Donald Trump was received by a fawning crowd as he joked with Saudi business and political leaders about how they don’t have ‘transgender’ or ‘liberal’ people in their country on Wednesday.
The president laughed boisterously from the stage at the US-Saudi Investment Forum as he insisted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s people wouldn’t believe the ‘woke’ things that happen in America.
But Trump also bragged that the concept of ‘woke’ is ‘virtually illegal’ in the US after he got back into office for a second term.
He was speaking with an international crowd in Washington, DC after welcoming his Saudi counterpart to the White House on Tuesday and receiving backlash for showering praise on the leader, known by his initials MBS.
At the Kennedy Center, the president showered more praise on MBS, calling him the ‘most respected man in the room’ and claimed that he ‘used your name hundreds of times’ to repeat his praise of the Trump administration’s first year back in office.
While rambling off script about the growing issue of biological men competing in women’s sports during Joe Biden’s single term, Trump looked at the crowd and chucked before recognizing: ‘A lot of the Saudis are sitting here saying, “What the hell is he talking about transitioning?” They don’t do a lot of transitioning.’
He then told the crowd that those who support the issue in the US are ‘crazy.’
While not expressly illegal, any transgender expression, including cross-dressing, is criminalized under moral and Sharia-based laws that are uncodified but followed in Saudi Arabia. The Muslim kingdom is infamous for executing homosexuals.
Along the same train of thought, the Republican president also claimed that the word ‘liberal’ doesn’t exist in the Middle Eastern nation.
‘I don’t know about in your country – I don’t know if you know that word “liberal,” the word “liberal” doesn’t exist,’ he laughed and the crowd joined in.
But he lamented that Democrats want to steal the word ‘progressive.’
‘You can’t use “liberal,” you have to use the word “progressive.” And I don’t like using it. It’s a beautiful word, “progressive.” Progressive – that’s not them. They’re regressive,’ Trump insisted.
Later in his wide-ranging speech, Trump said that he is pushing to get a single approval for Artificial Intelligence legislation because if it has to go through all 50 states it would become too ‘woke.’
He claimed that ’50 states is a disaster because you’ll have one woke state and you’ll have to do all woke.’
‘We don’t have woke anymore in this country. It’s virtually illegal,’ Trump bragged. ‘But you’ll have a couple of wokesters and we don’t want to do that. We want to get the AI done.’
Trump faced backlash for his chummy meeting with MBS on Tuesday – and specifically for defending him against a line of questioning over US intelligence findings that the Crown Prince ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The president claimed the question was embarrassing. He claimed the Saudi dissident and Washington Post journalist was an ‘extremely controversial’ person, and insisted that MBS ‘knew nothing about’ his death.
Khashoggi entered Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on October 2, 2018 to obtain marriage documents – he never left. International investigators concluded that he was strangled and dismembered with a bone saw, and that his body was removed in pieces in suitcases.
The CIA concluded in November 2018 that bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s assassination.
Trump is now disputing those findings.
He dismissed the brutal murder of Khashoggi, who relocated to the US in June 2017, and said on Tuesday alongside MBS that ‘things happen.’
Also on Tuesday, Trump named Saudi Arabia a major non-NATO ally, which is a designation given by the government to countries that hold a strategic working relationship with the US.
The US pledged to sell state-of-the-art F-35 fighter jets to the Saudis, which would make them the first Middle Eastern country other than Israel to obtain the warplanes.
