President welcomes the Saudi crown prince and tells the country, on camera, that 'things happen.'

The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia was in the Oval Office on Tuesday. The Crown Prince was there to announce a one trillion dollar Saudi investment in the United States, an F-35 fighter jet sale, a designation of Saudi Arabia as a major non-NATO ally, and a series of agreements on artificial intelligence, civil nuclear cooperation, and critical minerals. The agenda was business. The lighting was warm. The military flyover was scheduled.

Mary Bruce of ABC News asked the President a question about Jamal Khashoggi.

Mr. Khashoggi was a Washington Post columnist. He was a permanent resident of the United States. He went into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on the second of October, 2018, to pick up paperwork for his upcoming wedding. He did not come out. The American government’s official, declassified, unclassified-summary intelligence assessment, released by the Director of National Intelligence in 2021, concluded that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, the man sitting next to the President in the Oval Office on Tuesday, approved the operation that resulted in Mr. Khashoggi’s death and dismemberment with a bone saw inside that consulate. The assessment is on the public record. You can read it.

The President, asked the question on camera, in the Oval Office, with the Crown Prince at his elbow, said: “things happen.”

He then said the Crown Prince “knew nothing about it.”

He then told the reporter: “you don’t have to embarrass our guests.”

Hon. Things happen is the phrase you use about a flat tire. Things happen is the phrase you use when the diner runs out of pie. Things happen is not the phrase you use about a man who walked into a building and was hacked apart by a fifteen-person team that flew in for the occasion with a bone saw in carry-on.

The President is allowed to make foreign-policy choices. The President is not required, while making them, to lie to the country about what is in the intelligence assessments his own government has published. The President is also not required to scold an American reporter for asking a real question on behalf of a dead American resident. The Crown Prince did not even have to answer. The President answered for him. He did it on camera. He did it with the words things happen.

The Crown Prince got the F-35s. The Khashoggi family got “things happen.”

That ought to concern you.