Trump Freaks Out That MBS Might Be Embarrassed by Khashoggi Question

President Donald Trump offered a mind-boggling defense of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Tuesday when asked about the foreign kleptocrat’s orchestrating the murder of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

During a joint press conference in the Oval Office, Trump responded with hostility when ABC News reporter Mary Bruce asked Trump whether it was “appropriate” for the president’s family to do business in Saudi Arabia while he was in the White House, before turning her attention to the crown prince.

“And your royal highness, the U.S. intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 9/11 families are furious that you are here in the Oval Office. Why should Americans trust you, and the same to you, Mr. President?” Bruce asked, but Trump was already trying to interrupt her.

“No, who are you with?” the president snapped.

“I’m with ABC News, sir,” she replied.

“Who?” he asked.

“ABC News, sir,” she repeated.

“Fake news. ABC fake news. One of the worst, one of the worst in the business,” Trump said.

Trump then launched into a rant claiming he had “nothing to do with the family business” and that his family’s company had done “very little with Saudi Arabia, actually.”

“As far as this gentleman is concerned, he’s done a phenomenal job,” Trump said, referring to MBS. “You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial, a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen, but he knew nothing about it. And we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”

MBS offered his own response. “I feel painful about families of 9/11 in America, but we have to focus on reality,” he said, claiming that Osama bin Laden had used Saudi citizens in his attacks in order to destroy the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

“About the journalist, it’s really painful to hear [of] anyone that’s been losing his life for no real purpose or nothing illegal way. And it’s painful for us in Saudi Arabia,” the crown prince said. He claimed that the government had done “all the right steps” in investigating Khashoggi’s death and determined that “nothing happened like that.”

According to a 2021 assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, MBS had “approved” Khashoggi’s murder in 2018, during Trump’s first term, and supported “using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad.”

A federal judge has thrown out Texas’s gerrymandered congressional maps.

Judge Jeffrey V. Brown ruled Tuesday that the Lone Star State must return to its 2021 maps for the 2026 election, writing that “substantial evidence” proved Texas had “racially gerrymandered” its latest districts.

Congressional maps are typically redrawn every 10 years, after new census data is released. But Texas’s decision to do so in the middle of the decade—at Donald Trump’s direction—raised alarm.

Trump had suggested that Texas could give Republicans five more House seats by flipping a handful of blue districts in the Lone Star State next year via “a very simple redrawing.” In July, the Justice Department threatened to take legal action on the matter, asserting that at least four Texas congressional districts were “unconstitutional” since the presence of multiple racial groups had made white people the regional electoral minority.

Mere days after the DOJ letter, Governor Greg Abbott added redistricting to the special session’s legislative agenda.

“Lawmakers reportedly met that request to redistrict on purely partisan grounds with apprehension. When the governor announced his intent to call a special legislative session, he didn’t even place redistricting on the legislative agenda,” Brown wrote in his ruling. “But when the Trump Administration reframed its request as a demand to redistrict congressional seats based on their racial makeup, Texas lawmakers immediately jumped on board.”

Redistricting is perfectly legal—so long as it complies with federal law. Trump’s directive for Texas forced the state to focus on race rather than politics in defiance of national nondiscrimination laws. Brown noted in the legal opinion that if the effort had intended to thwart Democratic strongholds in the state, it would have also targeted majority white Democrat districts,” but those were “conspicuously absent.”

“In other words, the Governor explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race. In press appearances, the Governor plainly and expressly disavowed any partisan objective and instead repeatedly stated that his goal was to eliminate coalition districts and create new majority-Hispanic districts,” Brown wrote.

Brown determined that reverting to the 2021 map was a more adequate solution than providing the state with another opportunity to draw up a plan, since the 2021 iteration was not only developed by the state legislature (as opposed to the state judiciary) but has successfully been used in two previous congressional elections as well as an ongoing special election.

Democrats celebrated the news.

“Womp, Womp,” responded Texas State Representative Gene Wu, the chair of the state Democratic caucus.

Trump issued similar directives for a handful of other red states, including Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Illinois, and Florida.

The aggressive redistricting effort elicited shock and contempt from two of the country’s most populous (and Democratic) regions—California and New York. Both states have since launched their own redistricting wars to potentially offset Texas’s altered numbers, though the initiative may seriously offset House seats in the coming years in light of Tuesday’s ruling.

This story has been updated.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene seemed to call out Donald Trump Tuesday at a press conference surrounded by victims of child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein.

“I was called a traitor by a man that I fought for five—no actually six years for. And I gave him my loyalty for free. I won my first election without his endorsement, beating eight men in a primary, and I’ve never owed him anything, but I fought for him for the policies and for America First,” Greene said outside of the Capitol. “And he called me a traitor for standing with these women and refusing to take my name off the discharge petition.”

Greene laid out her reasons for supporting the release of the Epstein files, using her strongest words against the president to date.

“Let me tell you what a traitor is. A traitor is a, is an American that serves foreign countries and themselves. A patriot is an American that serves the United States of America and Americans like the women standing behind me,” Greene added.

Greene was one of three Republican signatories to the original discharge petition triggering a vote on the Epstein files. The House is expected to vote Tuesday on a bill to release the government’s files on Epstein, and it is now expected to easily pass with Republican and Democratic support.

Trump has seemingly given up on blocking and delaying the vote, but not without calling the Georgia congresswoman “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Greene” in recent days and mocking her claims of receiving threats. With these latest remarks, it seems Trump and Greene’s relationship could soon be irreparable.

The survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex-trafficking empire are begging Donald Trump to stop turning their suffering into a political issue.

Speaking during a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol Tuesday, a group of the financier’s victims excoriated Trump’s dogged efforts to minimize interest in the case as a “national embarrassment.”

Jena-Lisa Jones, who publicly accused Epstein in 2019 of abusing her in his home years earlier, described the process to obtain transparency into the government’s investigation as “distressing.”

“First, the administration said it would release everything, and applauded President Trump for that,” Jones said. “Then it fought to release nothing.

“Now that the checks and balances of our democracy have worked, and the bill is getting passed to release the files, we are hearing the administration say they intend to investigate various Democrats who were friends with Epstein.

“I beg you, President Trump—please stop making this political. It is not about you, President Trump. You are our president, please start acting like it. Show some class, show some real leadership. Show that you actually care about the people other than yourself,” Jones continued. “I voted for you, but your behavior on this issue has been a national embarrassment.”

The women met on Capitol Hill hours ahead of a House vote that could unlock public access to the Epstein case files.

The Trump administration first bungled the release of the files in July, when the Justice Department issued a memo that contradicted Attorney General Pam Bondi on the alleged existence of Epstein’s so-called “client list.” Since then, Trump has attempted to brush off the scandal, repeatedly referring to it as a Democrat-invented “hoax.”

Pressure on lawmakers dramatically ramped up last week after Representative Adelita Grijalva was sworn in, adding the final signature necessary to force a vote in the House on the files’ release.

The House Oversight Committee also released more than 20,000 documents that they had obtained from Epstein’s estate, revealing that Trump was a frequent topic of conversation between Epstein and his pen pals.

Senior Republicans privately expect dozens of their party members—“possibly 100 or more”—to vote in favor of a bill that would make the federal government’s trove of Epstein files publicly available.

Their split sent Trump into a tailspin, inspiring him to meet with conservative lawmakers one-on-one in an apparent pressure campaign to kill the vote. But by Sunday, Trump appeared to acknowledge that he had lost the battle—at least in the House—writing on Truth Social that Republicans should release the files because they had “nothing to hide.”

But the sudden reversal didn’t win him any favors with Epstein’s survivors.

“To the president of the United States of America, who is not here today, I want to send a clear message to you,” said Haley Robson, who was 16 when she met Epstein. “While I do understand that your position has changed on the Epstein files and I’m grateful that you have pledged to sign this bill, I can’t help to be skeptical of what the agenda is.

“I want to relay this message to you: I am traumatized. I am not stupid,” Robson added, repeating herself. “I am traumatized. I am not stupid.”

When misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate and his brother left Romania in February to return to the United States, a Trump administration official intervened on their behalf with Customs and Border Protection.

ProPublica reports that Paul Ingrassia, a White House lawyer who had previously represented the Tate brothers and once bragged about having a “Nazi streak,” intervened on their behalf when customs officials seized their electronic devices at the airport in Fort Lauderdale. 

Ingrassia, working as the administration’s liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, personally sent a letter to senior DHS officials urging them to return the devices. Ingrassia’s letter, obtained by ProPublica, told the officials that seizing the items was not a good use of the department’s time or resources, and that the request came from the White House. 

The letter reportedly alarmed the officials, who thought they could be interfering in a federal investigation if they returned the devices. Tate is under investigation for criminal and civil charges in Romania and the U.K. relating to sexual assault, tax evasion, and human trafficking. A woman in Florida has also sued Tate for coercing her into sex work. 

Ingrassia’s request disgusted at least one government official because of its “brazenness and the high-handed expectation of complicity.”

“It was so offensive to what we’re all here to do, to uphold the law and protect the American people,” the person told ProPublica. “We don’t want to be seen as handing out favors.”

Ingrassia already has a negative reputation inside and outside of government. Currently working for the General Services Administration, he was forced to withdraw his nomination to the Office of Special Counsel last month after text messages surfaced where he made blatantly racist comments. 

Not only is Ingrassia a racist, it seems he has a misogynist streak as well. It’s no surprise that he has also been accused of sexual harassment. But in the Trump administration, all that matters is loyalty to the president, and both Ingrassia and the Tates have it.