WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump, seated beside the man the CIA found had ordered the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, on Tuesday suggested that maybe the Washington Post journalist had brought his fate upon himself.
“You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happened,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office and then chastised the reporter who asked the question for disrespecting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to his face.
“He knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Trump said.
For his part, bin Salman claimed he had nothing to do with the assassination of the prominent critic of his regime at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on Oct. 2, 2018.
“It’s really painful to hear, you know, anyone that been losing his life for, uh, you know, no real purpose or nothing illegal, uh, and it’s been painful for us in Saudi Arabia. We did all the right steps of, uh, investigation, et cetera, in Saudi Arabia,” bin Salman said. “And we’ve improved our system to be sure that nothing happened like that, and it’s painful, and it’s a huge mistake, and we are doing our best that this doesn’t happen again.”
