Presidents and a Moral Framework

"Things Happen"

The U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia has been mixed. It is in a new era now, and one measure of the strategic alignment between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia came in President Trump’s response to a question about Jamal Khashoggi’s murder during his meeting in the Oval Office with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia:

“You’re mentioning somebody that was 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 (*1). And we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guests by asking a question like that.”

That’s five major types of excuse or obfuscation: 1. Character Attack on the Victim: “You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about...” 2. Minimization of the Crime: “Things happen...” 3. Unquestioning Acceptance of Denial: ““he knew nothing about it” 4. Deflection and Closure: “And we can leave it at that.” 5. Appeal to Diplomatic Decorum: “You don’t have to embarrass our guests by asking a question like that.”

This incident highlights a set of presidential questions: Should a president represent strategic interests alone or strategic interests guided by a public moral framework? How firm should our judgments be when we don’t know all the strategic interests a president weighs? Whose word should carry more weight with a president: a foreign leader’s denial or the assessments of the U.S. intelligence community? Speculative: Can a president mislead (i.e. “he knew nothing about it”) about an intelligence finding when national interests are at stake? What does it mean if a president consistently trusts the assurances of authoritarian leaders? What should a president’s words teach the world about American or universal values?

Among the issues to weigh: Saudi Arabia is key to relationships in the Middle East (Iran, Israel, etc.), a key supplier of oil, a market for US technology, nuclear energy. The president’s family also has deep business ties in the country.

“Things happen,” the president’s description of an assassination that was carried out with a saw— echoes a similar rhetorical minimization of the president’s response to the number of Covid deaths, in his interview with Jonathan Swan: “It is what it is.”

*1: Multiple news outlets (Post, Times, Reuters) reported that the CIA, in November 2018, during Donald Trump’s first term, concluded with “high confidence” that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.

President Trump in his October 2018 interview with Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes, had a different position on Khashoggi:

Lesley Stahl: “Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist — was he murdered by the Saudis? And did the prince give the order to kill him?”

Donald Trump: “Nobody knows yet, but we’ll probably be able to find out. It’s being investigated. It’s being looked at very, very strongly. And we would be very upset and angry if that were the case. As of this moment, they deny it. And den—deny it vehemently. Could it be them? Yes.”

Lesley Stahl: “What are your options? Let’s say they did. What are your options? Would you consider imposing sanctions, as a bipartisan group of senators have proposed?”

Donald Trump: “Well, it depends on what the sanction is. I’ll give ya an example. They are ordering military equipment. Everybody in the world wanted that order. Russia wanted it, China wanted it, we wanted it. We got it. So would you cut that off — I tell you what I don’t want to do. Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, all these com-[panies] I don’t want to hurt jobs. I don’t want to lose an order like that. There are other ways of-- punishing, to use a word that’s a pretty harsh word, but it’s true.”