Trump Sees Khashoggi’s Disappearance Mostly as a PR Problem
The administration is approaching the journalist’s apparent death as a stage for spin more than as a diplomatic incident or a human-rights outrage.
President Donald Trump is slowly coming around to the probable reality of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder by Saudi Arabia. But he isn’t happy about it.
Not the assassination itself, although he does seem at least displeased about that (he calls it “bad, bad stuff”), and has promised “severe” repercussions if the allegations prove true. The president’s biggest beef seems to be that it’s been a public-relations nightmare.
“Unless the miracle of all miracles happens, I would acknowledge that he’s dead,” Trump . Later that afternoon, when reporters asked him whether the Saudi journalist, who lived in Virginia and wrote, was dead, he said, “Certainly looks that way to me.”
