Wednesday, November 19, 2025

The National Embarrassment


People, at least those not taken over by PTDS (Pro-Trump Derangement Syndrome) are justifiably perturbed by this:


 SHOCKING: In a disgusting moment, Trump shouted personal insults at a reporter asking him about incriminating evidence in the Epstein files, shouting "Quiet! Quiet Piggy."

Facing little blowback, it was time to pick it up a notch.

MB: Is it appropriate, Mr. President, for your family to be doing business with Saudi Arabia while you're President. is that a conflict of interest? And Your Royal Highness, US intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 9/11 families are furious. Why should Americans-  

DT: Who are you with?

MB: ABC News, sir.

DT: Fake News. ABC News, one of the worst in the business. But I'll answer your question.

After lying about is involvement in the family business, Donald added

As far as this gentleman is concerned, he's done a phenomenal job. You're mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about, whether you like him or didn't like him, things happen but he ne knew nothing about it and we can leave it at that. You don't have to embarrass our guests by asking a question like that.

After the Saudi autocrat feigned concern about Jamal Khashoggi's "death," Trump

criticized Bruce for asking the prince a “horrible, insubordinate and just a terrible question.” He laced into her after a third query, about why the White House is waiting for congressional action to release more details about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s correspondence. “Why not just do it now?” Bruce asked.

“It’s not the question that I mind,” Trump said. “It’s your attitude. I think you are a terrible reporter. It’s the way you ask these questions.”

After addressing the Epstein question, he returned to Bruce, saying that “people are wise to your hoax.”  

In October of 2018, The New York Times reported

Saudi agents were waiting when Jamal Khashoggi walked into their country’s consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago. Mr. Khashoggi was dead within minutes, beheaded, dismembered, his fingers severed, and within two hours the killers were gone, according to details from audio recordings described by a senior Turkish official on Wednesday…

American intelligence officials say they have growing circumstantial evidence that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in the disappearance of Mr. Khashoggi, who entered the consulate in Istanbul more than two weeks ago to obtain a document for his coming wedding and did not emerge.

Despite leading Saudi officials denying involvement in the murder, they "reiterated their conclusion that a team of 15 Saudi agents, some with ties to Crown Prince Mohammed, was waiting for Mr. Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate the moment he arrived, at about 1:15 p.m. on Oct. 2." 

The following month, the C.I.A. concluded that the murder of Mr. Khashoggi was ordered by the man whom Trump on Tuesday praised for having "done a phenomenal job." Khashoggi needed documents to prove that he was divorced in order to marry his fiancee.  Mohammed bin Salman, according to the C.I.A., told his brother, the Saudi ambassador to the USA, to tell Khashoggi to go to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul the following day to obtain the documents, There he was assassinated.


 


Khashoggi was a citizen of Saudi Arabia and resident of the USA, in voluntary exile from the Kingdom while writing columns for The Washington Post urging moderate reform of the monarchy.   Although not an American citizen, the journalist was a graduate of Indiana State University and at least two of his adult children are citizens of the USA.

He deserved better from the President of the USA. Yet, so did Mary Bruce and Catherine Lucey, the White House correspondent for Bloomberg labeled "piggy" by the leader of the Free World, who much prefers the noun to the object of that preposition. They deserve much better. We deserve much better.

Yet, the American press proceeds as usual, as if it is unaware that the President is determined to suppress not only dissent, but only questioning. "Don't embarrass our guest," says the guardian of the most powerful military in world history, who asserts power and influence over American citizens while frightened even to question heads of state of large dictatorships. He is both aggressively domineering and, when national interests demand strength, a pathetic coward.


 


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