Many words could be used to describe Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. Dangerous. Authoritarian. The man who US intelligence concluded approved the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was kidnapped, murdered, and dismembered by bone saw in 2018. But for Jared Kushner, there is just one: visionary.
Asked about Khashoggi’s murder at the Axios BFD conference on Tuesday, Kushner initially responded with “exasperation”—apparently, he’s so over this topic—reportedly saying, “Are we really still doing this?” Then he claimed to have not seen the US intelligence report released in 2021 that concluded MBS had approved the gruesome killing, and insisted that, in his experience, MBS is a great guy. Maybe even the greatest!
“I know the person who I dealt with,” Kushner said of the crown prince, according to Axios. “I think he’s a visionary leader. I think what he’s done in that region is transformational.” And MBS’s buddy boy didn’t stop there. “I think he’s done a lot of things that are in America’s interest,” Kushner added. “And I think he’s done a lot of things that have made the world a better place.” Does he “understand why people are upset about“ Khashoggi’s killing? Sure. Does he think “what happened there [to Khashoggi] was absolutely horrific”? Yes. But “our job,” he told Axios’s Dan Primack, “was to represent America, to try to push forward things in America.”
Kushner’s remarks echoed those he made in his memoir released in 2022, in which he wrote, “While this situation [concerning Khashoggi’s brutal murder, after which he was chopped to pieces] was terrible, I couldn’t ignore the fact that the reforms that MBS was implementing were having a positive impact on millions of people in the kingdom—especially women. All of these reforms were major priorities for the United States, as they led to further progress in combating extremism and advancing economic opportunity and stability throughout the war-torn region. The kingdom was poised to build on this historic progress, and I believed it would.”
As for the $2 billion the main Saudi sovereign wealth fund deposited into Kushner’s investment firm not long after he left the White House—despite the panel that performs due diligence for the Saudi fund concluding it was a terrible idea—the former first son-in-law insisted there were absolutely no conflicts of interest there. “If you ask me about the work that that we did in the White House, for my critics, what I say is, point to a single decision we made that wasn’t in the interest of America,” Kushner said. And there you have it!
