The Bulwark's Bill Kristol argued in a new piece Wednesday that it made perfect sense for Donald Trump to spend his first international trip of his second term in Saudi Arabia because he admires the kingdom's iron fist of repression so very much.
Kristol wrote that Trump appearing among the "autocrats and plutocrats and kleptocrats" hosted by His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was exactly the image Trump wanted circulated around the world: American strongman holds court with a despot in one of the world's "most unfree" nations.
“I like him a lot. I like him too much,” the president said of his "friend" MBS, despite Saudi Arabia's proven ties to 9/11 and the gruesome murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. The U.S. has “no stronger partner," Trump said of the kingdom before shoring up at least $600 billion in Saudi investment pledges.
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"Once upon a time, when American presidents still believed in the principles of the American republic, they accepted that they still had to work with despotisms like Saudi Arabia," Kristol wrote. "Still, they mostly tried to move them along, even if slowly, toward the goal of a freer society. 'Liberalization' was the hope, from Riyadh to Beijing. The goal may not have always been pursued consistently or effectively. But it was held out as a not-ignoble hope, as a desirable outcome."
But, "No longer," Kristol argued.
In the era of the second Trump administration, "It is considered foolish to push back against these facts of life. Indeed it is thought to be desirable to embrace them," Kristol wrote.
There's a lot Trump likes about Saudi culture but number one for the budding American autocrat is the absence of dissent, the article suggested.
"Dissent is not a thing in Saudi Arabia," Kristol wrote. "Trump would of course like it not to be a thing in the United States of America. We have an American president who regards the House of Saud not with disdain but with envy."