• In the days following Saudi Arabia’s admission that journalist Jamal Khashoggi died inside its consulate building in Istanbul, Turkey, US President Donald Trump has agreed there are holes in the Kingdom’s latest explanation.
• Riyadh confirmed Khashoggi’s death on Saturday, saying he died during a physical altercation with Saudi agents inside the consulate.
• But after more than two weeks of stonewalling, that explanation has been widely panned and the concession failed to stem a massive sell off in Saudi stocks last week.
• That has not stopped Trump from launching a perplexing defence of the House of Saud by vastly inflating the number of US jobs at stake, should the US abandon an arms deal with Saudi Arabia.
• Trump has claimed that the Saudi arms deals will be the engine behind a million US jobs, an increase of 955,000 jobs in a handful of days.

In the days following Saudi Arabia’s admission that journalist Jamal Khashoggi died inside its consulate building in Istanbul, Turkey, US President Donald Trump has agreed there are holes in the Kingdom’s latest explanation.

Riyadh confirmed Khashoggi’s death on Saturday, saying he died during a physical altercation with Saudi agents inside the consulate.

But after more than two weeks of stonewalling, that explanation has been widely panned and the concession failed to stem a massive sell off in Saudi stocks last week. Also, that has not stopped Trump from launching a perplexing defence of the Saudis by vastly inflating the number of US jobs at stake if the US abandons an arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

On March 20, the day after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrived in Washington for his second sit down with Trump, the president claimed the Saudi arms deals helped create 40,000 new US jobs.

That figure began to go nova on October 13, when Trump declared from the White House, “I worked hard to get the order for the military, $US110 billion,” Trump said. “I believe it’s (the) largest order ever made. It’s 450,000 jobs,” Trump claimed.

That number jumped to 500,000 in an interview Trump gave to Fox Business on October 17. And then hardly 48 hours later, after ABC News claimed the Turkish government let Secretary of State Mike Pompeo listen to audio allegedly detailing when and how Khashoggi was killed, the same deals started generating 600,000 jobs.

The following evening, October 17, the president said Saudi arms sales were behind “over a million jobs.” The details of the $US110 billion arms package – initiated under the Obama administration and agreed upon in May 2017 – have also been “sketchy,” according to the Associated Press.

The Pentagon has said Saudi Arabia signed “letters of offer and acceptance” for only $US14.5 billion in military sales.

The implication is that the vast majority of the package remains in the air, a significant slice of money the administration is doing its best not to place at risk.

Trump has so far proven unwilling to strongly condemn the events surrounding Khashoggi’s disappearance and death that he has turned a deaf ear to his own intelligence officials, prompting The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin to say his administration has become “an accessory after the fact, an enabler of nearly unimaginable evil.”

For now, the US, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey are continuing their investigations into Khashoggi’s death before Trump or the US Senate decide on any retaliatory measures against the Kingdom.

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