uae. this is an incredibly busy day for the u.s. president on what is his first tour of the middle eastern gulf since he became u.s. president. the brutal murder of jamal khashoggi in 2018 has cast a pall. president biden hoping this trip will help move the two countries forward while still making clear he holds mohammed bin salman responsible for that killing. here s what he said after meeting with the crown prince on friday. i made my view crystal clear. i said very straightforwardly, for an american president to be silent on an issue of human rights is inconsistent with who we and who i am. some will find it difficult to square the president s rhetoric with him greeting the crown prince with a fist bump. it was mr. biden who labeled saudi arabia a pariah just a few years ago. the president says he doesn t regret the remark, but both men close to ignore reporters questions as their meeting started on friday. jamal khashoggi, will you apologize to his family, sir? t
correspondent for the wall street journal. if you were assessing to date, and this trip isn t over for the u.s. president, but if were you assessing to date how it has gone, how would you rate it? well, i mean, i think the president dcame in last night, had this meeting with the crown prince, really scrutinized with how they were going to engage with each other, and i think it went off without anything really bad, anything really going wrong. so he, the president had to come and have these conversations. they spent two or three hours ago. but it s the optics. yeah, it was a fist bump, it wasn t a warm handshake. there were some smiles in this meeting. you know, i think it probably went about as well as the white house could have hoped for. the president, you know, even a few weeks ago was saying this meeting wasn t going to happen. he was going to make the trip but not meet with the crown prince and had to walk that back. it s never easy to do.