the trip to saudi arabia hasn t been formally announced. it s already generating criticism from democrats, human rights advocates, environmentalists, too. w why are we begging for more oil when that is not good for the climate. and they must pay the price for the role in the khashoggi murder. is the president going to get grief from the left here? he is going to have to eat it. that s the real outcome here that, you know, he perhaps got ahead, lent out too far over his skis over what he said he was going to do to saudi arabia and the geopolitics of today dictate he cannot be as tough as he wanted to be. i was speaking with saudi diplomats last year after the glasgow climate summey and they said, look, i have to say the relationship with the united states was in the doldrums with saudi. i never heard saudi diplomats
this trip is a mistake, and particularly when it comes to the meeting with the saudi crown prince that he really should reconsider. the white house says this trip is not just about calming down energy markets, despite the fact that gas prices are at record highs here in the u.s. why are they downplaying that? why do they continue to emphasize the security in the region argument? yeah, you know, it is a really, really good question. the white house has seemed pretty determined to downplay sort of the gas, the energy, the oil prices aspect of this future trip. and saudi arabia, of course, is one of the biggest oil producers in the country. the u.s. would certainly like to see the country produce a whole lot more oil. i think we are seeing that the human rights issues that we just discussed, including the khashoggi murder, it really looms large for this white house. it has been a challenge for this white house to sort of answer the question of how the president has evolved from a few
rights, given the concern that he s expressed consistently since the khashoggi murder. what president is trying to do is they ve praised recently the saudis for brokering a truce in yemen and the president said it s his responsibility to ensure to do what he can to bring about peace. the other issue he didn t really address as directly in this context is that they ve been trying to expand global oil supplies. opec recently announced a slight increase in production, and so the president clearly is balancing different priorities, human rights on the one hand, war and peace in the middle east, and gas prices on the other. i think that was reflected in his answer. in general, of course, he was talking about this positive jobs report, which showed continued strong job growth, 390,000 jobs, no sign of recession, moderating wage growth, expanded labor force participation which indicates some cooling of
there, mohammad bin salomon being held for the murder and dismemberment of jamaal khashoggi. the energy situation, oil prices are above $100 a barrel. secondly, diplomatic efforts to end the war in yemen. and then thirdly probably most of all iran. we re at a point now where the iran nuclear talks are not working. every day iran is accumulating more of the stuff of nuclear weapons, the international atomic energy agency is monitoring it, we are facing, we, the united states, israel, saudi arabia, the possibility of iran either getting close to nuclear weapons, we re basically there, but getting very close. we need to collaborate with saudi arabia. so essentially what the administration is weighing is taking saudi arabia essentially no longer having a relationship defined by human rights, over yemen and the khashoggi murder, and instead having a broader
facto ruler of saudi and was the ruler. you can see a lot of ties there. jared was instrumental in asking the white house to tone down the response to the khashoggi murder, if you will, and convincing them to try to take a softer approach which donald trump did and, of course, there was not a lot done to try to arrest or slow down the war in gem men and, of course, you also saw, nicole, in trump s very first state visit to riyadh in may of 2020, $110 billion in deals struck. that was over a year s long period, but to sell defense equipment to the saudis from american manufacturers, among many other deals that were struck during the trump administration to try to facilitate this warm rapport with the saudis. kate kelly, thank you for spending time with us. thank you. we have breaking news to