Jake Tapper Scoffs At Spox’s Claim That Biden Has Held Saudis Accountable: ‘I Don’t Know What Repercussions You’re Talking About’
A skeptical Jake Tapper pressed White House spokesman John Kirby’s claim that Saudi Arabia has faced “repercussions” for its abhorrent actions on the world stage.
Kirby appeared on Tuesday’s installment of The Lead on CNN, where the host asked about a potential mutual defense treaty between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in exchange for the latter normalizing relations with Israel.
“Well, there’s no agreed framework here,” Kirby said. “We’re working toward normalization. I would just say that we continue to encourage both sides to pursue normalization. We think normalization with Israel is not only good for Israel and the Israeli people, but for the region writ large. And so, we think it’ll make a more integrated, cooperative, and stable Middle East. We also have and will continue to work with Saudi Arabia on their defense needs.”
Tapper turned to the kingdom’s domestic and foreign policy records.
“It has an atrocious human rights record,” the host said. “The U.N. has said that the Saudi-led war in Yemen – you just noted the ceasefire – but it’s resulted in mass killings of civilians, one of the worst manmade humanitarian crises in the world, plus of course, American spies have said the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was ordered specifically by Saudi Crown Prince [Mohammed bin Salman].”
Tapper then played comments by Joe Biden when he was campaigning for president.
“We are gonna in fact make them pay the price and make them in fact the pariah that they are,” Biden said in 2019. “There’s very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia.”
“He sounds very different when he talks about Saudi Arabia today,” Tapper said after the clip concluded.
“Well, look, there’s no question that Saudi Arabia is a strategic partner,” Kirby replied. “Has been for some 80 decades. It’s also no question… the president hasn’t been bashful about expressing our concerns with Saudi behavior. But this is a strategic partnership. We want to keep moving forward. We need to do that. There have been repercussions for Saudi Arabia.”
The host seized on this remark.
“I don’t know what repercussions you’re talking about,” Tapper responded. “I mean, like, take a look at this photo of President Biden from a few days ago with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Biden is shaking his hand, he’s smiling at him. Was the president bummed that the photo was made public?”
“Look, the crown prince put his hand out, the president shook it,” Kirby answered. “He shook a lot of hands there at the G-20. It was a gathering of significant world leaders to work on problems that we can all try to solve for people around the world, including infrastructure, investment, and economic multilateral development banks. There’s a lot that was discussed. Crown prince was a part of those discussions and the president was happy to have a range of discussions with world leaders to all those ends.”
Watch above via CNN.
