Trump defends Saudi crown price, who US intelligence found ordered killing of Washington Post columnist

President Donald Trump on Tuesday welcomed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the White House, calling him “a great ally” and defending him against questions about American intelligence reports that found he ordered the killing of a Washington Post columnist.

It was the ruler’s first visit to the U.S. since the Biden administration found in 2021 that the Saudi leader had ordered the 2018 assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi while he was inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Asked by a reporter about Khashoggi’s murder during a press conference in the Oval Office, Trump defended the crown prince — who minutes earlier had pledged to increase his past commitment of $600 billion in investments in the U.S. to $1 trillion.

“He's done a phenomenal job,” Trump said of Mohammed, adding: “Things happen, but he knew nothing about it.”

And, referencing Khashoggi, the president also seemed to offer an explanation for his murder: “a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman,” he said.

Trump chastised the reporter who asked about the intelligence reports, saying : “you don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that” and calling her outlet, ABC News, “fake news.”

Moments later, he went further and suggested that ABC should lose its broadcasting license over the reporter’s question.

It was not the first time Trump made excuses for Khashoggi’s murder, something he also did in 2018. And it followed the president praising Mohammed for his record on “human rights” and declaring that he and the Saudi crown prince have “always been on the same side of every issue.”

Saudi Arabia — over which the crown prince has authoritarian control — has rejected the U.S. intelligence assessments and says it has punished the people responsible for Khashoggi’s death.

Mohammed said Tuesday that “it’s really painful to hear anyone that losing his life for no real purpose or nothing illegal — it’s been painful for us in Saudi Arabia.”

He called it “a huge mistake” and said “we are doing our best that this doesn’t happen again.”

The two-day visit began with an extravagant welcome ceremony on the South Lawn marked by a military flyover and will continue with a black tie dinner Tuesday evening and an investor conference on Wednesday at the Kennedy Center. It carried all the trappings of a state visit but the official designation, which can’t be made because Mohammed is not his country’s official ruler.

He and Trump are also set to deepen ties between their countries with deals on defense cooperation — including the sale of F-35s to Saudi Arabia — and AI technology. That’s happening despite Mohammed’s reluctance to normalize ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords, a top foreign policy goal of Trump’s.

Asked about normalization, Mohammed said he was hopeful it could happen soon once he’s convinced that there is “a clear path to a two-state solution” in Israel.

Felicia Schwartz contributed to this report.