MESOP NEWS SPECIAL MIDDLE EAST Trump Endorses Saudi Prince Amid Crackdown
7 Nov 2017 – President Trump wrote on Twitter on Monday that he has “great confidence” in Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (Reuters) and that some of the officials and royals arrested in a major purge had been “milking” their country for years. Saudi Arabia’s attorney general said the arrest orders were “merely the start” of an anticorruption drive (BBC).
CFR’s Elliott Abrams writes in the New York Times that the Saudi crown prince is a modernizer who believes absolute monarchy is the path forward.