Trump won’t stop arms sales to Saudis

Donald Trump has implied Jamal Khashoggi has been murdered, saying it “certainly doesn’t look like he’s around,” but said he would not cut arms sales to Saudi Arabia even if the kingdom was responsible for the missing journalist’s death.

The president suggested he did not believe Saudi Arabia’s claim that Khashoggi had safely left its consulate in Istanbul before he disappeared more than a week ago. “He went in, and it doesn’t look like he came out. It certainly doesn’t look like he’s around,” Trump told Fox News Thursday.

Turkey, meanwhile, said it had accepted Saudi proposals to set up “a joint working group” to investigate the case. It was not clear how such a group would work given that Turkish officials have accused Saudi Arabia of murdering and dismembering Khashoggi.

The president’s comments came amid growing anger in Congress toward Saudi Arabia over allegations that a 15man Saudi “hit squad” killed the journalist and may have filmed his death. Democratic and Republican senators banded together to trigger an investigation and said the U.S. government must examine whether the “highest-ranking officials in the government of Saudi Arabia” were involved.

The senators’ letter invoked a statute that Congress enacted in December 2016 that says the executive branch, upon receipt of such a letter, has 120 days to decide whether to sanction foreign officials.

“There will be a bipartisan tsunami against Saudi Arabia here if they did in fact do this,” said Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator close to the White House. “This is a defining moment for us. Behaviour like this is unacceptable.”

But Trump said he would not scale back $110 billion in U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia even if it was proved that the kingdom had murdered Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist living in Virginia who regularly criticized the Saudi government.

“I would not be in favour of stopping a country from spending $110 billion, which is an all-time record, and letting Russia have that money and letting China have that money,” Trump said. “What good does that do us? There are other things we could do.”