WSJ Gossip: Saudis, MBS Make Fun of Joe Biden’s ‘Mental Acuity’ Behind His Back

Anonymous “people inside the Saudi government” told the Wall Street Journal in an article published Tuesday that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has little respect for leftist American President Joe Biden and makes fun of the elderly leader’s seemingly poor mental faculties in private.

The rumor follows years of growing tensions between the Biden administration and the government of Saudi Arabia, led by de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman that began with Washington delisting the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist insurgency as a foreign terrorist organization shortly after Biden took office.

The Houthis, currently waging civil war in Yemen, almost immediately took the delisting as a sign to bomb Saudi oil facilities. Saudi Arabia supports the legitimate government of Yemen, which the Houthis overthrew.

The Biden administration has also continued to raise the gruesome 2018 murder of Islamist Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, at the hands of Saudi agents in meetings with Saudi officials as an impediment to the U.S.-Saudi relationship – and directly blamed MBS for ordering the murder, which the crown prince denies.

Despite candidate Joe Biden having promised to turn Saudi Arabia into a global “pariah,” Saudi officials, and MBS personally, were reportedly “shocked” at the delisting and several other moves following Biden’s inauguration, including accusations against MBS personally regarding the Khashoggi affair.

“To the Saudis, Mr. Biden’s early moves were a slap in the face,” the Wall Street Journal claimed.

More recently straining the relationship is the decision by the oil cartel OPEC+ to cut production by 2 million barrels a day despite rumors, later confirmed by the Biden administration, that the White House asked Saudi Arabia to limit oil production cuts before the U.S. midterm elections, as high gas prices will likely turn voters against Democrats.

Biden officials have accused Saudi Arabia of supporting the production cuts to help Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a spurious claim even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has refuted through public statements of gratitude to MBS.

According to the Wall Street Journal‘s rumors, the very public discord between the two countries is fueled by the simple fact that MBS and Biden do not personally like each other.

“Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s 37-year-old day-to-day ruler, mocks President Biden in private, making fun of the 79-year-old’s gaffes and questioning his mental acuity,” the Wall Street Journal claimed, “according to people inside the Saudi government.”

“He has told advisers he hasn’t been impressed with Mr. Biden since his days as vice president, and much preferred former President Donald Trump, the people said,” the newspaper added.

Saudi Foreign Ministry Prince Faisal bin Farhan enthusiastically denied the rumor to the New York publication.

“Our economic agenda is critical to our survival. It’s not just about energy and defense,” the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, said in an interview. “It may have been 50 years ago but that certainly is not the case today.”

“These allegations made by anonymous sources are entirely false,” he reportedly said. “The kingdom’s leaders have always held the utmost respect for U.S. presidents, based on the kingdom’s belief in the importance of having a relationship based on mutual respect.”

While the claim is an anonymous rumor – one the Saudis vocally denied – the Wall Street Journal also anonymously reported that the Biden administration had asked the Saudis to stall oil production cuts through the midterm elections, which White House spokesman John Kirby later confirmed.

“We presented Saudi Arabia with analysis to show that there was no market basis to cut production targets, and that they could easily wait for the next OPEC meeting to see how things developed,” Kirby said in a statement in mid-August.

World leaders mocking or questioning Biden’s mental fortitude is not a new phenomenon. Anti-American rogue states such as China and North Korea regularly have cronies make fun of the 79-year-old president. In April, after Biden called Russian leader Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” over his invasion of Ukraine, North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) called the comment a product of “an old man in his senility.”

“It is known that Biden is not articulate. Since taking office, he has uttered all sorts of strange words and expressions,” an “expert” quoted in China’s Global Times state propaganda newspaper observed last year. The newspaper itself described Biden as “poor in verbal expression.”

Some allies have expressed similar thoughts, however, in the tone of concern rather than mockery.

“I met with him at the G-20 [summit in October] and he passed me by as if I didn’t exist,” a confused Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, said in May of Biden. “But that is how he treated everyone, I don’t know if it’s his age.”

Elsewhere in Monday’s Wall Street Journal report, anonymous “people” told the newspaper that tensions between Riyadh and Washington worsened when Biden visited Saudi Arabia this summer for what is now infamously known as the “fist bump summit,” after an awkward greeting photo Biden and MBS took together.

“When they [Biden and MBS] finally did meet in Jeddah in July, Saudi officials present felt that Mr. Biden didn’t want to be there, and was uninterested in the policy discussions, the people said,” according to the newspaper.

The Saudis also complained that Biden insisted on “immediately raising human-rights allegations, people close to the talks said, including the 2018 death of Jamal Khashoggi.”

Prior reporting claimed that the Biden visit to Saudi Arabia – clearly intended to convince the Saudis to pump more oil to lower prices, much as Biden himself denied it – resulted in the Saudis reducing a planned increase in production out of annoyance with Biden.

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