President Donald Trump on Tuesday welcomed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the Oval Office and defended him against questions about American intelligence reports that found he ordered the killing of a Washington Post columnist.
It was the ruler’s first visit to the U.S. since the Biden administration found in 2021 that the Saudi leader had ordered the 2018 assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi while he was inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Asked about that report, Trump defended the crown prince — who minutes earlier had pledged to invest up to $1 trillion in the U.S.
“He’s done a phenomenal job,” Trump said of Mohammed, adding: “Things happen, but he knew nothing about it.”
Trump chastised the reporter who asked about the intelligence reports, saying : “you don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that” and calling her outlet, ABC News, “fake news.”
Saudi Arabia — over which the crown prince has authoritarian control — has rejected those intelligence assessments and says it has punished the people responsible for Khashoggi’s death.
Responding to questions in the Oval Office, Mohammed said that “it’s really painful to hear anyone that losing his life for no real purpose or nothing illegal — it’s been painful for us in Saudi Arabia.”
He called it “a huge mistake” and said “we are doing our best that this doesn’t happen again.”
Felicia Schwartz contributed to this report.
