What Did I Say?

CNN's Van Jones: “Do you trust the Saudis to investigate themselves?”

Jared Kushner: “We’re getting facts in from multiple places. Once those facts come in, the Secretary of State will work with our national security team to help us determine what we want to believe” #CITIZENCNN pic.twitter.com/JW8MDkHl3J

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) October 22, 2018

My last post was titled: "What Are You Willing to Believe?" because it seems quite obvious to me that one can't literally believe that KSA did not tacitly authorize the slaying of Khashoggi based on the surface data, and that any option that does not place the blame at the feet of the people who actually run shit in KSA is an exercise in what one chooses to look at--and away from.

I had not anticipated that White House Ken doll Jared Kushner would state it quite so baldly as I was implying (or in so nearly the same phrase), and in the face of a subtle Van Jones softball question that a legitimately schooled pol would have easily bunted. Even President Trump is willing to express skepticism, after a sort, regarding what has taken place, at this point:

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Mr. Trump said: "They had a very bad original concept, it was carried out poorly and the cover up was the worst in the history of cover-ups."

"Where it should have stopped is at the deal standpoint, when they thought about it," he continued. "Because whoever thought of that idea, I think is in big trouble. And they should be in big trouble."

He's not morally expressing an opinion that doing away with a meddlesome journo is bad, however--it's just that it wasn't planned at all well, and they are so very caught. This would get one very fired if running a hit squad was a task on Celebrity Dictator Apprentice.  The peons who carried out the failure of a coverup should be punished, and the brain geniuses who couldn't wait until the extradition or whatever. But the idea that a journalist should not be killed for being even kind of a problem is  not his moral judgement to consider.