NBC’s Peter Alexander Confronts Jen Psaki on Biden Not Sanctioning MBS and Putin: How Will That ‘Deter’ Their Behavior?

President Joe Biden’s decisions not to impose direct sanctions on Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and Russian President Vladimir Putin are drawing scrutiny in the White House briefing room.

NBC’s Peter Alexander pressed White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on the matter during a Tuesday briefing, questioning Biden’s decision not to punish the leaders directly.

“The Biden administration didn’t punish Mohammed bin Salman directly for [Jamal] Khashoggi’s death,” Alexander said. “You’re not punishing Vladimir Putin directly for [Alexei] Navalny’s imprisonment — only those around them. So, how is that going to deter these leaders from this behavior in the future?”

Psaki answered the question in two parts, first addressing the Biden administration’s response to Khashoggi’s killing, noting that they pledged to do things differently than Donald Trump. 

“Our objective is to recalibrate the relationship,” she said. “We took a number of steps including releasing this report, including seizing our support for offensive operations in Yemen, including ensuring engagement was counterpart to counterpart, and also pushing for the release of U.S. Citizens and human rights activist who were released.”

She went on to say that Biden’s national security team approved the administration’s response, which included sanctioning Saudi former Deputy Head of General Intelligence Ahmad Hassan Mohammed al Asiri and “76 Saudi individuals.”

“Our conversations with the Saudis, at every level, make clear that we expect additional reforms to be put in place, that their behavior will change,” she added. “We have seen some evidence of that, but we will continue to press on that meeting for.”

Alexander continued to press Psaki, asking why the administration expects those leaders to stop their behavior if they do not face direct consequences.

“Again Peter, with all due respect, these decisions were made on the basis of decades of experience and consideration by our national security team on what would be most effective and not only to train actions like this in the future preventing this from ever happening again, which is of course our objective, but also being able to maintain a relationship moving forward and, of course, we have important work we do with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from intelligence sharing to deterring the actions of militants in the region and those are in the national interest of the United States,” Psaki responded.

Watch above, via C-SPAN.