The Washington Post’s editorial board has delivered a blistering riposte to President Donald Trump after he shrugged off the murder of one of their colleagues.
During an Oval Office meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Trump responded to journalists’ questions about slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by saying “a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman.” The president added that the Saudi ruler, whom the CIA said ordered the 2018 killing, “knew nothing about it” and that “things happen.”
“President Donald Trump’s performance at the White House Tuesday was something else entirely: weak, crass and of no strategic benefit to America,” the editorial board of the newspaper, which is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, wrote. “Forgetting Mohammed [bin Salman]’s brutality and [Jamal] Khashoggi’s warnings is a choice, and Trump made the wrong one.”
Exiled from his native country, Khashoggi wrote extensively for The Washington Post about the Saudi regime’s brutal repression of critics at home and its attacks on foreign states. In October 2018, he was lured to Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, where an elite team of Saudi operatives murdered him, later using a bone saw to dismember him before disposing of his body, according to a CIA report released under the Biden administration.
The CIA report concluded that the horrifyingly violent hit was undoubtedly carried out on the personal orders of bin Salman himself. The crown prince, who had not traveled to the United States since the killing before his visit with Trump on Tuesday, acknowledged Khashoggi’s murder but like Trump insisted he had nothing to do with it, calling the hit “painful and a huge mistake” before adding, “We are doing our best that this doesn’t happen again.”
Amid a growing exodus of veteran journalists, The Washington Post has been under fire for what’s been perceived as a neutering of its opinion output under the second Trump administration. The apparent change in editorial stance has been attributed to pressure from the newspaper’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, who’s lately enjoyed a thaw in his historically cold relationship with the MAGA leader.
In their Tuesday response to Trump’s comments—throughout which they notably referred to the crown prince not by the more formal “bin Salman” patronymic, but by his first name—the newspaper’s opinion editors nevertheless appear to have chosen their words very carefully.
They argued “it would be more effective” for Trump to ensure bin Salman “understands who the more powerful partner in the relationship is” and that he “comes back begging for forgiveness,” rather than being “greeted cost-free with an honor guard of black horses, herald trumpeters and fighter jets.”
While the newspaper’s comments about the ceremony of bin Salman’s reception may be self-explanatory, more telling was the suggestion that Trump, who has long and proudly styled himself as a master negotiator, has fundamentally misunderstood and mishandled the balance of power between himself and the crown prince.
“The reality is that while Trump advocates peace through strength, he showed nothing but debility,” they went on, with use of the word “debility” seemingly a subtle reference to widespread speculation the 79-year-old president is presently suffering from an otherwise undisclosed physical ailment.
“No doubt other dictators took note,” they added, without clarifying whether “other dictators” was a comparison to Trump or bin Salman.
During Trump’s exchange Tuesday with the ABC News reporter who first brought up Khashoggi’s murder, the president described her query as a “horrible, insubordinate and just a terrible question,” suggesting her network’s “license should be taken away.”
These comments were later quoted verbatim by the Post’s editorial board, and only a paragraph before they argued “legitimizing and defending Mohammed” would only serve to “embolden him and his ilk to mistreat not just journalists but any Americans—knowing that they’ll probably face no real consequences.”
Elsewhere in the editorial, the Post wrote that Trump’s conduct and statements on Tuesday were “beneath the office of the president.” The editorial board also suggested “it’s possible to protect U.S. interests without insulting Khashoggi’s memory” and that “an American president should be able to respect Khashoggi’s legacy while conducting the messy business of statecraft.”
That last quote in particular would appear to read as a thinly veiled reference to President Joe Biden’s promise upon taking office in 2021 to make bin Salman an international “pariah” over Khashoggi’s murder.
After releasing the CIA’s assessment that bin Salman had indeed approved the killing, the Biden administration later forged ahead with targeted sanctions and visa restrictions on a number of individuals involved, though it declined to sanction the crown prince himself and continued to leverage ties with the repressive Middle Eastern kingdom with respect to energy, regional security, and relations with Iran.
The Daily Beast has reached out to The Washington Post for comment on this story.
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