Donald Trump is at the White House today, and the writer believes what he is about to do will drag the office of the presidency lower than ever before.
Instead of protecting what the White House is supposed to stand for — dignity, democracy, and moral leadership — Trump is turning it into a stage for something dark and shameful. He is using “the People’s House” as a backdrop while he openly aligns himself, and the country, with a man widely seen as a brutal leader. And the writer’s point is simple: he’s doing it for money.
The man at the center of this is Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, commonly known as MBS. He became known around the world in 2018 after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist who wrote for The Washington Post. Khashoggi was a Saudi citizen who lived in the United States as a legal permanent resident. He was not some unknown figure — he was a respected writer who often criticized the Saudi government.
On October 2, 2018, Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to get documents he needed so he could marry his fiancée. He never came out. Investigations by Turkish officials and U.S. intelligence later showed what happened inside was horrifying. He was tied up, injected with a deadly drug, killed, and then his body was cut into pieces and dissolved with chemicals. His remains have never been found. His fiancée waited outside in the street, not knowing he was already dead.
This was not a random crime or a mistake by a few low-level people. The CIA looked at audio recordings from inside the consulate, as well as phone calls and messages sent around that time. They found that MBS had sent at least 11 text messages to his close adviser Saud al-Qahtani, the man who oversaw the 15-man team sent to Istanbul. Soon after the murder, one member of that hit squad called a senior aide to MBS from inside the consulate to report that the job was done.
For the people working in U.S. intelligence, the conclusion was clear. They described it as “blindingly obvious” that the order came from MBS himself. A killing so organized, so bold, and carried out inside a diplomatic building could not have happened without his approval.
But Trump did not accept this. Instead of standing by his own intelligence agencies, he publicly brushed aside their findings. He put out a statement filled with exclamation marks, claiming that the CIA had no solid proof, only “feelings” and “no smoking gun.” The writer calls this what it was: a deliberate lie told to protect a man accused of ordering a brutal murder.
Trump then tried to wrap this decision in the slogan “America First.” He argued that it was more important to protect arms deals, oil interests, and business ties with Saudi Arabia than to hold MBS accountable for killing a journalist who lived in the U.S. He even asked out loud whether Americans really wanted him to give up “hundreds of thousands of jobs” just because of this murder. In other words, he framed basic justice and human rights as something too expensive to care about.
Again and again, it came down to the same things: money, weapons, and oil. Trump said that turning away from Saudi Arabia would be a “terrible mistake,” and he promised that the U.S. would stay firmly on Saudi Arabia’s side. The message was clear: the relationship with Saudi Arabia was worth more to him than standing up for the truth or defending American values like human rights and freedom of the press.
The rest of the world did not forget what happened. When the Biden administration later released a declassified intelligence report in 2021, it confirmed what had long been suspected: MBS saw Khashoggi as a threat and supported using violent methods to silence him. The report did not reveal some surprising new story; it simply put into official words what many people already knew.
And MBS has not suddenly become a gentle reformer. Under his leadership, Saudi Arabia has continued to execute people at very high rates and has carried out a wide, harsh crackdown on dissent. Activists, writers, and ordinary citizens who speak out can find themselves in prison for years. Human-rights groups say that Saudi Arabia has gone back on its promise to stop executing people for crimes allegedly committed when they were under 18. Some people have been executed for non-violent offenses, including drug-related crimes. So the brutality has not slowed down; it has continued.
Despite all of this, Trump is now welcoming MBS to the White House with full honors. There will be a formal arrival on the South Lawn, a meeting in the Oval Office, a signing ceremony in the Cabinet Room, and a fancy dinner in the East Room hosted by Melania Trump. The two sides are expected to sign deals involving artificial intelligence, defense, and semiconductors — possibly worth up to $142 billion. The cameras will capture the smiles, the handshakes, and the warm words.
But what will be missing is just as important as what will be shown. There will be no real accountability for what happened to Jamal Khashoggi. There will be no serious talk about the journalists, dissidents, and activists punished for speaking out. There will be no open recognition, in that room, that the man being honored ordered a journalist to be lured into a building and killed, his body cut up with a bone saw.
Seven years after Khashoggi’s murder, Trump is not just ignoring that betrayal — he is repeating it. He is choosing again to side with money and power over justice and truth. The writer wonders whether any of Khashoggi’s former colleagues in the media will even mention his name today. Will anyone in the press corps, enjoying the access and the spectacle, dare to say out loud why MBS is infamous in the first place?
It looks like many powerful people have moved on. The media has mostly moved on. Congress has mostly moved on. But Jamal Khashoggi is still dead. His body has never been found. His fiancée has never had a grave to visit. And the man widely believed to have ordered his death is being treated as a respected guest in the White House.
The writer’s final point is sharp and personal: for Donald Trump, everything comes with a price tag. If the money is big enough, almost anything can be ignored or excused. And as long as he is president, the writer argues, America’s moral values — its “soul” — are also up for sale.
