Wednesday on ABC’s “The View,” co-host Abby Huntsman criticized President Donald Trump standing by Saudi Arabia despite allegations the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was responsible for the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Joy Behar said, “You know, I looked it up, Canada provides 40 percent of oil, Saudi Arabia 9 percent, and yet he’s so nasty to Canada. Justin Trudeau didn’t kill anybody. He’s mean to Canada and nice to the Saudis. What can you make of that? We don’t know the reason. maybe it’s the fact that they bailed him out of bankruptcy one time. Maybe it’s about the fact that they bought the entire floor of Trump Tower one time. It’s all these things that have to do with his pocketbook and not ours.”
Sunny Hostin said, “In 1986 Osama bin Laden’s brother lived in Trump Tower. Since 2016 saudi bookings at his hotel have gone up 169%, a similar uptick in New York. So what we have to ask ourselves, I think, as Americans is if the Saudis are intentionally lining his pockets, what do they expect in return? That is the question. And perhaps they expect to get a pass on the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.”
McCain said, “Jamal Khashoggi was cut up into little pieces and brutally murdered for being a dissident journalist There’s a tectonic shift in our country right now where human rights violations, we’re okaying them. We don’t have the same response we once did.”
She continued, “I believe in America where we are a beacon — as Ronald Reagan said, a shining beacon on top of a hill. I just don’t know where we are as a country where you can slaughter a journalist and we’re not going to bat an eye, we’re going to say there will be no ramifications for this. It sends a message globally that you can brutally murder journalists and it’s okay and our president won’t listen to the audio because it’s too intense to hear.”
Behar added. “Sad day for America.”
McCain said, “I just – I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t mean to make this about my father, but things were very different when he was around and I feel very unsafe. We’re shifting in a way that’s very dangerous, and it’s not the America I grew up in.”
Abby Huntsman concluded, “There’s nothing ‘America First’ about throwing your intelligence community under the bus — ever. And we have seen these time and time again. These are moments where a president either rises as a true leader or you fail miserably, and I think he’s failed miserably on this. Because these are two of the issues that we hold most dear as Americans; human rights but also freedom of speech and if you don’t stand strongly for that, what are we as a country? What do we stand for? Also a State Department official who has seen the version of the CIA’s assessment of what they found said it is, quote, ‘blindly obvious that the crown prince not only knew about it but ordered the murder of this journalist’ and the president saying he’s not even sure if the crown prince even knows.”
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