No Republican smear could be complete these days without a contribution from Donald Trump Jr, and he’s been spot on — sharing a tweet that accused Khashoggi of associating with bin Laden. Which is true to the extent that Khashoggi interviewed bin Laden several times in his role as a Mujahideen leader fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. At the same time the United States was supplying bin Laden with weapons and training. Several of Khashoggi’s friends have also notes that he encouraged the future terrorist to give up violence following the war.
Like many other people in the region, Khashoggi really did seem to have shown interest in the Muslim Brotherhood when it was newly formed, and he may have formally joined the organization for a short while. But he lost interest when it became clear that rather than fighting for democratic ideals, the Brotherhood only wanted to replace the existing tyranny with one of their own.
But Khashoggi as supporter of secular, democratic governments is not the image that Republicans are after. As when Trump smeared the family of a fallen American soldier, right wing politicians and media are falling in line behind a story that Khashoggi was a terrorist-supporter. The less than subtle undertone to that story: He deserved what he got.
The Khashoggi smear has another element. From the start, right-wing sources have complained that the Khashoggi story was getting “too much attention.” That’s part of why Trump keeps repeating that the journalist was “not a US citizen” and Republicans keep bringing up other stories that “didn’t get as much coverage.”
The emerging talking point on this is that coverage of Khashoggi is itself a conspiracy — a media conspiracy to embarrass Trump by attacking our unassailable bond to the Saudi royal family trying to turn a terrorist-sympathizer into a martyr and giving his death wall to wall coverage.
Back at his Montana rally, Trump praised Republican Greg Gianforte for assaulting a reporter, a crime to which Gianforte pleaded guilty, and mimicked doing a body slam against a reporter. His followers laughed and cheered. And to show they got it, one of them looked at CNN reporter Jim Acosta, a frequent target of Trump’s ire, ran a thumb across his throat. And laughed. The message that it’s perfectly fine, and even good, to hurt reporters came across loud and clear.
Republicans have not called for other journalists to be body slammed. Or dismembered. Yet.
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