More so than during the early crises of his presidency, Trump appears to comprehend the complexity of it all, which may be what has rendered his administration’s response so limp. Earlier this month, Trump harangued on Twitter that M.B.S. was innocent until proven guilty, a similar refrain he had used to protect Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination. In the end, he seems to be hoping that the whole thing will blow over.

This defensiveness largely falls flat among his fellow lawmakers. “Across the Hill, there is just absolute disgust at what seems to have taken place, and bewilderment over the way the administration has reacted. And I think that runs the gamut from people whose baseline position would be deeply skeptical of the U.S.-Saudi relationship to people who have been traditionally strong supporters of the U.S.-Saudi relationship,” the congressional staffer told me. “By and large, the reaction on the Hill is outrage, and an insistence that we get ourselves a full, clear accounting and a deep skepticism that the Saudis are investigating this on their own—despite Secretary Pompeo’s assurances—are really going to provide clarity.”

Benaim distilled the dissonance. “Other administrations would certainly have struggled with how to balance America’s values and interests, given the way a case like this impacts both,” he told me. “But Donald Trump doesn’t seem to have that struggle.” Instead, Trump says the quiet part out loud. “In a funny way, what you see is Donald Trump basically adopting the left-wing critique of the U.S.-Saudi relationship—which reduces a very complex situation with a lot of different variables—to basically, ‘They can get away with murder, because they are going to buy our weapons.’ He is actually taking the leftist critique of the relationship—and embracing it.”

As the Khashoggi drama has unfolded, the close relationship between M.B.S. and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, has come under renewed scrutiny. (The New York Times reported this week that Kushner was advocating on M.B.S.’s behalf within the White House.) Their relationship dates back to the early days of Trump’s presidency, when Rex Tillerson was still running the State Department. As Dexter Filkins has noted in The New Yorker, Kushner identified M.B.S. as a “change agent” in the region, and developed a relationship that effectively sidelined Tillerson. According to one former administration official, Kushner’s communications with M.B.S. over the encrypted messaging service WhatsApp were a point of contention within the administration, one that was partly assuaged when Kushner began providing screenshots of his conversations with the National Security Council. But, this person added, “It was still an after-the-fact thing.”

In recent days, a number of sources I have spoken with have raised the possibility that M.B.S.’s ties to Kushner may have instilled in the crown prince a belief that America would, indeed, turn a blind eye to the murder of Khashoggi. “I think there is a lot to be said [about how] M.B.S. thought he could get away with it because Jared Kushner was in his pocket, and so was the president for that matter,” the former State Department official who worked in the Middle East said. And after all, the Trump administration has largely ignored the war in Yemen; the strange sojourn of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to Saudi Arabia; the ill-fated boycott of Qatar; and M.B.S.’s spats with Canada and Germany. “The Trump administration made it clear that he had a blank check, and so what do you do when you have a blank check? You write in the craziest sum imaginable and take it to the bank, and that is what he did,” Benaim told me. “Only it seems that the blank check has bounced—at least with Congress, if not with the president.” (The White House did not respond to a request from comment.)

Whether Trump will yield to the pressure from Capitol Hill and the international community, or side with his son-in-law and his buddy, remains an open question. But if evidence indeed shows that M.B.S. was behind the death of Khashoggi, the crown prince will join the ranks of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, all of whom have engaged in extraterritorial murders to send a clear message to dissidents. Meanwhile, any remaining hope that M.B.S. is the idealist he’s claimed to be has rapidly dissipated. “I think there was legitimate hope when M.B.S. came on the scene that he was going to be a reformer, and he was going to change course,” the congressional aide told me. “And despite initial appearances and words to that effect, it is pretty clear that is not the case.”