Buffeted by international criticism and condemnation for its Crown Prince’s alleged but increasingly believed role in the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Saudia Arabia has a new public relations person in Washington.

President Donald Trump.

In yet another virtual attack on America’s traditional norms, Trump is discounting the Crown Prince’s possible role and once again ignoring and, in effect dissing, the Unites States’ professional intelligence community: the CIA has concluded Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman likely ordered the murder. Some Republican Senators are now starting to speak out in breaking with Trump. As expected Fox News’ Sean Hackety Hannity is defending the White House’s explanation.

But it seems to be yet another example of how America’s “givens” and “norms” are under attack by Trump. The question is whether the “givens” and “norms” can hold up in the long-run over what appears to be a continuing onslaught.

The Washington Post:

President Trump declared his strong support for Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, effectively ignoring the CIA’s conclusion that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and asserting that relations with a critical ally should not be derailed.

In an exclamation-mark-packed statement that aides said he dictated himself, Trump said that U.S. intelligence would continue to “assess” information but that the United States “may never know all the facts surrounding the murder.”

Speaking of whether the crown prince knew about or ordered the killing by Saudi agents last month in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Trump said “maybe he did or maybe he didn’t!” But the president indicated that U.S. interests in Saudi oil production, weapons purchases and support for administration policies in the Middle East were more important than holding an ally to account, and he stressed the importance of staying in the kingdom’s good graces.

“They have been a great ally,” he said of the Saudis, and “the United States intends to remain a steadfast partner.” Speaking later to reporters as he left the White House for his Florida resort, Trump said, “I’m not going to destroy our economy by being foolish with Saudi Arabia,” he said.

Trump’s defense of Saudi Arabia, whose leaders have denied knowledge of the operation while acknowledging that its agents carried it out, marks another instance when he has sided with the personal assurances of an autocrat over the analysis of his own intelligence officials.

He also took the word of Russian President Vladi­mir Putin that he didn’t interfere in the 2016 election, despite the unanimous conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community to the contrary. And Trump continues to praise North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, and declare the threat from its nuclear-weapons program neutralized, even though U.S. intelligence is still tracking the development of missiles and nuclear weapons material.

The Post notes that Trump’s position has been condemned by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

“I never thought I’d see the day a White House would moonlight as a public relations firm for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) wrote on Twitter.

Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, must decide whether to use the handful of days left in the legislative term to consider a bipartisan bill, introduced last week, to stop virtually all U.S. weapons sales and military assistance to the Saudis in response to both the war in Yemen and Khashoggi’s killing. A similar measure has been introduced in the House.

Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, joined Corker in sending a letter to Trump on Tuesday demanding that the administration make a determination specifically addressing whether Mohammed was responsible for the killing.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump confidant, co-sponsored the Senate bill and said in a statement that he believed there would be “strong bipartisan support for serious sanctions against Saudi Arabia, including appropriate members of the royal family, for this barbaric act which defied all civilized norms .?.?. I fully realize we have to deal with bad actors and imperfect situations on the international stage. However, when we lose our moral voice, we lose our strongest asset.”

Democrats cast the president’s decision as a failure of leadership.

Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Trump’s “failure to hold Saudi Arabia responsible in any meaningful way .?.?. is just one more example of this White House’s retreat from American leadership on issues like human rights and protecting the free press.”

New York Times Editorial:

America’s most cynical critics on Tuesday when he portrayed its central objectives in the world as panting after money and narrow self-interest.

Ignoring the findings of the C.I.A., Mr. Trump said in a muddled statement released by the White House that, in effect, no matter how wrong the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, no matter where true responsibility lay, he would not stand up to the Saudi regime. He would not take any chance of risking its supplies of money, oil and help in the Middle East by holding the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, accountable for the killing.

The president made clear his commitment to the use of the exclamation point, if not to truth and justice: “It could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”

Mr. Khashoggi, a resident of Virginia though not an American citizen, was a columnist for an American newspaper, The Washington Post. It did not serve the safety of journalists or Americans abroad that President Trump could not summon even a modicum of lip service to condemn the abomination of dispatching a hit team equipped with a bone saw to throttle and dismember Mr. Khashoggi for daring to criticize the crown prince. The crown prince, who is 33, is an ally and kindred spirit to Mr. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

At the outset of his statement, Mr. Trump declared, “The world is a very dangerous place!” Indeed. He is making it more so by emboldening despots in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. The killing, revealed in all its inhuman detail by a Turkish audio recording and followed by a stream of lies revising previous lies from the Saudi regime, seemed to reflect arrogance of a rising breed of autocratic rulers impervious to shame or moral judgment. Mr. Trump is confirming them in their impunity.

In simplistic and often inaccurate terms, the statement reflected Mr. Trump’s view that all relationships are transactional, and that moral or human rights considerations must be sacrificed to a primitive understanding of American national interests — or as he put it, “America first!” “We may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi,” the president declared. “In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

Go to the link to read it in full.

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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