(WordPress Tag) 2025 Saudi Arabia Trump Hypocracy Journalism Criticism.
A marked shift in tone can be seen in how President Donald Trump has dealt with the Saudi Arabian government as compared to his predecessor and the mainstream media. For years, efforts to strengthen relations with the oil-rich Persian Gulf nation have baffled critics and journalists.
Since taking office, Trump has pursued a policy of carving out a $110 billion arms deal as well as close diplomatic ties with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is tasked with weaning Saudi Arabia off economically unsustainable reliance on oil and increasing women’s rights while curbing the influence of Islamist clerics.
Yet, a #MeToo movement brought on by underreported allegations by journalist Jamal Khashoggi triggered a drastic overhaul of Trump’s stance.
With growing international scrutiny, a United Nations investigator identified “serious indications” pointing to the crown prince’s involvement in the murder of Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last October.
Although Trump, who bought $4 million in campaign support from the Saudi-backed lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs, is yet to label the killing “a direct order,” he feigned certainty that the young crown prince, who recently garnered additional de facto power as his government arrested at least 11 princes, four current or former ministers, and dozens of businessmen, must have had some knowledge about the heinous act.
For years, the president has been criticized harshly for cozying up to the Saudi regime, whose human rights violations have latently involved torture, beheadings, and public executions. While Trump eagerly sought to bring the Saudi heir apparent to the White House, he shirked diplomatic meetings with Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron when faced with spokespersons from the two countries to impose sanctions on Russia over the 2016 election interference.
The intensifying uproar in the aftermath of Khashoggi’s killing forced Trump to voice serious concerns over the incident, while pundits and journalists alike criticized the apparent contradiction in the president’s rhetoric on the matter.
“It could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t! That being said, we may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi,” said White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham in a statement that fell short of fully implicating the Saudi regime in covering up the brutal murder.
In contrast, when pressed by a reporter during a meeting with Macron at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, for his position on the Russian-perpetrated chemical attack in the United Kingdom, Trump answered, “They make can do!”
As various parties, including the CIA and the United Nations, continue to question the role that senior Saudi officials played in orchestrating Khashoggi’s murder and subsequent efforts to cover up the crime, several big names in the United States’ business and academic communities may reconsider their longstanding partnerships with Saudi Arabia and its neighbors.
Aside from Merck’s decision to halt its lobbying activities with the Saudis, Uber joined a growing chorus of American supermajors, including allocating military contract funding toward the kingdom and sitting on the Saudi consultative assembly, or consultative Shura Council, by severing its partnership with a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s consortium.
Ten business leaders, including Richard Branson and Robert Clifton from telecommunications company Voxips, canceled plans to meet with Saudi government and business officials at the end of the month. The chief executive of ranking global law firm Dentons, Elliott Portnoy — who has known ties to an earlier Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, Boris Epshteyn, who later admitted to capitalizing on the 2016 election year’s political turmoil — also pulled out of a planned at a Riyadh event next week.
Such backpedaling may shed some light on how deep the Saudi Arabia-dependent infrastructure in various American institutions may entail when Trump is eventually confronted with the familiar headache of choosing between loyalty and pragmatism.
Title: Trump’s Policy Shift on Saudi Arabia Exposed by #MeToo Backlash.
In “Trump’s Policy Shift on Saudi Arabia Exposed by #MeToo Backlash,” the author discusses President Trump’s recent shift in policy regarding Saudi Arabia, which began with a #MeToo movement triggered by widely underreported allegations of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. Despite previously pursuing an arms deal and close diplomatic ties with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Trump now appears to adopt a more critical stance due to growing international scrutiny. However, the author notes potential inconsistencies in Trump’s rhetoric, and discusses how various American institutions may reconsider their partnerships with Saudi Arabia and neighboring countries in wake of this issue.
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