulate in Turkey to collect documents to prepare for his upcoming marriage. There are still some unknown details about how exactly he died. Some reports suggest he died while being restrained by the Saudi operatives, who were reportedly attempting to bring him back to Saudi. Some suggest he died after being injected with a drug.
His body was dismembered with a bone saw inside the embassy building in Turkey and was disposed of, according to Turkish officials. Bin Salman has maintained he had nothing to do with the assassination and dismemberment and put 11 people on trial with the Riyadh Criminal Court. The public prosecutor sought the death penalty for five of them.
When asked by MS NOW, formerly MSNBC, how she felt seeing bin Salman welcomed by the White House today, his widow Hanan Elatr Khashoggi stood up for her husband’s work writing about the Saudi government.
“I have a very heavy feeling today. I cannot express it. It is very painful. It’s very heavy and a mix of feeling. I wish Jamal were here to welcome him, because Jamal was very open to meet with him and to explain to him what is his mission and vision,” she said. “But, unfortunately, they just decided to take his life away without listening to him.”
Trump Shutters Dept of Ed
The Trump administration began acting on the president’s promise to dismantle the Department of Education and fold its crucial services and responsibilities into other federal agencies. The offices for elementary and secondary education, and postsecondary education will be moved to the Department of Labor, for example.
The move has already sparked congressional pushback from Democrats who have called the executive branch moves illegal. Politico has all the incredibly grim details here:
The expansive and unprecedented effort to outsource the department’s operations using intergovernmental contract agreements with other agencies does not yet include transferring federal authority over special education to HHS, according to the department official and people familiar with the matter who spoke as the agency began to detail the effort ahead of the formal announcement Tuesday afternoon.
Senate Dems Demand Epstein Vote
After every present member of the House, except Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), voted to compel the Justice Department to release its tranche of documents on investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, a group of Senate Democrats are asking Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to “immediately bring the Epstein Files Transparency Act to the Senate floor for a vote, without delay or unnecessary process distractions.”
Thune, for his part, said Tuesday that he would bring the measure to the floor for a vote “as soon as we can figure out where our members are.”
As we mentioned yesterday, Trump’s designed-to-obfuscate maneuvering on the matter appears to be a delay tactic of sorts. Trump could easily demand the DOJ release the files at any time and he has not only not done that, but has actively blocked it from happening up until this point.
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