Trump Finds Khashoggi 'Controversial,' Not the Saudis Who Murdered Him
The Hill reports on Jamal Khashoggi's widow rightly responding to Donald Trump calling her murdered husband “extremely controversial.” While the outrage is predictable, The Hill dutifully omits the inconvenient truth: Trump’s administration, like every US administration since WWII, prioritized weapons sales and 'strategic alliances' over any abstract notions of human rights. According to the
Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, the Trump administration approved over $100 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia, including $8.1 billion in 2019, post-Khashoggi's murder in October 2018. So, a journalist criticizing a regime is 'extremely controversial,' but a head of state providing billions in advanced weaponry to the same regime, despite their extrajudicial killings, is just...
foreign policy. One might wonder if 'controversial' is simply Washington-speak for 'inconvenient to our arms deals.'