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President Donald Trump’s warm welcome to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is meeting with notably little resistance on Capitol Hill.
It’s a sharp turnabout from 2018, when US intelligence concluded the crown prince approved an operation that ended with the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. MBS, as the crown prince is known, arrived in Washington on Tuesday amid a flurry of potential dealmaking with Trump, who plans to host a lavish dinner for him.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said seven years ago that one must be “willfully blind” to ignore the crown prince’s role in Khashoggi’s death. Asked about his assessment today of US intelligence on that front, he replied to Semafor: “I’ve already commented on that. I want to look forward.”
“I think he’s the future of the Mideast,” Graham said of the Saudi leader.
House lawmakers on both sides of the aisle plan to attend a reception with him on Wednesday, when Trump and the crown prince will also attend an investment conference. And even most Democrats focused more on potential conflicts of interest than on the crown prince’s human rights track record, which provoked bipartisan worries a few years ago.
Rep. Greg Meeks, D-N.Y., his party’s senior member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, aligned with Graham as he told Semafor that Saudi Arabia is “essential” to the US’s future in the region.
“We need to talk about that and have those dialogues; they seem to be very focused on a Palestinian state and a secure Israel,” Meeks said. “I have concerns, on our side,” over “the transactional relationship the president has — because any time you go over there, you look at the resources his family gets, compromising some things for citizens of the United States.”
Trump, who’s seeking to bolster US ties to the world’s top oil exporter, told reporters that the crown prince “knew nothing” about Khashoggi’s death as he announced a “defense agreement” between the two countries on Tuesday, the details of which remain unclear. The president also said that the US would sell Saudi Arabia F-35 fighter jets and opened the door to a potential nuclear deal.
House Speaker Mike Johnson invited House leaders, including the top Republicans and Democrats on key House committees, to a reception with bin Salman Wednesday, several people familiar with the plans said. Meeks, House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and House Intelligence ranking member Jim Himes, D-Conn., told Semafor they plan to attend.
“It’s better for the United States to have a friendly relationship with Saudi Arabia,” Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, told Semafor. “MBS is trying to move Saudi Arabia in a more modern direction generally.”
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The crown prince’s visit, and Trump’s remarks, prompted some bipartisan pushback.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Semafor that “unlike the president, I believe the American intelligence community,” adding that he had no plans to meet with the crown prince. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., went further by saying that “I wouldn’t have invited him to the White House.”
House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., subtly referenced longstanding concerns about the Saudi government’s human rights record by saying he hoped the reception with the crown prince would “serve as an opportunity to work with world leaders on issues that we agree with, while not ignoring the issues and concerns that we have between our countries.”
“There are concerns that have been raised in the past — and I don’t think that we should whitewash some of those concerns,” Aguilar said.
It’s not clear to what extent senators will engage with bin Salman. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who said attempts to arrange a meeting with him “didn’t work out schedule-wise,” is not currently slated to meet with the Saudi leader.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, also said he had no plans to meet with bin Salman this week.
Still, several expressed their support for normalizing ties to Riyadh.
“I was in Saudi Arabia in May, and anybody you talk to will tell you the dramatic change they’ve seen in reforms under his leadership,” Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., told Semafor. “He’s doing a great job.”
Rogers told Semafor he doesn’t “have a big problem” with the F-35 deal, but added that “the biggest issue is which variant they get and how long it takes them to be prepared to fly anything.”
The View From The White House
Trump was particularly friendly with the crown prince during his Oval Office meeting, taking his hand for multiple shakes.
The president didn’t provide many specifics on any potential US deals with Saudi Arabia: He told Semafor he expects a formal civil nuclear agreement to be discussed but suggested it wasn’t urgent. He also didn’t directly respond when pressed on whether the sale of F-35 fighter jets would be conditioned on the kingdom moving to normalize relations with Israel.
“They’re going to be very happy,” Trump said of Israel.
The crown prince was equally vague about the $1 trillion that Saudi Arabia promised to invest in the US — a huge sum for a country that’s already spread thin by domestic projects like the 2034 World Cup.
When a reporter raised the topic of Khashoggi, Trump interrupted to ask her employer and defend the crown prince — prompting a soft smile from the Saudi leader, who eventually interrupted the US president to provide his own answer.
Seated on a couch next to the president, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio remained stone-faced throughout the interaction.
In 2018, then-Sen. Rubio pushed back on the Trump administration’s claims that there was no direct link between bin Salman and the murder and introduced legislation condemning the crown prince for additional actions.
The View From Democrats
Other Democrats joined Meeks in signaling they were more worried about the Trump family’s Saudi deals than bin Salman’s current human rights violations.
“A lot of the Republican Party just follows Trump; a lot of Trump follows Trump’s personal financial interest,” Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., told Semafor, pointing to Trump-affiliated digital assets. “So I’m a little suspicious.”
The Trump Organization is in talks with a Saudi firm, whose board is chaired by the crown prince, about partnering on one of the country’s biggest real estate developments. And a Trump Organization business partner, Dar Global, has announced four Saudi developments since Trump’s election. The country’s sovereign wealth fund also backs golf tournaments at Trump’s club and contributed $2 billion to Jared Kushner’s investment fund.
Trump told reporters Tuesday that he has “nothing to do with the family business,” which the White House has said is managed exclusively by his children.
Sherman, a senior member of the Foreign Affairs panel, also called for any civilian nuclear agreement Trump may reach with Riyadh to parallel the US deal with the UAE, which he called “the gold standard for controls.”
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., her party’s top member on the Foreign Relations Committee, also urged the administration to impose safeguards on any nuclear pact, adding: “We must not fuel a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.”
Notable
- The Washington Post’s editorial board slammed “Trump’s performance” Tuesday as “weak, crass, and of no strategic benefit.”
- The Economist lays out why “Saudi Arabia is in no hurry to join the Abraham accords.”