President Donald Trump asked Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman how he sleeps at night in a bizarre speech attended by some of the world’s business elite.
Saudi Arabia‘s de facto ruler, who was accused of ordering the bloody execution of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi embassy in Istanbul nearly seven years ago, is playing host to Trump’s first trip abroad in his second term.
Trump got a standing ovation after saying that Riyadh had become a major world business center before asking, clearly ignoring the teleprompter: “Mohammed, do you sleep at night? How do you sleep?
ADVERTISEMENT
“What a job. He tosses and turns like some of us, tosses and turns all night, ‘How do I make it better?’ It’s the ones who don’t toss and turn, they’re the ones who will never take you to the promised land.”
Then returning to the script, he added, “Critics doubted it was possible, what you’ve done, but over the past eight years. Saudi Arabia has proved the critics totally wrong.”
There was no mention of Khashoggi’s murder, and no suggestion that it was in Trump’s mind, as he gushed in the speech about his long relationship with the royal leader known as MBS.
“Oh, what I do for the crown prince,” Trump added, after saying he was lifting sanctions on Syria at the request of MBS and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Sleep may have been on the president’s mind; he was spotted appearing to nod off and jerking himself awake during a welcome ceremony after landing on a red-eye flight from D.C. to Riyadh.
Despite Saudi Arabia’s troubled human rights record, Trump said the Arab nation was now the “center of the world.”
“We are rocking, The United States is the hottest country, with the exception of your country,” Trump added, pointing to the Saudi prince.
Trump got another ovation after announcing he was softening America’s stance toward Syria.
“There is a new government that will hopefully succeed in stabilizing the country and keeping peace. That’s what we want to see in Syria,” he said, referring to the coup that ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad in December. He added that he would meet Syria’s new leader, President Ahmed al-Shara, on Wednesday.
Trump made it clear where he sees the biggest threat to Middle East peace to be, saying: “The biggest and most destructive of these forces is the regime in Iran, which has caused unthinkable suffering in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Yemen, and beyond.”
After bathing in the acclaim on stage alone after making his entrance to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” Trump thanked his Saudi hosts before launching into a speech claiming that if he had been president over the preceding four years, the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack would never have been allowed to happen.
The CEOs of some of America’s biggest companies were in the audience along with members of the Saudi royal family and Arab business leaders. Tesla chief Elon Musk was listening, as was his former friend turned foe, Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI.
Trump took the opportunity for a dig at Apple boss Tim Cook, praising Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang at one point and adding: “Tim Cook isn’t here, but you are.”
Earlier, Musk warmed up the crowd for 15 minutes as the U.S. president’s support act, thanking the Saudis for approving his Starlink internet access service.
Among the deals Trump says he has signed since arriving for the four-day tour, which will also take him to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, is the “largest defense sales agreement in history,” worth $142 billion.
Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi critic, was murdered in Istanbul in October 2018, and U.S. intelligence said later that it believed that Crown Prince Mohammed ordered the execution. Saudi thugs inside the embassy were accused of kidnapping, drugging, and torturing the American resident journalist.
Joe Biden refused to speak to the prince when he was first president.
The prince has always denied any role in the killing. He was named crown prince by his father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, 89, in 2017, and effectively rules his country. The king has not been seen during Trump’s visit.
