Trump Honored MBS While Khashoggi's Widow Demanded Answers
Hanan Elatr Khashoggi, Jamal Khashoggi's widow, joins Democratic lawmakers demanding the transcript of a 2019 Trump-MBS call. The AP notes Trump dismissed intelligence culpability for Khashoggi's 2018 assassination and 'lavished' MBS with honors. Call us cynical, but 'lavishing' honors on a leader implicated in dismembering a journalist is par for the course for US presidents concerned with
strategic alliances. This isn't a uniquely Trumpian failure; it's a bipartisan tradition of prioritizing 'stability' and oil over human rights, a pattern laid bare every time a US official shakes hands with someone they simultaneously 'condemn.' One might wonder when precisely the US decided that a journalist's dismemberment was less concerning than, say, a hostile take-over of a social media
platform. The demand to 'release the transcript' makes for good headlines, but it sidesteps the fundamental hypocrisy that allowed such a call, and such 'honors,' to exist unchallenged until now. Where were these ardent demands when countless other regimes friendly to US interests engaged in similar or worse atrocities? This sudden burst of transparency theatre (in 2025 for a 2019 call) almost
makes you forget decades of quiet complicity.