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Washington Post Issues Statement About Biden Fist Bumping Saudi Crown Prince

   DailyWire.com
JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA - JULY 15: (----EDITORIAL USE ONLY â MANDATORY CREDIT - "ROYAL COURT OF SAUDI ARABIA / HANDOUT" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS----) US President Joe Biden (L) being welcomed by Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (R) at Alsalam Royal Palace in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on July 15, 2022.
Royal Court of Saudi Arabia / Handout / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The Washington Post slammed President Joe Biden Friday afternoon for fist-bumping Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is widely suspected of having ordered the gruesome murder of one of its columnists in 2018.

Biden’s salutation came three years after he declared at a Democrat primary debate that the leader, known as MBS, was responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Biden vowed that if he were president he would “make them pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are.” But on his current Middle East trip, Biden has not followed through on that pledge, which Washington Post Publisher and CEO Fred Ryan called “shameful.”

“The fist bump between President Biden and Mohammed bin Salman was worse than a handshake– it was shameful,” Ryan said in a statement. “It projected a level of intimacy and comfort that delivers to MBS the unwarranted redemption he has been desperately seeking.”

The New York Times reported last year that Biden would not punish MBS because he was “fearing” the consequences of doing so.

An intelligence report released by U.S. officials last year said that their assessment that MBS was responsible for Khashoggi’s death was based on MBS’s “control of decision making in the Kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammed bin Salman’s protective detail in the operation, and the Crown Prince’s support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi.”

Khashoggi, a citizen of Saudi Arabia who had been critical of the royal family, was killed in the country’s Istanbul consulate by a team of intelligence operatives linked to the prince. His body was dismembered with a bone saw, according to American officials.

Biden is expected to beg Saudi Arabia to increase oil production to help ease high gas prices as Democrats face a potential shellacking in the upcoming midterms due to skyrocketing inflation and historic energy costs.

Prince Turki Al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief, told CNBC that Biden had arrived in the Kingdom as a “much diminished president” who faced an uphill battle in trying to repair relations between the two countries.

“As an example, on energy issues, he came in with a policy to stop completely fossil fuel usage not only in the United States, but worldwide, and now he is finding himself having to rely on fossil fuels as a means of meeting the energy shortage that has come about, not only because of the Ukraine war, but also because of U.S. policy itself that shut down pipelines and stopped issuing … discovery of oil on U.S. soil,” he said.

This report has been updated to include additional information. 

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