Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with top congressional leaders of both parties Wednesday morning, before an hours-long session with corporate CEOs and billionaires at the Kennedy Center in the afternoon.
The events confirm that President Trump spoke for the entire US ruling class, Democrats and Republicans alike, when he welcomed the bloodstained monarch to the White House and denounced any mention of bin Salman’s role in the gruesome murder of Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
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There is nothing surprising about the welcoming of the Saudi despot and mass murderer to the US Capitol. The House and Senate have given standing ovations to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on at least two occasions during the Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has addressed a joint session of Congress twice—even as he pursued policies of entrenching his authoritarian Hindu-supremacist regime and threatening nuclear war against neighboring Pakistan. British Prime Minister Tony Blair addressed Congress at the height of the US-British war of conquest in Iraq, in July 2003.
More importantly, American presidents themselves address Congress on a regular basis, and the war crimes committed by these presidents in this century alone (wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, drone missile assassinations from the Middle East to the Caribbean), dwarf those committed by any visiting monarchs, dictators or prime ministers.
After his brief session schmoozing with the congressional leadership, bin Salman travelled across town to the Kennedy Center to resume the real business of his trip: wooing and being wooed by corporate CEOs and billionaires, with Trump presiding over the scene like the head pimp at a house of ill repute.