By Matt AgoristWhile speaking with supporters at a campaign event in Bluffton, South Carolina in 2016, then-Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said if he is elected “you will find out who really knocked down the World Trade Center.”
“It wasn’t the Iraqis,” Trump said.
“You may find it’s the Saudis.”
Trump was referencing the fact 15 out of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. He also, somehow, had knowledge of what was in the 28 pages that would be declassified a few months later in July.
Trump went on to say the government has “papers” “that are very secret” which may implicate the Saudis, perhaps referencing the report discussed above.
“You will find out,” Trump said.
Before he was elected, Americans did find out that the 28-pages proved the United States government knew the Saudi Arabian government had a hand in and supported the terrorists who carried out the attacks on 9/11 — and covered it up.
Before the campaign event in South Carolina, Trump accused Saudi Arabia of being behind the 9/11 attacks. “Who blew up the World Trade Center?” Trump asked his pals at Fox and Friends on the morning of February 17, 2016. “It wasn’t the Iraqis, it was Saudi — take a look at Saudi Arabia, open the documents.”
Speaking to the New York Times last year, as the Intercept notes, Trump claimed that, without U.S. support and protection, “Saudi Arabia wouldn’t exist for very long.” The real problem, he continued, was that the Saudis are “a money machine … and yet they don’t reimburse us the way we should be reimbursed.” Asked if he would be willing to “stop buying oil from the Saudis” if they refused to pull their weight, Trump responded: “Oh yeah, sure. I would do that.”
Fast forward to post-election win Trump and his view on Saudi Arabia has changed — drastically.
After going from implicating them in the worst terror attack ever to take place on US soil, Donald Trump is now best buds with the terrorist regime in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is responsible for the death of 2,369 Americans — yet Trump is dining with them this very weekend.
Trump’s arrival in Saudi Arabia on Saturday was quite the spectacle, with the Saudi king throwing the president’s family arrival at the Royal Diwan a “welcome fit for a king.”
According to a statement just issued by the White House, Trump “has just completed largest single arms deal in US history, negotiating a package totaling more than $109.7 billion” which will boost Saudi Arabia’s defense capabilities, bolstering equipment and services in the face of extreme terrorist groups and Iran. The White House added that the deal will create defense jobs while also reaffirming America’s commitment to Saudi Arabia.
“This package demonstrates, in the clearest terms possible, the United States’ commitment to our partnership with Saudi Arabia and our Gulf partners, while also expanding opportunities for American companies in the region,” the statement reads, according to Reuters.
His loyalty to the Saudi regime first became evident during his travel ban earlier this year.
Out of the 43 people who carried out terrorist attacks on US soil, only three of them came from the seven countries on Trump’s list — the other 40 terrorists came from countries who were not banned.
This handful of attacks on American soil hardly justifies restricting the travel from these countries once we look at the countries Trump did not ban — who are responsible for 93% of all terrorism in the United States causing death on a massive scale — including Saudi Arabia.
The majority of the 40 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, while the others were from Pakistan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Guinea.
As the Free Thought Project previously reported, during his campaign, Trump registered eight companies tied to hotel interests in Saudi Arabia alone. And, in 2001, the alleged Saudi-hating Trump sold an entire floor of Trump Tower to the Saudis for $4.5 million.
When taking a closer look at Trump’s ties to Saudi Arabia, the rhetoric he used during the campaign, decrying the Saudis for their terrorist ways, was little more than lip service.
Indeed, according to Mehdi Hasan, writing for the Intercept, it was a load of bull.
Just like Obama, Trump is curtseying to the terrorist Saudi Arabian regime and selling them weapons which are in turn used to kill innocent women and children. Just like Obama, Trump is continuing war, and in fact, doubling down. In march, Trump dropped more bombs in Yemen than Obama did in all of 2016.On Sunday, the fawning Saudis will offer a platform to the world’s most famous Islamophobe, to give a speech on Islam in “the birthplace” of Islam. And Trump will likely take the opportunity to decry “radical Islamic terrorism” while visiting a country that has perhaps done more than any other to incite, fund, and fuel it.
Hypocrisy unites them both. So too does their fear and loathing of the Iranians — the Saudis are busying dropping bombs and backing militants to push back Iranian influence in Yemen and Syria. The Trump administration, filled with Iran hawks, is on the verge of inking a series of arms deals with Riyadh worth more than $100 billion.
To be clear: Trump’s U-turn on Saudi Arabia has little to do with being moderated by the realities of high office or swayed by the Beltway’s foreign policy elites. Despite his bombastic campaign rhetoric, he never planned to go after the Saudis in office — even after publicly accusing them of murdering 3,000 Americans. Early on in the campaign, in 2015, a senior Arab diplomat told me, on condition of anonymity, that Trump had informed most of the Gulf governments, in private, that his anti-Muslim and anti-Arab rhetoric was “all for the campaign” and that it would be business as usual once he was elected (or, for that matter, defeated).
Trump is on track to become far more deadly than Obama and he’s less than half a year into his presidency.
While the media uses fairy tales of Russian election hacking to distract, Trump is proving to be just like all of his predecessors — fooling people into thinking he’s ‘MAGA’ — while bowing down to the military industrial complex.
Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Facebook. This article first appeared here at The Free Thought Project.
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