Trump Meets MBS in White House, 'Firming Up' Those Kashoggi-Era Bonds
The mainstream media touts these meetings as essential diplomacy, ignoring the fact that MBS, according to U.S. intelligence, ordered the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S.-resident journalist. This 'firming up' of ties with a regime infamous for its human rights abuses domestically and its devastating war in Yemen—a war fueled by U.S. arms sales—is framed as business as usual. It's a
pattern: the U.S. leadership consistently prioritizes strategic alliances and oil deals over moral consistency, especially when the other party is a reliable buyer of American weapons. One might wonder at what point 'firming up ties' becomes explicitly endorsing authoritarianism, particularly when that authoritarianism involves dismembering journalists and bombing civilians. How many diplomatic
handshakes does it take for the media to question whether U.S. foreign policy has any ethical baseline whatsoever?