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Imagine if Russia — instead of doing what it has been accused of doing last year — had funded and facilitated an attack on US soil that killed thousands of Americans. Then imagine that US policymakers, rather than punish the Kremlin by cutting diplomatic ties, imposing sanctions, seeking legal recourse, or all of the above, covered up its involvement in the attack and continued to treat it as a loyal ally. Imagine if the president who presided over that attack had decades of intimate personal and financial ties to members of the Russian elite and subsequently spirited dozens of Russian nationals out of the country before law enforcement could interrogate them. Imagine if, despite full knowledge of the Kremlin’s once and ongoing anti-American activities, successive presidents heaped praise on Russia’s authoritarian government, sold it weapons, and made regular pilgrimages to wine and dine with its leaders. Imagine if an army of Russian lobbyists operated on Capitol Hill to ensure Washington’s pro-Kremlin line, eventually pressuring American leadership into actively assisting it in carrying out one of this decade’s worst war crimes. Imagine if, at the end of all this, Donald Trump ran for president on an explicitly anti-Russia line, only to shamelessly reverse himself once elected, embrace the Russian leadership, and pursue policies that benefited them even more enthusiastically than his predecessors had. It’s a pretty scary thought. Thankfully, in the real world, none of this applies to Russia. It does, however, perfectly describe Saudi Arabia.

Decades of Access Ultimately, the Saudi government has been allowed to get away with these things because of its vast oil reserves. But for decades, the Saudis have also consciously attempted to curry favor with US officials, Democrat and Republican. From their sudden decision in 1992 to give millions to an Arkansas academic institute just a month before then–Arkansas governor Bill Clinton’s election victory, to their 1980s donations to initiatives led by Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush, to their 1970s purchase of a Georgia bank that swiftly resulted in Jimmy Carter getting a personal business loan restructured, Saudi cash has been a mainstay of American politics for generations. Ordinarily, this level of long-term influence-courting from another country might inspire suspicion or scrutiny, particularly when the country in question has been facilitating anti-American interests for just as long. But the Saudis’ image has long been protected by a pliant media, reinforcing its global PR efforts. Bandar regularly received flattering profiles, like this one, from major newspapers, painting him as “the Arab Gatsby.” Columnists like the Washington Post’s David Ignatius have spent years writing puff pieces that whitewashed the Saudi government’s appalling human rights record. Some of them have even ended up working for the Saudi government. Most recently, the New York Times faced much justified criticism for this column, which paints the country’s current crown prince — in the midst of war crimes in Yemen and a political purge at home — as a far-sighted reformer. The author? Tom Friedman, who is apparently more outraged at “9/11 scale events” than he is at the actual 9/11. As historian Abdullah Al-Arian‏ recently documented, Friedman’s love letter is just the latest in a seventy-year-long series of Times articles that declare successive Saudi rulers “reformers” and “modernizers.” And while the Saudis regularly pay for favorable coverage, there’s no evidence they have ever sent the Gray Lady a single dime for these fawning pieces.