How America’s rich and powerful embarrassed themselves in front of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince
For those of us who tend to find smug displays of wealth and influence nauseating, this event hit like aggressive food poisoning.
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If you’re someone who finds smug, gloating displays of wealth and influence nauseating, as most of us in possession of neither commodity do, one event this week was akin to aggressive food poisoning. The type that traumatises both ends.
On Tuesday night, US time, the White House hosted a black-tie dinner in honour of Mohammed bin Salman, the visiting crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who at the modest age of 40 is already remarkably close to completing his human rights abuse bingo card.
The worst among several emetic elements here is the dinner’s guest list, which featured a who’s who of people who would get off on being described as modern “titans of industry”. Rather than some other options that spring to mind, such as “money grubbers”.
Before we return to that coterie of charmers, let’s skim bin Salman’s resume, which is impressive in the same way you might marvel at a prolific serial killer’s rap sheet.
He’s the de facto head of a Saudi regime which, according to the non-profit organisation Freedom House, “restricts almost all political rights and civil liberties” for its citizens, using “pervasive surveillance” and “the criminalisation of dissent” to remain in power, forever unelected and unaccountable.
Women are systematically oppressed (albeit slightly less so of late). Religious minorities are persecuted. Dissidents are disappeared. Among other staples of authoritarianism.
And, though he denies it, the crown prince himself was judged by Western intelligence agencies to be responsible for the kidnapping, murder and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Kashoggi in 2018, a crime so brazen in its monstrosity that, for a vanishingly brief moment, it seemed as though genuine, lasting diplomatic consequences might follow.
Yet there bin Salman was a few short years later, in 2022, accepting a chummy fist bump from Joe Biden. And there he was again in Washington D.C. this week, basking in the praise of President Trump, who apparently felt the fist bump was insufficiently deferential.
“I’m very proud of the job he’s done, in terms of human rights and everything else,” Mr Trump said of his guest, whom he described as “a friend of mine for a very long time”.
“We’ve always been on the same side of every issue.”
Amazing, isn’t it, how easily the pitch black stains on one’s record can be overlooked when vast sums of money are involved? What a happy and entirely unrelated coincidence it is that Saudi Arabia has been pelting cash at the Trump family for years.
For his Oval Office meeting with bin Salman, Mr Trump came armed with the almost childlike credulity we have come to expect from his dealings with dictators, swallowing whole the prince’s claim that he “knew nothing about” Mr Kashoggi’s death, and berating American journalists for daring to ask about it.
“As far as this gentleman is concerned, he’s done a phenomenal job. You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about,” the President said.
“Like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”
Goodness, the word “things” is doing some work there. I’ll note again, because it feels like this cannot be stressed enough, that we’re talking about a man who was chopped into pieces with a bone saw for saying and writing things the Saudi regime didn’t like.
“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” added Mr Trump.
(In fairness I, too, would find it deeply embarrassing if I visited a foreign country and people insisted on bringing up a murder I’d done.)
Look, we all understand, living here in the real world, that there are many reasons for the United States and other liberal democracies to pinch their nostrils shut and engage with the Saudis, including bin Salman, reprehensible as he is. Moral lines are bent all the time in international diplomacy.
But what we saw this week was not cold, calculating realpolitik. It was a lovefest, one that blew right past any qualms about legitimising bin Salman and ended up celebrating him.
The distinction does matter. The Trump administration didn’t have to be so simpering. It didn’t have to throw bin Salman a fancy dinner. The President didn’t have to laud to high heaven a man who is very much destined for hell, if one exists.
What happened to all those Trump officials who, all too recently, bravely lectured closer allies than Saudi Arabia for failing to protect free speech? Cat got your tongue, J.D. Vance? Plonked next to a man who literally kills people for exercising that freedom, the American Vice President suddenly wasn’t so lippy.
Anyway. The guests. Who among the botoxed elite, you may wonder, agreed to check their dignity at the White House’s door and prostrate themselves before a foreign dictator?
A non-exhaustive list: Apple boss Tim Cook; Salesforce CEO and Time Magazine owner Marc Benioff; OpenAI CEO Greg Brockman; Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell; Invidia CEO Jensen Huang; Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su; Cisco Systems CEO Chuck Robbins; Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong; Blackstone CEO Steven Schwarzman; Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla; Ford Motor Company executive chair William Clay Ford; venture capitalist David Sacks and Josh Harris, who owns an NFL team, the Washington Commanders.
Several of those folks are in the artificial intelligence business, which makes their motive for being there quite plain, given Saudi Arabia’s current efforts to claim a better position at the AI trough.
Elon Musk deserves a special mention for being hilariously lacking in self-awareness, given his recently acquired habit of declaring anything to the left of Nigel Farage a mortal threat to Western civilisation.
Funny how, when the threat is coming from somebody with a Chinese or Saudi name who could send business his way, the free speech absolutist’s principles melt away.
Who else? Sentient Ken doll Cristiano Ronaldo was there, in his role as the Saudis’ pet footballer, which requires him to strut around pretending he still plays in one of the world’s best leagues and not, in fact, a lucrative retirement home for people who used to enjoy the sport at a competitive level.
Football Ken, whose toy would come with a mirror and a little gap in the packet where a World Cup trophy should be, was joined by FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who has taken up semi-permanent residence in Washington.
Apparently Mr Infantino’s only job, ahead of next year’s US, Mexico and Canada-hosted World Cup, is to suck up to Mr Trump, which is why he’s haunting the President’s every step, showering him with gifts, and has invented a new “FIFA Peace Prize” to give him at the announcement of the tournament’s draw.
Most recently, upon hearing Mr Trump suggest that World Cup games could be arbitrarily moved from cities that displease him, thus screwing over the fans paying exorbitant sums to attend them, Mr Infantino offered no objection.
A self-neutered man, then, leading an organisation which, having sent its most recent editions of the World Cup to Russia and Qatar back-to-back, seems to have forgotten what it is like to deal with a democratic country. FIFA is stuck in “don’t piss off the autocrat” mode.
And so is everyone else. Just as FIFA has no actual need to ingratiate itself to Mr Trump – what’s he going to do, refuse to host a global event that will bring him oodles of attention? – Elon and his buddies don’t need to suck up to the likes of bin Salman.
Some of these people are richer than the combined GDP of multiple countries. If acquiring more money than you could ever spend is the goal, they have already won.
I’ll put it less delicately. What is the best thing about having “f*** off money”? It’s neither the private jet, nor the exotic places it can take you. Neither the portfolio of seaside mansions nor the option of upgrading your spouse to a fresher model every few years like they’re a lightly scratched iPhone.
No, the best thing about f*** off money is, as the name implies, the ability to tell pretty much anyone, including governments, exactly where to shove it.
You do not need to bow, scrape, or compromise, and most gratifyingly of all, you need not pretend to like any blowhard politician, let alone the ones who are criminals. Your riches buy you the freedom to say and do whatever you want.
Is this really what the modern day business tycoon wants? To be a chortling court jester, debasing himself for malicious men, hoping to add a few more coins to his already bottomless pile? Apparently so.
