The Washington Post’s editorial board delivered a blistering rebuke to President Donald Trump on Tuesday after he dismissed the 2018 murder of its journalist Jamal Khashoggi with the phrase “things happen” while hosting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House.

Trump, meeting the crown prince for the first time since returning to office, was asked about Khashoggi, the Post’s contributing columnist who was assassinated and dismembered with a buzz saw inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

The president replied: “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about… Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.” He also insisted the crown prince “knew nothing about it.”

The Post said the president’s remarks amounted to a “distortion” that “dishonor[s] Khashoggi’s legacy,” contrasting Trump’s comments with the CIA’s long-standing conclusion, made during Trump’s first term, that bin Salman ordered the killing.

Khashoggi, who lived in Virginia, had repeatedly criticized the Saudi government’s repression and foreign aggression in critiques that, the Post noted, “got under Mohammed’s skin.”

Mohammed, standing beside Trump, called the murder “a huge mistake” and said Saudi officials have “improved our system to be sure that nothing happened like that.”

The newspaper’s editors, however, rejected his remarks as “offensive and insufficient,” yet “somehow better than Trump’s response.”

“President Donald Trump’s performance at the White House Tuesday was something else entirely: weak, crass and of no strategic benefit to America,” they wrote.

Trump went further during the presser, praising the crown prince as “one of the most respected people in the world” and scolding ABC News reporter Mary Bruce after she asked him about Khashoggi. The president labeled the question “horrible, insubordinate and just a terrible question,” adding that the network’s “license should be taken away.”

The board warned that Trump’s posture “will embolden” authoritarian leaders, signaling that targeting journalists or Americans more broadly may carry little cost.

While acknowledging the messy realities of U.S.-Saudi relations, the editorial insisted an American president “should be able to respect Khashoggi’s legacy” without granting Mohammed bin Salman a “cost-free” welcome.

The post Washington Post Editorial Board Trashes Trump’s ‘Distortion’ of Murdered Columnist Jamal Khashoggi’s ‘Legacy’ first appeared on Mediaite.