[P]resident Donald Trump took diplomatic action against 21 Saudi officials believed to be connected with the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi on Wednesday after Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders sent a letter to the White House demanding condemnation of the Saudi government.
“The White House has continued to equivocate on the obvious and coddled leaders of the Saudi regime. At times like this, the United States should speak firmly with a united voice — that American values are not for sale and that such actions are intolerable in the civilized world,” the senators wrote.
Leahy and Sanders, who were joined by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., roundly criticized Trump’s friendly attitude toward autocratic and undemocratically elected leaders, and wrote that this is undermining American values of free press and democracy.
“Your crude abandonment of such values at home and abroad and embrace of global autocrats has weakened our great nation and undermined its moral standing in the world,” the senators wrote.
Pointing to Trump’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, Leahy and Sanders urged the president to “end this troubling downward spiral and restore America’s moral standing.”
“You and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo can start by formally, without equivocation, condemning Jamal Khashoggi’s murder and indicating there will be severe consequences to those around the world who act in such a barbaric manner,” the senators wrote.
The majority of Americans think Trump has not been “tough enough” dealing with the Saudis.
According to a new poll by the political news website Axios, 56 percent of Americans believe the Trump has not been “tough enough” on Saudi Arabia in response to the assassination of Khashoggi, while a third of Americans responded that Trump’s response has been “about right.”
In addition to annulling the visas of 21 Saudi officials, Trump, in his first admission that Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman could have been involved in the Khashoggi killing, said to reporters at the White House that “the prince is running things over there,” according to reporting by the Guardian.
Trump also said that the Saudi cover-up “was the worst in the history of cover-ups” and “whoever thought of that idea, I think is in big trouble. And they should be in big trouble.”
The Saudi government has blamed the murder on rogue agents and said that Khashoggi was strangled during a fistfight in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has said the journalist was the victim of a carefully planned assassination by Saudi intelligence officers.
Trump’s newest statements about Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the Khashoggi killing are a reversal of comments he made earlier this month in which he supported the crown prince’s story that he had no knowledge of the killing.
On Wednesday, the crown prince broke his public silence on Khashoggi, saying the incident was a “heinous crime that cannot be justified,” the Guardian reported.
CIA Director Gina Haspel flew to Turkey on Monday to assist Turkish officials with the investigation into Khashoggi’s murder and Pompeo, who had been been leading the U.S. investigation said there will be additional measures taken against Saudi Arabia, according to reporting by the Guardian.
“We’re making very clear that the United States does not tolerate this kind of ruthless action to silence Mr. Khashoggi, a journalist, through violence,” Pompeo said. “Neither the president nor I am happy with this situation,” the Guardian reported.
