Trump: MBS may be Involved, but I Want to Believe He’s Not 

Local Editor 

US President Donald Trump predicted that “the Saudi Crown Prince might be implicated in journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder.”

The US and its allies used harsh words to speak about the act, there’s no harsh punishment to follow.

“Well, the prince is running things over there more so at this stage. He’s running things and so if anybody were going to be, it would be him,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal, answering a question about the Saudi crown prince’s possible involvement into the killing of the journalist. He also added he was “convinced” that the Saudi King Salman did not know about the murder in advance.

However, Trump suddenly changed his stance and said that he wanted to believe that the prince is actually not involved in the incident. The US president told the WSJ that he repeatedly questioned MBS about Khashoggi’s death “in a couple of different ways” and the prince told him he did not “know anything about it in terms of the initial planning.”

Asked whether he believed Mohammed bin Salman’s words, Trump said: “I want to believe them. I really want to believe them.” Earlier, the US leader denounced Khashoggi's murder and its cover-up by the Saudi Arabia as a “total fiasco from day one.”

However, he continued to refrain from openly condemning the Saudi government while still hailing its assistance to the US. Most recently, Trump called Riyadh “a very good ally of ours,” adding that it has “been helping us a lot with respect to "Israel".”

Trump repeatedly said that Washington would not be axing its arms deals with the Saudis, which are worth billions of dollars. The US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin also said that it “would be premature to comment on sanctions” against Saudi Arabia in the wake on the incident. Mnuchin also met with Mohammed bin Salman at a time when the investigation into the journalist’s murder was already ongoing.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team