Despite promising to hold Saudi Arabia accountable during the 2020
presidential election.
It appears as though Joe Biden has completely abandoned that
campaign promise.
And has refused to hold the Saudi Crown Prince accountable for
ordering the assassination and
dismemberment of Washington post journalist Jamal Khashoggi accountable.
And now we're getting a better sense of why that is,
turns out that the Biden administration is littered with various individuals
who actually have pretty close ties to the UAE and particularly Saudi Arabia.
Now, before I give you the details of all of that, I do want you to remember what
Biden promised as he was debating other Democrats during the Democratic primary.
>> Khashoggi was in fact murdered and dismembered and
I believe in the order of the Crown Prince.
And I would make it very clear,
we are not going to in fact sell more weapons to them.
We are gonna in fact make them pay the price and
make them in fact the pariah that they are.
There's very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia.
And I would also as pointed out, I would end subsidies that we have and
the sale of materials to the Saudis, who they're going in and
murdering children and they're murdering innocent people.
And so they have to be held accountable.
>> Now, Biden ordered an investigation into the assassination of
Jamal Khashoggi and that investigation definitively found that
the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman did in fact order for that assassination.
But did he hold him accountable.
No, of course, Biden loves to do these studies.
Put commissions together to look into an issue and then he drops it.
Now, why is that?
Well, it turns out at least 28 literally dozens of top Biden officials,
some of whom have a great deal of influence over him.
Came into the administration by way of groups that have been funded by,
worked directly with or have financial relationships to Saudi Arabia,
the UAE or both.
For instance Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of defense,
pretty important position though, is a former board member of Raytheon,
a weapons company that supplies bombs to both the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Which have used these weapons in the war on Yemen, which by the way that war,
Biden has decided to become more involved in and not on the right side.
The Biden administration has recently escalated its support for
the UAE and Saudi war in Yemen, including statements expressing backing for
military action and approval of arms shipments to both countries
amid alarming reports of civilian deaths.
And we have other examples to give you,
this was a great piece written in the American Prospect by Sara Lazar,
I highly recommend you read the entire piece, we'll give you excerpts though.
And Cenk, what do you think?
>> Unfortunately, I keep coming back to the same thing,
which is that it's amazing what the media doesn't tell you.
Right, so first of all, why are former defense contractors and yes,
if you're on the board, yes, if you get paid a lot of money,
millions of dollars by companies like Raytheon.
Yeah, you're a defense contractor.
You made money off of selling missiles to countries like Saudi Arabia.
Why would we let them back in the government?
I mean, to say that they're bias is an enormous understatement.
He's a former general and people made a big deal about that.
Who cares about that?
He's a former defense contractor and no one made a big deal about that.
But even more important.
So that was so
obvious that the only people who don't get it as usual are national media reporters,
isn't it amazing that they always against the most obvious things.
What 99% of us agree on right wing, left wing, it doesn't matter.
Why a defense contractor is running the government?
Well, is the secretary of defense more likely to sign
off on billions of dollars going to Raytheon, let alone Saudi Arabia.
Well, of course he is.
He's a former employee of theirs and probably a future employee of theirs.
>> Like we owns some stock?
>> Yeah, so that's already outrageous enough.
But Ana's gonna get to the think tanks.
Every one of these think tanks is infiltrated by Saudi Arabia,
bought by Saudi Arabia and Yemen with a giant amount of money.
And yet every media organization from CNN to New York Times,
quotes those think tanks as if they're neutral and objective and
experts, no they've been bought by these murderous regimes.
Yet there's no mention of it at all, let alone all of the people in the Biden
administration that have gotten funding from those same think tanks.
And now funny enough, support Saudi Arabia's war,
horrible disastrous war in Yemen and
I'm not the only one who said it was a terribly moral war, Joe Biden said it.
And then when you're not paying attention because the media never told you,
he then puts all of their buddies into his own government and helps them.
So God bless the American Prospect for doing an amazing job with this story.
>> They did and look, just quick comment on the think tanks.
Look I think journalists realized,
maybe printing statements from lobbyists is not the way to go.
And then they end up just printing statements from various figures within
these think tanks as if they're not getting funded by the same lobbyists.
Oftentimes from foreign lobbyists which is the case here.
Now let me give you other examples,
by the way in regard to the Yemen war, January 2022,
was the most violent month in the Saudi led war in Yemen in more than five years.
And that's under Biden's watch.
This is according to a war monitor group known as the Yemen Data Project.
Now one organization that provided brainpower to the top echelons of
the administration is the Center for Strategic and International studies,
a policy research think tank.
CSIS receives funding from the UAE according to its website.
And it also takes money from Saudi Arabia via Saudi Aramco,
the oil company that is majority owned by the Saudi monarchy.
So what are these homies up to?
Well, Kathleen Hicks, Biden's deputy secretary of defense,
was hired directly out of CSIS, where she served as vice president and
program director, there she's not the only one though.
Melissa Dalton, an assistant secretary at the pentagon also came from CSIS,
where she was in the role of senior fellow and deputy director.
And then on February 7th, Andrew Hunter a CSIS alum,
took on the role of assistant secretary of the Air Force,
where he is responsible for weapons acquisitions, contracts, and logistics.
So the corruption is within the administration.
Okay, I mean, who needs the lobbyists when the former,
honestly the people who are bought by the lobbyists
in the first place are now baked into the Biden administration.
That is what is fueling his foreign policy decision, specifically
in regard to anything involving Saudi Arabia including the war in Yemen.
In December of 2021, the think tank published a report on the Yemen
war that called for increased US support for Saudi Arabia, of course.
The report refers to the Yemeni rebel group and Saudi opponents,
the Houthis as a terrorist group.
An official Trump-era designation that the Biden administration had actually backed
off of but is considering reinstating.
>> Of course they are.
Or they wrote a report supporting the Saudi government after literally being
paid by the Saudi government.
And yet media figures quote those reports.
And don't tell you that they were literally funded by the company that
the report says it's just so grand.
They murdered all those people in Yemen.
Well that was just a smashing good job of doing that.
Speaking of murder, let me get you two numbers.
But before I do actually, let me give you an important context to, we've been
telling you that Biden has actually done a pretty good job on foreign policy.
We like to withdraw from Afghanistan.
Yes, it was messy but it was necessary and it was brave.
I think he's done a good job balancing our interest in Ukraine and
going after Russia without getting us into World War III.
So we give you that context.
But we are not like the rest of the media.
We don't just get a pro-Biden or anti-Biden.
On Saudi Arabia, let me give you further context.
I get it, you might wanna do a deal now because you don't wanna start two
financial wars.
You don't wanna drive the Saudis and
UAE into the arms of Russia while we're in the middle of that conflict.
But Biden had plenty of time to go after the Saudis before this conflict.
And he'll have plenty of time after this conflict.
Will he ever do it?
No way, no way.
He just showed you he's house, his entire, not his entire staff obviously,
but a huge part of his staff by people who got rich off of Saudi money.
And they're showing it in their actions.
Now, the two devastating death tolls.
In Ukraine, thousands of civilians have died.
And you've seen us talk about it over the last couple of weeks and
we're enraged by that.
And we think it's a terrible thing that Russia did with their war of aggression.
Now, you know how many have died in Yemen?
377,000.
>> Yeah, do their lives matter at all?
>> Apparently not.
Number one, the American media couldn't care less, almost never covers it.
And number two, apparently, Biden couldn't care less.
So when it's Europeans and Christians in Ukraine and
there's a lot of extenuating circumstances, I understand.
There's a ton of context that makes it apples and oranges, but
at the same time, they're European, they're Christian,
everybody's looking at every death, including us, right?
Yemen 377,000 dead and Biden isn't doing a thing about it.
But says, hey, we gotta get cheap oil from Saudi Arabia.
So those several 100,000 deaths is not so important.
How about the recent deaths from the Saudi government?
The Saudis just had the largest mass execution even in their history, and
that's a long bloody history.
By the way, we have a long bloody history too.
But they are Muslim fundamentalists and they honestly,
their penal code is not very different at all than ISIS.
I'm keeping it real.
And so, they just executed 81 people in 24 hours.
>> They executed 81 people in one day.
And then they try to sell you this garbage about how, my, but
Saudi Arabia is different everybody, they're so different.
They're actually moving to the left, there allowing women to drive.
Wow, congratulations.
I have nothing against women driving.
Obviously, I want them to have that right, but
don't allow that propaganda to convince you that Saudi Arabia is somehow,
some wonderful democratic place where people are treated fairly.
They're still doing mass executions based on religion.
I mean, there have been some articles published recently
that just take the propaganda at face value and print it.
Don't believe it.
Okay, be skeptical of these claims, especially when look, you can judge by
actions, you can judge by the way civilians are being slaughtered in Yemen.
I wanna give you one more example or a few more to be honest.
So one other example is, Ilan Goldenberg.
So in 2017, Ilan Goldenberg, then director of CNAS's Middle East Security Program,
advocated in favor of the arms sale, telling The Washington post that
they have a neutral continuation of a critical defense relationship.
This past December, guess what?
Goldenberg was appointed by Biden to serve as an acting assistant secretary of
defense.
So when we make arguments about how substantive issues seem to have quite
a bit of agreement on both sides of the aisle, this is what we're referring to.
This is the kind of stuff that you would expect from the Trump administration.
But I think it would be a mistake to assume that it's just something that
a Republican administration would be supportive of,
when in reality proof is in the pudding.
You just take a look at this and you see how corruption, how money in politics,
how lobbying, how these gross think tanks,
essentially pressure both parties to be very similar on substantive issues,
especially issues pertaining to the economy and foreign policy.
>> Especially issues related to their paychecks.
That is as clear a corruption as it gets, yet
other than the American Prospect, sound of silence from the national media.
Either they don't know anything about politics and
they're like, the Saudis paid off half of Biden's staff?
Didn't know anything about it, didn't even think, hey,
where are those think tanks getting their money or they know it and
they're like a lot of those guys are our friends.
And that's also true