‘For me, it’s all about America First. We’re not going to give up hundreds of billions of (Saudi) orders’ for military equipment, Trump told reporters<\/b>
\nWASHINGTON \u2013 President Donald Trump\u2019s declaration Tuesday that he won\u2019t hold Saudi rulers accountable for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi distilled the president\u2019s approach to foreign policy to its transactional and personalized essence.
Nearly two years into his presidency, Trump is unswerving in his instinct to make everything \u2013 from trade to terrorism, from climate change to human rights \u2013 about what he sees as the bottom line.
\u201cWe may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi. In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,\u201d Trump said in an oddly brisk statement laying out that the U. S. business and security relationship with Saudi Arabia, and with its designated next leader, is paramount.
He cited arms sales with the kingdom, its role as a bulwark against Iran and the threat of higher oil prices as risks to the United States if his administration ruptured the relationship over the Khashoggi killing.
The statement was issued as Trump prepared to head to his golf resort in Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday and in the wake of the CIA\u2019s conclusion that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the Oct. 2 killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor and U. S. resident.
The nothing-to-see-here tone, the fractured syntax and falsehoods and the abundance of exclamation points were pure Trump \u2013 and as far from the massaged, nuanced products of past White Houses as one could imagine.
\u201cIt\u2019s \u2018America First,\u2019 \u201d Trump told reporters Tuesday before departing for Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s all about \u2018America First.\u2019 We\u2019re not going to give up hundreds of billions of orders\u201d for military equipment that he claimed Russia or China would vie for.
Trump said Saudi Arabia had helped him keep oil prices down, and that without those efforts, \u201coil prices would go through the roof.\u201d
As with U. S. intelligence assessments that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump, he overrode his own advisers and downplayed their findings in favor of his own priorities and interpretation of events.
\u201cKing Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman vigorously deny any knowledge of the planning or execution of the murder of Mr. Khashoggi. Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event \u2013 maybe he did and maybe he didn\u2019t!\u201d Trump wrote.
Trump\u2019s clannish management style is also a factor in the Saudi decision. He has entrusted the relationship to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has built a close partnership with MBS, as the young Saudi heir is known. Kushner has argued within the administration that the crown prince is crucial to assisting White House policy against Iran and in providing backing for a U. S.-sponsored Mideast peace package expected soon.
Telling reporters later that there is no \u201cdefinitive\u201d proof, Trump washed his hands of the matter.
\u201cI think that statement was pretty obvious, what I said,\u201d Trump said, as reporters shouted questions above the din of the presidential helicopter blades. \u201cI\u2019m not going to destroy the world economy,\u201d or harm U. S. interests in the Middle East or elsewhere, over this case, he said.
The Trump administration has applied sanctions on 17 Saudis allegedly involved in the killing inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, but Trump appeared to be effectively writing off the possibility of larger consequences. Those might have included sanctions or a rebuke against the royal family, cancellation of weapons sales or a boycott.
Trump has also bucked convention and the advice of Cabinet and career government officials in pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord, and in deploying punitive tariffs against allies and foes alike.
The president always places himself at the center of events and decides what to do from that standpoint, said Ross Kennedy, an American history professor and presidential scholar at Illinois State University. In the case of Saudi Arabia, the kingdom\u2019s lavish welcome in Riyadh for Trump in 2017 set the tone, Kennedy said.
\u201cHe really personalizes his interactions, not just with people in domestic audiences or in business, or with people he meets\u201d at the White House, Kennedy said. \u201cHe does it with foreign leaders, and he bases much of what he does by how they treat him personally. The Saudis really laid it on thick.\u201d
Past administrations, both Republican and Democratic, have prized a strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia and sometimes tempered criticism of human rights abuses that include religious persecution and the jailing of dissidents.
But President George W. Bush also argued that U. S. national security interests were served by defending human rights abroad, and his administration claimed to raise particular cases each time U. S. officials met with leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Russia and other countries with poor human rights records.
On Iran, Riyadh has leveraged Trump\u2019s opposition to the Iran nuclear deal reached under former president Barack Obama, appealing to Trump\u2019s impulse to reverse his predecessor\u2019s policies and giving Trump additional diplomatic footing to pull out of the deal, Kennedy said. Trump\u2019s statement Tuesday begins with an indictment Iranian activities in the Middle East.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif responded by mocking Trump on his English-language Twitter feed, including a reference to the U. S. president\u2019s false claim that Finland spends \u201ca lot of time raking\u201d its forests to prevent wildfires.
\u201cMr. Trump bizarrely devotes the FIRST paragraph of his shameful statement on Saudi atrocities to accuse IRAN of every sort of malfeasance he can think of,\u201d Zarif wrote. \u201cPerhaps we\u2019re also responsible for the California fires, because we didn\u2019t help rake the forests \u2013 just like the Finns do?\u201d
Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not attempt to wrap the Saudi decision in diplomatic niceties.
\u201cSo, it\u2019s a mean, nasty world out there, the Middle East in particular,\u201d Pompeo said when asked whether the Trump administration is excusing murder. \u201cThe United States will continue to have a relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They are an important partner of ours. We will do that with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, its people. That is the commitment that the president made today. It\u2019s that straightforward.\u201d
Samantha Power, who was Obama\u2019s ambassador to the United Nations, called the president\u2019s statement an \u201cabomination that will define the ignorance, corruption, cruelty and recklessness of this presidency for generations to come.\u201d
And Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S. C., who has become a reliable Trump ally, took the president to task for letting the Saudis off easy.
\u201cOne thing I learned during the Obama years is that when you look the other way regarding problems in the Middle East, it seldom works out,\u201d said Graham, who added that there is \u201cstrong bipartisan support\u201d for serious sanctions against Saudi Arabia and members of the royal family.<\/p>\n

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