For the second time this year, Donald Trump ambushed the democratically elected leader of a US ally in the Oval Office. At the same time, he only has good things to say about authoritarian rulers who give him things.
When Donald Trump met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last week, he called the kingdom’s authoritarian ruler a “friend” and praised him as “wise beyond his years.”
What he did not do was to instruct his staff to play a video showing evidence that a team of Saudi operatives murdered and dismembered journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 and then tried to cover it up.
Trump did not hold up any kind of documents, such as this assessment by the intelligence community that MBS, as the crown prince is also known, authorized that operation, and he did not talk about how the Saudi government lied about what happened in its consulate in Istanbul that day.
Finally, the US president did not criticize Saudi Arabia for the massive human rights abuses taking place in the kingdom.
All of these things are well documented and rooted in fact.
Now let’s fast-forward a week to Wednesday’s meeting with South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Trump used the occasion to ambush the democratically elected leader with unsubstantiated accusations, including a four-minute video, that his country is engaging in a “genocide” of white farmers. In doing so, he made a series of false and misleading claims.
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