President Biden, who vowed to 'shoot straight' with the public, has sought to avoid the obvious truths about his visit to Saudi Arabia.
President Biden has boasted frequently about his own penchant for truth-telling, reminding the public about his promise to “give it to you straight.”
She noted that administration officials insisted Biden was going to Saudi Arabia to attend regional meetings. But the Saudis said they were looking forward to their bilateral, or one-one-one, meetings with Biden.“These optics really matter, Flacks said, “in terms of the cards that the U.S. is playing.”
“He said something he shouldn’t have said when he was running and it’s making things very uncomfortable for him now,” said Ian Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group, a global risk assessment firm in New York. “The Saudis have problems and Khashoggi is just one of them. But they’re an important ally and have actually made a lot of positive progress under MBS.”
“I wish they would be a little more plainspoken around it,” Bremmer said. “This all feels defensive and unnecessary. And at a time when the U.S. is struggling with such deeply eroded political institutions and the legitimacy of our own system and questions of values, we just need to be less in the practice of lecturing other countries around the world that we need cooperation from.
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