The president has no plans to punish Saudi Arabia over the likely murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi https://t.co/tGWc9N6dhy
— The Hive (@VFHIVE) October 11, 2018
I don’t pretend to understand the foreign policy implications here. (To be honest, since I grew up with Armenian neighbors, my first thought upon hearing about this was This sounds like the sort of torture porn the Turks would dream up.) But I know good old-fashioned American corruption by two-bit grifters entirely too well. Donald Trump is a national disgrace, and I sincerely hope he’s punished for enabling Khashoggi’s (alleged!) murder, among his ever-growing list of impeachable offenses.
Trump: This thing happened in Turkey and Khashoggi isn't even a US citizen. pic.twitter.com/3poTLR22jN
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 11, 2018
Kind of like how a crooked police chief looks the other way from mobsters that are buying him off, but, you know, like the biggest bribes ever. Really tremendous bribes. https://t.co/wDsSzjzblV
— Schooley (@Rschooley) October 12, 2018
“The audio recording in particular provides some of the most persuasive and gruesome evidence that the Saudi team is responsible for Khashoggi’s death.” https://t.co/AoqlpXZ1lN
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) October 12, 2018
… Mohammed has billed himself as a reformer and moderating force in Saudi Arabia, and he has become a key strategic partner in particular to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser.
Kushner has tried to promote Mohammed to skeptical national security officials, who have long viewed him as an impetuous and ruthless leader who has an overly simplistic view of the complex challenges the United States faces in the Middle East.
During a bill signing Thursday in the Oval Office, President Trump called Khashoggi’s suspected killing “a terrible thing,” but stopped short of assigning blame.
“We’re looking at it very strongly,” Trump said. “We’ll be having a report out soon. We’re working with Turkey, we’re working with Saudi Arabia. What happened is a terrible thing, assuming that happened. I mean, maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised, but somehow I tend to doubt it.”…
The Saudi prince once reportedly bragged that he had Jared Kushner “in his pocket.” https://t.co/Xurn7EMiMb
— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) October 11, 2018
NARRATOR: They do know what happened, they just don’t want to say it out loud. https://t.co/kJuSK0s658
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) October 12, 2018
EvenTheMealyMouthedRepub…
There were sound reasons why the authors of the Constitution sought to forbid the president of the United States from accepting payments from foreign states
— David Frum (@davidfrum) October 11, 2018
And it would be easy to do: give Americans some actual transparency into the president’s personal and Trump Org finances.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) October 11, 2018
This is an important reminder that Trump isn't owned by just one foreign state. A number have bought ownership stakes.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 11, 2018
MobiusKlein
Have you ever put a website out with a few security flaws, and woken up to 3 national spy agencies owning your user data, credit cards, and PII?
That’s POTUS today
MobiusKlein
@MobiusKlein:
Ps. Not an exaggeration.
Can’t say the company. But true story
opiejeanne
The massive amounts of money pouring into our country are going directly into Trump’s pocket through real estate sales & hotel room rentals. There is no massive sale of arms because the Saudis can’t afford it, and as I understand it they won’t suddenly switch to buying from anyone else; they would have to scrap what they have of ours and start from scratch because of compatibility issues.
Amir Khalid
There is an obvious hazard in having more than one shady paymaster. I wonder if Trump is aware of it.
Tony Jay
Not to worry. If things get too hot over the Khashoggi murder I’m sure that Bibi will do his pal a solid by having a spokesman announce that Iran totally did it, and The Pustule can ‘win’ a news cycle by making a ‘strong’ statement about that. These guys know what they’re doing, in the same sense that a dog knows what it’s doing when it digs up your lawn burying a shit.
oatler.
And we have news of Kanye typing 00000 for his phone code, Thomas Pynchon are you listening??
Keith P.
@oatler.: It sounds like the kind of combination that an idiot would have on his luggage. Only stupider.
OzarkHillbilly
Eeeewww… I know how I’d feel if reached into my pocket and found a warm, fresh, dog turd there and it’s not like bragging about it.
Van Buren
“It’s OK that someone gets killed as long as my friends and I are raking in the bucks” is really the embodiment of US foreign policy since WWII. Usually not stated quite so bluntly, but that’s Trump for you.
OzarkHillbilly
Republican pair apparently pose as communists to make Democratic donation
Espect charges to be filed in 3…2…1… never.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: blech
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: Back atcha.
Kay
We desperately need some congressional oversight. No one has any idea what the various members of the Trump Family are doing, who pays them, what they trade, what they get in return. Nothing. It’s a black box.
Once they’re gone we need a whole new set of rules for executive branch disclosure and regulation, starting with an enforceable anti-nepotism law. They’re not going to stop robbing until they’re stopped, even then they have some Trump family appointees in the judiciary who will protect them and have to be gotten around but that’s a second stage problem.
Kay
Amy Spitalnick
Verified account
Congress needs to start enforcing their own rules about lying to them. It’s really bad that the Trump people lie to Congress constantly and nothing happens to them. If they can’t bring “perjury”, and they seemingly can’t since they never do, they need some other enforceable code or rule because these people are just happily lying to them and then going on their merry way, which makes congressional hearings and oversight a waste of time.
If they didn’t anticipate that all of these Trump appointees would brazenly lie under oath they need to adjust and recover and adapt to the new reality which is : they lie without any fear of any repercussions. They lie because it works. The “oath” was never the thing- only criminals would be seizing on this “I wasn’t technically under oath” thing. The oath isn’t magical. They shouldn’t be hiring people who are bragging about narrowly escaping perjury sanctions. The lying is the thing. “He’s not an indicted criminal so let’s hire him” is not sound management practice.
SFAW
@Kay:
Well, they haven’t found any Dems they could get for perjury. Once they do … “whoa, Nelly!”
JMG
The last person I remember who was indicted for lying to Congress was Roger Clemens. He was acquitted. I think on the grounds that the jury thought the whole case a complete waste of time.
SFAW
@JMG:
To improve their record, they’ll keep looking for something on Hillary.
ETA: Of course, since there’s nothing (legitimate) to go after Hillary for, Junior G-Man Lindsey Graham will done his Angry Defender of Shitgibbon cape and cowl, and find something. Maybe marble countertops.
Gin & Tonic
All I want for Christmas is to see Jared Kushner indicted as an accessory to murder. Which I believe he is.
hells littlest angel
“Strongly.” The adverb of choice when you’re completely full of shit.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
Oh, it’s not as if a journalist is a real person.
You libtards, with your quaint ideas of “justice.” As Leona might have said, “Justice is only for little people.”
Citizen_X
It’s tragic what happened to Kashoggi; I’m sure something happened to him. But there’s no reason to put the blame on an accomplished young man with a bright future ahead of him like Mohammed bin Salman without any evidence.
Kashoggi doesn’t even remember how he got out of the embassy, how can he remember who murdered and dismembered him?
Aleta
Gin & Tonic
@Aleta: Two things so far amaze me. First, how badly the supposedly savvy MBS seems to have miscalculated; second, how thoroughly wired (by the Turks) the Saudi consulate was.
tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat)
@Gin & Tonic: I wondered about that. I mean revealing this shows how deep they have access into the embassy. I would be interested if Adam or anyone else knowledgeable could give insight into why the Turks might have been willing to risk this in this particular case. The Turks have to be angling for something.
Aleta
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
President Pig-eyed Fatberg and everybody around him are the worst people on Earth. And what’s worse, they don’t even do it with any style. Burnt steaks and a house that looks like a Russian whorehouse threw up after too much Tяump vodka? These people aren’t just bad, awful, soulless, evil people, they’re cheesy, tasteless, crass people. Somehow that even makes it worse.
David Evans
@Citizen_X: That’s frighteningly good.
kindness
Well we’ll get the House come January. I wish I could confidently say we’d get the Senate too, but that is looking less likely. Damn I loathe Mitch McConnell’s smirk (as well as his very being). Karma can’t come quick enough for him.
Aleta
@Gin & Tonic: I read one anon. mention that they didn’t mean to kill him. (me : Only kidnap him back to SA for god knows what atrocities.) I don’t entirely trust the motivation of that statement.
If he even thought of it as a risk, it shows how desperate MSB is to stop the increasing number of dissidents speaking out abroad, by using terror. If not, another example of how absolute power corrupts a brain, so the mind believes it has control over everything.
Seems like the draconian underbelly of these wealthy thugs was OK with Western corporations as long as their justice system was described as religious in origin, and cultural wrt women. All along their repression and public executions have been a reign of terror. Run by people who the British put in power, it’s said.
Tokyokie
Since MSB put the country’s elite (i.e., his cousins) under house arrest at a luxury hotel and strong-armed concessions (and lots of money) from them, I’ve firmly been of the opinion that it’s merely a matter of time — and probably not that much time — before his brains splatter the concrete somewhere. MSB’s instinct seems to always to be dramatic overreach, and one doesn’t make as many powerful enemies as he has in a society in which political assassination is viewed as a semi-legitimate form of self-expression.
Gin & Tonic
So people/organizations are now dropping like flies from MBS’s “Future Investment Initiative” conference in a couple of weeks, from the World Bank President, to Andrew Ross Sorkin, to The Economist, to Viacom, all deciding not to attend.
Steve Mnuchin, obviously, has no plans to cancel.
Scumbags, top to bottom.
Wag
@oatler.:
At least Kanye opted for the extra security of a six number passcode instead of a simpler four digit code
stan
Why the shot at the Turks?
The armenian genocide happened under the Ottomans, a different country than present-day Turkey. There were plenty of mass murders to go around in the last decades of the 1800s and first few of the 1900s on all sides in the Balkans and within what was the ottoman empire. I’m not sure why the gratuitous swipe at the Turks as if they are more depraved than the rest of us are.
Kay
Josh Mandel was never going to beat Sherrod Brown. Never. Not in a million years. The Ohio GOP has been promoting Mandel for years now and he hasn’t exactly caught fire with the electorate. Because he’s horrible and he was, incidentally, a bad treasurer. Even. He’s most famous for hiring his unqualified college buddies for no-show jobs in the treasurer’s office. That’s the sum total of accomplishments there.
Gin & Tonic
@stan: Maybe because they continue to deny that it even happened? Just a guess.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
You’re being kind. In recent decades (i.e., since 1990), the Turkish government has exerted itself anytime someone in an official, or quasi-official, position dares to suggest that the Armenian Genocide actually occurred. And by “exerted itself,” I mean “has threatened retaliation if Country X or Person Y (diplomat/politician from country Z) does anything to call significant attention to it.” I might be mixing up memories — quite possible — but I seem to remember Turkey threatening closure of either air space or Incirlik AB if the Congress passed some resolution relating to the genocide.
On the other hand, “it was only about a million Armenians” so …
And besides, it’s not as if Erdogan is a dictator or anything.
SFAW
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Interesting nickname, considering his anti-Semitic tendencies. And, no, having a Jewish son-in-law, and being BFFs with Bibi, does not change that.
celticdragonchick
@SFAW:
Yep. They did exactly that.
mr gravity
@Kay: Doesn’t testifying under oath imply that the person testifying has some sort of “moral compass”?
Bjacques
@SFAW: THE SO-CALLED ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IS A LIE THEY ALL RAN AWAY INTO THE DESERT AND FAKED THE KILLINGS TO MAKE TURKEY LOOK BAD!!1!
— Serdar Argic
(Hands up if you remember this chappie)
Kay
Hmmm. Now why wouldn’t Mike DeWine want to appear with the super-popular and awesome Donald Trump?
noncarborundum
@SFAW: I wouldn’t have thought a Semitic reference was intended there. Instead, I my mind went of here.
Kay
This is such a big deal in Ohio. Briefly, DeWine, who has no real beliefs of any kind, sued to overturn Obamacare back when he was pretending to be a Tea Partier. But before he was pretending to be a Tea Partier, he was a “moderate” in the US Senate and made some lame and ineffective efforts on health care. So he tells the Trumpsters he opposes Obamacare and he tells everyone else he supports what’s inside Obamacare.
It’s kind of gratifying to watch in the “all lies all the time” Trump era, because he actually got nailed on it. You start to think they never do. This lie really backfired.
SFAW
@noncarborundum:
You’re probably right. I had never heard of a “fatberg” before you linked to it, but your version makes a lot more sense.
Sorry for not picking up on that, Smedley!
opiejeanne
@Bjacques: That was a joke, right?
SFAW
@Kay:
In theory. We’ll have to see if there are tangible consequences for his lie(s).
Bjacques
@opiejeanne: More of a homage. Serdar (which means “Colonel” in Turkish) Argic was a legend on Usenet; anytime, day or night, he’d respond almost instantly whenever Armenia was mentioned in any newsgroup.
He turned out to be a Turkish secret police agent at a US university on a student visa, the abusr of which eventually got him booted out of the country.
(If you’re familiar with him, my apologies for the mansplaining.)
opiejeanne
@Bjacques: Thank you for the explanation. I was very late to usenet, and only very very marginally. I think my only interaction were a swing dance venue calendar and something called The Mining Company, although I don’t remember if the latter was actually a usenet thing.
But her emails!!!
It’s the penny ante nature of the corruption that is particularly galling. They’re leading a country with an 11 digit gdp and 10 digit tax revenue and even Trump is settling for 10s of millions in hotel room rentals and real estate deals, while the legislature sells out for nice dinners, plane rides and the chump change they can skim off the top of a few million in campaign contributions. We’d be better off if Trump just pocketed a billion each year and each senator and representative took 10 million straight from the till as long as outside of that they actually acted in the best interest of the country.