Donald Trump welcomed Mohammed bin Salman to the White House on Tuesday for the Saudi crown prince’s first visit since the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi – and berated a reporter who asked about the killing.
The president quickly lost his temper and began yelling at ABC News reporter Mary Bruce, the moment she raised the issue of Saudi Arabia’s role in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and also asked the prince about the 2018 murder of the Washington Post columnist by Saudi agents acting on the crown prince’s orders.
As Bruce pressed him on whether his family should be doing business in the oil-rich kingdom during his presidency and the Saudi leader on why Americans should trust him given his role in Khashoggi’s murder, Trump angrily interrupted her and asked her to identify her employer. After she said she worked for ABC News, he shouted at her: “Fake News. ABC, fake news, one of the worst, one of the worst in the business.”
He angrily denied having anything to do with his eponymous real estate and hotel company’s multiple partnerships with Saudi developers and claimed his sons, who currently run the company, have “done very little with Saudi Arabia.”
Trump also attempted to dismiss the question about the killing of Khashoggi — a US permanent resident at the time of his murder — by calling the slain journalist “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 happen, but he knew nothing about it. And we can leave it at that,” he said before chiding Bruce for “embarrassing” the Saudi leader.
The crown prince, who is commonly known by his initials MBS, jumped in at that point and calmly responded to the ABC News journalist’s question by stating that he felt “painful” about the effect of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the families of those who were killed but suggested that it was necessary to “focus on reality.”
He then claimed that al Qaeda leader and 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi construction heir, had “used Saudi people” to commit the terror attacks with the aim of destroying U.S.-Saudi relations.
MBS then addressed the matter of the journalist whose murder he’d ordered by claiming it had also been “really painful” to hear of “anyone … losing his life … for no real purpose or not in a legal way.”
“And it’s been painful for us in Saudi Arabia. We’ve did all the right steps of investigation, etc, in Saudi Arabia, 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,” he said.
The president lashed out at Bruce again a short time later after she asked him why he would not order the Department of Justice to release case files from FBI probes into deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein instead of forcing Congress to pass legislation that would force the Department of Justice to release the same documents.
He told her: “It’s not the question that I mind. It’s your attitude. I think you are a terrible reporter. It’s the way you ask questions.”
Trump then laid into her for having asked the Saudi crown prince “a horrible, insubordinate and just a terrible question” and accused her of being “all psyched up” to ask it.
“You’re a terrible person and a terrible reporter,” he said before launching into a separate rant about Epstein, the convicted sex trafficker with whom he once shared a close friendship.
“As far as the Epstein files is, I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. I threw him out of my club many years ago because I thought he was a sick pervert, but I guess I turned out to be right,” he said.
He then once again claimed the entire controversy over the Epstein case files is a “Democrat hoax” before accusing Bruce — and ABC — of being “one of the perpetrators.”
“Your crappy company is one of the perpetrators. And I’ll tell you something. I’ll tell you something. I think the license should be taken away from ABC, because your news is so fake and it’s so wrong,” he said.
It was the crown prince’s first visit to the White House since the Khashoggi murder left Americans on both sides of the political aisle outraged, with then-former vice president Joe Biden vowing to make MBS a “pariah”.
Five years later, Trump happily welcomed him back to Washington for two days of activities, including a Black Tie dinner planned for Tuesday and an investment forum scheduled for Wednesday.
At one point during the media availability, the president marveled at how he was “sitting here … with a future king” and about the fact that the two of them were answering press questions.
He called MBS “a man who is respected by everybody … that doesn’t have to be doing this, really.”
“I don’t have to be doing it either. And yet we’re sitting here taking questions and there’s never been transparency like this,” he said.
