We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. Call me Ishmael. It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.

All fairly solid literary openings, but even they don't have quite the impact of the official White House statement on Saudi Arabia and the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi which Donald Trump released yesterday. It begins:

"America First!

"The world is a very dangerous place!"

That line-break is very important, as is the italicisation and capping-up of "America First!". It makes the phrase feel less like a credo for nationalism and more like some folksy cartoon park ranger's cheery sign-off. It looks like it should be trademarked and stamped on a plastic lunchbox.

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It continues by dumping on Iran for a bit ("Iran states openly, and with great force, 'Death to America!' and 'Death to Israel!' Iran is considered 'the world’s leading sponsor of terror,'” it says, omitting the Wiki-standard [citation needed]) before moving onto the much, much more important subject of cash. Saudi Arabia, Trump claims, has agreed to spend $450 billion on American arms, "a record amount of money". If you look up the 2019 Guinness Book of Records entry for Biggest Amount Of Money, you'll see this deal there. It's the most there's ever been. If America cancels the contracts over something as silly as the brutal murder of a critical journalist, Trump warns, then Russia and China will swoop in for them. Anyway, that's when we get to the real nitty gritty.

"Representatives of Saudi Arabia say that Jamal Khashoggi was an 'enemy of the state' and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but my decision is in no way based on that," Trump writes, sounding like the indiscrete great-aunt who accidentally gives Poirot a crucial expository clue while they chat over bridge. "King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman vigorously deny any knowledge of the planning or execution of the murder of Mr. Khashoggi."

The security services are on it, Trump says, admitting that "it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event – maybe he did and maybe he didn’t! That being said, we may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi."

We may never know, so let's just stop poking that hornet's nest, shall we? To sum up: they didn't definitely do it, and anyway even if they did, they basically drove JCBs full of petro-dollars up to the White House gates and I'm not made of stone, guys. America first, arms cash a photo-finish second, vague threats of terrorism in a distant third, journalists murdered by death squads and dismembered with bone saws while they're still alive DNF.

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