President, Joe Biden is now planning to travel to Saudi Arabia next month and
it is not going over well in certain quarters,
certain very understandable quarters, including based on the reaction that we
see from the former fiancee of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
She is not happy with the president choosing to dignify and
elevate Mohammed bin Salman in this way by traveling to Saudi Arabia as if they
had not done these horrible things.
She urged Biden to quote, uphold your vow to bring all the perpetrators
of this brutal crime to justice.
Khashoggi, if you are not familiar with the story, disappeared in October 2018 and
all the evidence seems to point to this being a plot
from the very top of the Saudi Arabian government to murder him.
Now that said, she had more to say, take a look at this video.
>> You must uphold your word to bring all the perpetrators of this brutal
crime to justice.
But as disappointing as this is, if you have to put oil over the principles and
experience the over values, can you at least ask where is Jamal's body?
Doesn't he deserve a proper burial?
>> And that just breaks your heart.
It's been four years and in certain ways there's been, I'm sure for
her, no closure.
The remains were never found and to now see the President of United States
apparently being willing to move past this brutal assassination,
David, I can understand the concern that she has, and
a lot of people are reacting negatively to this.
>> Yeah, this doesn't look good for Joe Biden, never mind Khashoggi but
also there's all the suggestions that's coming out now that even if Saudi Arabia
were to turn on the as George W Bush would say, and flood the markets with oil.
It would take them so
long to sort of ramp up that it really wouldn't impact gasoline prices at all.
And by the way, there's no guarantee that the Saudis are gonna do that.
So if Joe Biden is going to try to help with energy, then this could be sort of
a big fail because he's getting hammered over the human rights stuff.
There is some reporting out there though, John that Saudi Arabia and
Israel are on the verge of a historic peace deal.
And there's so many in the American, Israel sort of circles that perhaps Biden
is going to Saudi Arabia to sort of push this across the finish line.
However, if he does not yet a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and
Israel and that doesn't happen in the next six months,
then this trip to Saudi Arabia I think will continue to haunt him and
will perhaps even look even worse in terms of historical perspective.
>> Yeah, especially because three,
he talked a really big game when it came to Saudi Arabia on the campaign trail.
He either actually thought he would be tough on MBS or
he at least thought it was an easy thing to score some points on.
He said in 2019 that he would make Saudi leaders, quote, pay the price for
Khashoggi's murder and make them in fact the pariah that they are.
There's no better way to make someone a pariah than to visit them on a trip.
Biden also vowed to end the sale of material to the Saudis,
where they're going in and murdering children in Yemen.
And there have been some changes in terms of our willingness to assist them in
the brutal massacres in Yemen.
But this just doesn't look good.
And it isn't just Khashoggi's widow who is criticizing him,
Senator Tim Kaine said the crown prince's blood stain has not been cleansed.
I get it that circumstances change.
But what's the fundamental issue in the world right now?
It's the authoritarians.
And in fact there are protests.
You can see in the tweets that will put up,
there are protests concerning this decision, including from Code Pink.
So look, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi is not the only awful thing.
And you could certainly make a case like if you wanted to engage in this drone
strikes, kill people and destroy them.
And there are a lot of terrible things in the world.
That is definitely true.
Often people will deploy that argument though to say, well,
what are you gonna do?
I would argue we should expect better from our own government and
from the Saudi government.
And so far, I've seen nothing from the Saudis,
that implied that they're moving on is about true reform.
It seems to be they would just very much like to get more military assistance from
the US and they wanna have economic ties with other countries while also being
just as horrible to their people as ever before.
>> And if we expected more from our own government, I would have hoped for that,
Joe Biden would say, okay [COUGH] there's nothing really that concrete that can
come out of the Saudi visit because of oil prices and
certainly I'm getting hammered for human rights.
So why not say to Saudi Arabia look, you go ahead and
make the peace deal with Israel first, and then I'll come and reward you and
elevate your prestige by coming to Riyadh after you've done that.
Why Joe Biden is sort of putting himself out there first and risking that.
You know, there still may not be a peace deal.
I mean that just seems puzzling to me because the United States doesn't
need this visit of a U.
S. President to Saudi Arabia right now.
It will not really do anything for the United States.
Well yeah it's not gonna buy him any credit on the right or anything like his
his letter like pushing domestic oil manufacturers to up their production.
Fox is using that to attack him, going to the Saudis.
It's not like he can do anything he wants, they're not gonna love him.
So that's weird.
And and the the hypothetical situation you sketched out I think makes a lot of sense.
So much so that the fact that they're not doing that, does that lead us to believe
that perhaps a potential peace deal isn't as close as people might have
thought because tying those things together Sure seem to make sense.
I mean, if he's going with no, like there's nothing being given in advance,
certainly nothing that's been announced yet.
I don't know. That looks really suspicious.
I'm with you.
I mean, there's this whole thing is again, it's just it's just not a good look.
And I just, you know,
I think the criticism with biden sometimes biden sort of over negotiates.
He gets himself too involved in trying to find compromise.
And I think this is one of these cases where maybe he's too involved in trying
to get this peace deal together and maybe he needs to sort of step back and say,
I'm not part of this, you do this on your own.
And once your own reputation has been improved,
then the President of the United States will come and visit it.
Yeah,