As media mammoths and top business leaders cancel plans to attend an upcoming investment conference in Saudi Arabia over the disappearance of a Washington Post columnist earlier this month, the Trump administration is digging its heels in.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Friday that he has every intention of attending the conference, casually referred to as “Davos in the Desert,” and said he would “look at” new information about the disappearance if it came out before the gathering.
“I am planning on going at this point,” he told CNBC Friday. “If more information comes out and changes, we could look at that, but I am planning on going.”
After the Washington Post reported Thursday that Turkish government officials have audio and video evidence that they say proves the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, was interrogated, tortured and murder by Saudi officials inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, The New York Times, CNN, Uber and several other companies announced they’d be boycotting the event.
Saudi officials maintain they aren’t involved in Khashoggi’s disappearance and claim he left the consulate shortly after entering earlier this month. The dissident Saudi journalist, who entered the consulate to get divorce records so he could marry his new fiancee, has been missing since Oct. 2.
There must be a solar eclipse in Saudi Arabia that week.
Who is to judge? Whose mob boss’s son-in-law has not gotten hundreds of millions to prop up their real estate empire, and expects loyalty in return? You don’t bite the hand that is bribing you.
President Bonesaw
What nations are boycotting various diplomatic, trade and commercial events in the United States due to our indiscriminate bombing of Iraqi and Afghan wedding parties, street fairs and field hospitals?
Rumor has it Khashoggi left the embassy and was later shot in the middle of Fifth Avenue, so no big deal.