Takeaways from Trump’s White House meeting with Saudi crown prince: deals and bromance

WASHINGTON (AP) — A jovial President Donald Trump held a warm and friendly meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman at the White House, packed with plenty of handshakes and back pats. He brushed aside questions about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, praised the prince for his statesmanship and announced hundreds of billions of dollars in new Saudi investment in the United States.

The White House rolled out plenty of pomp for the Saudi royal on Tuesday, dispatching fighter jets that the two leaders watched from a red carpet, parading out an honor guard on horseback and giving a lavish dinner in the East Room.

In a sitdown in the Oval Office that took place just seven years after Prince Mohammad was implicated by U.S. intelligence agencies in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump and the prince took numerous questions from reporters — one of whom was repeatedly insulted by Trump — on everything from commerce to the sale of advanced F-35 fighter jets to Riyadh.

Here is a look at some of the takeaways from the visit:

Movement on military cooperation

Trump had previewed his decision to sell F-35s on Sunday but formalized it before the prince on Tuesday when he said the approval was complete and that Israel’s fears about maintaining its qualitative military edge in the Middle East would be addressed.

Details of the deal were not immediately clear, but some in the Pentagon and other agencies have opposed the sale because of the potential for advanced technology being shared with China, which also has close ties with Saudi Arabia.

“As far as I’m concerned, I think they are both at a level where they should get top of the line,” Trump said of Saudi Arabia and Israel, which already has F-35s. “Israel’s aware and they’re going to be very happy.”

Israeli officials have suggested that they would not be opposed to Saudi Arabia getting F-35s as long as Saudi Arabia normalizes relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords framework.

The Saudis have said they would join the Abraham Accords but only after there is a credible and guaranteed path to Palestinian statehood, a position Prince Mohammad repeated in the meeting.

“We want to be part of the Abraham Accords, but we want also to be sure that we secure a clear path of two-state solution,” he said. “We’re going to work on that to be sure that we come prepared for the situation as soon as possible to have that.”

Trump also said the U.S. and Saudi Arabia would complete a broader agreement on military and security issues during the visit and that the U.S. would proceed with a civilian nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia, about which Israel also has raised concerns.

The two nations also signed a deal that calls for the Saudis to purchase nearly 300 tanks from the U.S.

At the dinner Tuesday night, Trump announced he was designating Saudi Arabia as a major non-NATO ally, a largely symbolic move that gives foreign partners some defense, trade and security cooperation benefits.

Khashoggi’s killing gets swept aside

Tuesday’s meeting was the first White House visit for the crown prince since Khashoggi, a U.S. resident and Washington Post columnist, was killed and dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2018.

U.S. intelligence said Prince Mohammad likely approved the slaying.

In a remarkable scene in the Oval Office, the prince, nicknamed MBS, faced questions from reporters, something not typical for the de facto head of the absolute monarchy where dissent is criminalized.

He was asked about Khashoggi’s slaying along with the role that Saudi citizens played in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Trump, however, lashed out at the reporter for the line of questioning.

Trump called Khashoggi, a Saudi pro-democracy activist, “extremely controversial” and said “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 (the crown prince) knew nothing about it and we can leave it at that.”

Prince Mohammad, who has denied involvement in Khashoggi’s killing, replied that his government had taken action.

“It’s been painful for us in Saudi Arabia,” he said. “We did all the right steps of investigation, etc., in Saudi Arabia, and we’ve improved our system to be sure that nothing happens like that again. And it’s painful, and it was a huge mistake.”

Trump also commended the Saudi leader for strides made by the kingdom on human rights without providing any specific detail but presumably referring to reforms relating to women’s rights. “What’s he done is incredible in terms of human rights and everything else,” Trump said.

Lots of pomp and circumstance

Trump greeted Prince Mohammed at the White House’s South Lawn entrance with a handshake and arm slung over the prince’s shoulder. Trump literally rolled out the red carpet for the Saudi leader, with a military band on hand and a flyover by U.S. military planes, before showing the crown prince his decorations along the White House Colonnade.

“We have a extremely respected man in the Oval Office today,” Trump said at the top of meeting, calling the prince “a friend of mine for a very long time.”

Trump also castigated his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, for greeting Prince Mohammed with a fist bump during his 2022 visit to Saudi Arabia.

“When you get out of the plane and you get the future king — and a man who is one of the most respected people in the world — you shake his hand, you don’t give him a fist bump, right?” Trump said. “Trump doesn’t give a fist bump. I grab that hand” — and he did just that.

At the dinner Tuesday night, the tuxedo-clad president and first lady Melania Trump welcomed the crown prince back on the red carpet again, before feting him at a dinner attended by tech titans such as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Tesla founder Elon Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook, along with golfer Bryson DeChambeau and soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo.

They dined on a pistachio-crusted rack of lamb, followed by a couverture mousse pear for dessert.

Vast but vague commercial and economic deals

Prince Mohammad told Trump that his country would be increasing its financial commitments to the U.S. from $600 billion, which was announced during the president’s trip to Riyadh in May, to $1 trillion.

Details of those deals were not immediately clear but are expected to include investments in a variety of American businesses, including artificial Intelligence, as well as the purchase of jet engines and other equipment.

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Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.