According to televangelist Pat Robertson, the US should not jeopardize $100 billion worth of arms sales over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
The Saudi government has now admitted that Khashoggi is dead. This after insisting that he had walked out of the consulate alive and well. But the Saudis now claim that Khashoggi died in a melee against fifteen other men. Setting aside the preposterousness of the argument, it is instructive to see how US conservatives are reacting to the revelation that Khashoggi was indeed killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Conservatives are reacting in a predictable fashion. They are reacting now exactly as how they have always reacted when their patrons told them to do so.
Trump has now gone on record as believing the Saudi crown prince (MbS), when the latter told Trump that his government had no hand in the killing of Khashoggi. While some Republicans, such as Marco Rubio do not accept this explanation, it is by now painfully obvious that the feckless Republican establishment will bend to Trump’s stance just as they did with Kavanaugh.
There is a deeper story when it comes to conservatives and facts. This is a story of conservatives and regulations. In 1986, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a rule requiring all cars to have three stop lights. This was done after NHTSA scientists had replicated a 1974 experiment showing that adding a third light to vehicles significantly reduced the number of fatalities. Since the implementation, there have been 200,000 fewer crashes each year. But, in the 1980’s conservatives claimed that the additional cost of the third light would place an undue burden on US car manufacturers.
Conservatives also complained about airbags in cars. They argued that airbags and seatbelts added to the cost of vehicles and therefore would cut into profits, placing American car manufacturers at a disadvantage. Nearly 30,000 lives have been saved in the US because of airbags, making the economic point moot. Moreover, consumers want airbags so that all cars sold today are fitted with them. Despite the exaggerated claims of conservatives, American car manufacturers are still among the most profitable in the world.
Another conservative doomsday scenario during the 1980’s involved the reactionary arguments against the government taking steps to regulate tobacco. According to conservatives, big tobacco needed to be left alone because Americans were free to choose whether to smoke or not. Nevermind evidence that the tobacco industry was hooking smokers as teenagers. After years of public ad campaigns informing the public about the risks associated with smoking, smoking rates have decreased, along with cancer and heart disease related to smoking. In spite of this, tobacco companies are more profitable than ever before. So, again, conservatives were wrong.
When it comes to decisions based on evidence conservatives are always ready to claim that the evidence is false or misleading. When it comes to facts, conservatives are always eager to point to some meaningless, insignificant (generally false) reason not to follow common sense. But as in every case listed above, conservatives have always been in the pocket of interested parties. They were in the pocket of Detroit when it came to airbags, as they were in the pocket of big tobacco. In the case of Khashoggi, conservatives (Trump) are in the pocket of the Saudi royal family and the stench of whataboutism reeks.
In the present, we have the deplorable Donald Trump Jr., claiming that the US Saudi relationship is too important to be derailed over the death of one journalist. This is exactly how low the Republican discourse has fallen. Where a party luminary claims that no one should be too upset with the Saudis because they murdered just one man.
What are the facts that Republicans are ignoring? For one, the Turkish government claims to have audio recordings of the torture and dismemberment of Khashoggi. Why would the Turks lie about this? Of course even when the Turks release the audio the Donald Trumps of this world will claim the audio to be counterfeit and “fake news”. It defies common sense that the Turks would claim to have audio unless they were able to provide evidence of it. It also defies common sense to know that the Saudi assassination team traveled with a bone saw but that they meant not to harm Khashoggi. But conservatives–just as they do with climate change–will claim that they do not understand and therefore do not believe the evidence presented before them.
The fact is that nothing happens in Saudi Arabia without the hand of MbS. It is also clear that the Trumps are terrified that Congress will invoke the Magnitsky Act, which will freeze the assets of anyone involved with the murder of Khashoggi. What will the Saudis do? Stop buying US weapons and parts? Anyone that knows or understands anything about the global arms trade knows that the Saudis are locked into a long term weapons contract with the US. The Saudi air force is composed entirely of American fighters and only American weapon manufacturers can provide the parts to keep those airplanes in the air. The claim that a $100 billion arms deal is in jeopardy is a distraction.
MbS will get away with the murder of Khashoggi only if Republicans are willing to accept $100 billion as the price of a man’s life.