Donald Trump will debase the White House today like never before.
Far worse than bulldozing its East Wing, Trump will use the People’s House as the grotesque backdrop for reducing to rubble any pretense of American moral leadership in the world. He will prostrate himself — and our nation — at the feet of one of its most malign actors.
All for the money.
The killer’s name is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. The world came to know him as MBS when he first gained widespread notoriety for ordering the brutal murder in 2018 of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen and legal permanent resident in the U.S.
Little more than seven years after Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul — his dismembered body never to be found — MBS will be fêted today at the White House.
Trump will be there to greet him as a dignitary — ready with smiles, handshakes, photo ops, and promises of billions in deals (presumably not limited to his family in this case).
Trump has spent seven years evading the truth, but the intelligence record is unambiguous. On Oct. 2, 2018, Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents for his marriage. He never walked out. Turkish authorities and U.S. intelligence confirmed the gruesome details: he was bound, injected with a fatal sedative, then dismembered, his body chemically dissolved.
This was not some “rogue operation.” The CIA examined audio recordings from inside the consulate, intercepted calls, and text messages. MBS sent at least 11 texts to his top adviser, Saud al-Qahtani, who oversaw the 15-man hit squad sent to Istanbul. A member of the hit team called a senior aide to MBS from inside the consulate immediately after the murder to report the job was done.
The CIA’s assessment wasn’t vague. Officials called it “blindingly obvious” that MBS gave the order. A killing this organized, this brazen, couldn’t have happened without his approval.
And what did Trump do with this intelligence? He didn’t just ignore it — he rejected it outright. He issued a disgraceful, exclamation-point-laden statement dismissing his own CIA’s findings, claiming they only had “feelings” with “no smoking gun” — a deliberate, contemptible lie designed to protect a killer.
Trump framed his surrender as “America First” by prioritizing arms sales and oil over the murder of a journalist who lived here. In a moment that never truly engendered the scorn it deserved, he wondered aloud whether people really wanted him to give up “hundreds of thousands of jobs.”
That’s what it always comes down to: Money. Arms. Oil. Trump declared that abandoning Saudi Arabia would be a “terrible mistake,” ensuring “we’re with Saudi Arabia and staying with Saudi Arabia” — to hell with justice, truth, and American values.
The rest of the world hasn’t forgotten. When the Biden administration released the declassified intelligence report in 2021, it confirmed what everyone already knew: MBS viewed Khashoggi as a threat and supported using violent means to silence him.
MBS hasn’t changed. Saudi Arabia is executing prisoners at a record rate and maintaining an unprecedented human rights crackdown. Dozens of activists and writers languish in Saudi prisons for speaking freely.
This is not just a crackdown on adults. Human rights groups have documented that Saudi authorities are reneging on their promise to halt the death penalty for juveniles, executing individuals for crimes allegedly committed when they were children, in addition to the hundreds executed for non-lethal, drug-related offenses.
But today, Trump rolls out the red carpet — literally. There will be a South Lawn arrival ceremony, an Oval Office meeting, a Cabinet Room signing ceremony, and an East Room dinner hosted by Melania Trump. They’ll sign deals on AI, defense, and semiconductors potentially worth $142 billion. There will be smiling photo ops and glowing praise.
What there won’t be is accountability. What there won’t be is justice for Jamal Khashoggi. What there won’t be is any acknowledgment that the man being honored in the White House ordered a journalist lured to his death and dismembered with a bone saw.
Seven years later, Trump is doubling down on that betrayal. It would be interesting to see if any of Khashoggi’s erstwhile colleagues in the press dare mention his name today.
It appears that the media has moved on. Congress has moved on. But Jamal Khashoggi is still dead, his body never found and his murderer is being celebrated as an honored guest.
For Donald Trump, everything has a price.
And as long as he’s our president, so does America’s soul.
- Ray Hartmann writes on Substack at Ray Hartmann's Soapbox
