Ronaldo: Golazos for Saudi PR, Human Rights Get Red Card
While Newsweek framed Cristiano Ronaldo’s presence at a dinner with Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as a benign mingling of global figures, they conveniently omitted the Prince's rather inconvenient, documented human rights record. This wasn't just a casual meet-and-greet; it was a high-profile photo op, part of Saudi Arabia's extensive 'sportswashing' campaign (a PR tactic
dating back at least to the 1970s). The Crown Prince, you'll recall, was linked by US intelligence to the 2018 assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a fact apparently deemed less newsworthy than Ronaldo's celebrity. So, as the forks clinked at Mar-a-Lago, one might wonder: Was Ronaldo discussing his latest goal, or perhaps the Kingdom's commitment to free expression for dissenting
journalists? How many 'golden boots' does it take to gloss over bone saws? The media often presents these celebrity-politician encounters as neutral events, rather than calculated attempts to sanitize brutal regimes and divert attention from their atrocities. It’s almost as if some stories are just too inconvenient to report.