Karen Attiah, The Guardian:

This week, seven years almost to the day since the CIA announced the crown prince’s responsibility in the murder [of Jamal Khashoggi], Mohammed bin Salman returns to Washington, invited for an offical visit by America’s Temu pharaoh, Donald Trump. The reconciliation between Trump and MBS was perhaps inevitable, given that even before the first Trump presidency, Trump spoke often of his love for the Saudis and their wealth. (“I get along great with all of them; they buy apartments from me. They spend $40m, $50m,” he quipped in 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much!”)

Attiah, who was until recently the editor of the Washington Post’s global opinion section, hired Khashoggi in 2017.

A year later, Saudi Arabia had Jamal killed. In the aftermath of Jamal’s murder, Trump administration officials worked overtime to launder Saudi Arabia’s blood-stained image. Jared Kushner was advising Prince Mohammed on how to “weather the storm”. Last year, Kushner’s equity firm received $2bn from Saudi Arabia’s private equity firm.

There’s much to say about the Saudification of western cultural spaces through the sheer sums of money the kingdom is so obviously throwing into what it sees as soft power. Writers and observers have commented for years about Saudi Arabia’s “sportswashing”, like the kingdom’s sponsorship of LIV golf tournament and the purchase of the Newcastle United soccer team.

“Gameswashing” too: Pokemon Go (and its location data) for $3.85 billion, Electronic Arts ($55 billion), and many more.

Attiah again, this time on her personal site, The Golden Hour:

Yesterday, ABC news reporter Nancy Bruce asked the question of MBS. “Your royal highness, the U.S. concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 9/11 families are furious that you are in the Oval Office. Why should Americans trust you?”

At first, the crown prince smirked at the camera during the mention of 9/11 families. Then, seconds after that question about Khashoggi’s murder, the millennial crown prince looked down, fidgeting with his hands like a nervous schoolchild called into the principal’s office. And he let Trump do the dirty work -to attack ABC as fake news before launching into more vile commentary and smearing Jamal’s name:

“You’re mentioning someone [Khashoggi] who 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,” Trump said.

The written word doesn’t do the quote justice. The malice oozing from Trump as he spews out “a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman” needs to be seen and heard to fully comprehend its odiousness.

That’s in addition to Trump’s vile and appalling implication that murder—dismemberment—is, perhaps, somehow, acceptable if you’re “controversial” or disliked, a perfectly reasonable consequence in Trump’s twisted, mob-boss mind.