Trump Received 83 Gifts from Saudi Arabia!

Local Editor

During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump attacked Hillary Clinton for accepting money from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, complaining during one of the debates, "These are people that kill women and treat women horribly and yet you take their money."

That was, of course, before he made his first foreign visit as president to Saudi Arabia-and accepted dozens of gifts from the kingdom. In fact, during Trump's visit, the White House accepted at least 83 separate gifts from Saudi Arabia, according to a document The Daily Beast has obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request to the State Department.

The gifts range from the regal ["Artwork featuring picture of President Trump"] to the martial [multiple swords, daggers, leather ammo holders and holsters], to the baroque [tiger and cheetah fur robes, and a dagger made of pure silver with a mother of pearl sheath]. Now when the president is contemplating the state of Saudi women's rights, he can do so before a "large canvas artwork depicting [a] Saudi woman."

Amusing as the gifts may be, they are emblematic of a more serious issue: Trump's embrace of the Saudi regime, a stark reversal from his campaign rhetoric. During the campaign, Trump accused the regime of everything from being responsible for 9/11 to failing to "reimburse us the way we should be reimbursed," going so far as to threaten to stop buying their oil if they didn't shape up.

Trump's decision to make his first foreign visit to Saudi Arabia was a singular one, breaking with a long-standing presidential tradition of first visiting Mexico or Canada.

"Trump's decision to visit Saudi first clearly signaled his top prioritization of America's most profitable relationship with its number one weapons client in the world," Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa Division, told The Daily Beast.

However, it is unclear whether Trump gave similar luxury items to his Saudi hosts, who also posted the president's face on billboards in the capital and arranged a summit meeting of Muslim leaders and a concert by the American country singer Toby Keith.

No less noteworthy than the visit itself was the administration's conduct during it. During the visit, the Trump administration announced a $110 billion arms deal with the Saudis that includes $500 million in precision-guided munitions, totaling $350 billion over 10 years. This represented a decisive reversal of the Obama administration's 2016 policy of blocking certain arms sales to the regime because of civilian deaths in Yemen.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team