The Enemies List

The only U.S. president to make Saudi Arabia his first foreign visit…

Trump signed a mega-deal with Saudi Arabia:

Running parallel to Trump’s summit with Saudi King Salman on Saturday is a business forum that will include senior executives from about 45 U.S. companies. Defense contractors Lockheed Martin (LMT) and Raytheon (RTN) are due to attend. Also on the list: Boeing (BA), ExxonMobil (XOM), Dow Chemical (DOW), GE (GEK), Citigroup (C), Morgan Stanley (MS), oil services firms and investment groups.

For example:

Lockheed Martin President Marillyn Hewson praised the deal.  “At Lockheed Martin, we are proud to be part of this historic announcement that will strengthen the relationship between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” Hewson said in a statement.

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Saudi Arabia’s state oil giant Saudi Aramco signed $50 billion of deals with 11 U.S. oil companies, including Haliburton, Jacob’s, Schlumberger, Emerson, Honeywell and McDermott International.

And to disabuse you of the notion that this is about jobs in the USA:

In the deal, Saudi Arabia agrees to buy military equipment from the United States and to hire American companies to build them in Saudi Arabia…

Enough of the enemies; let’s turn to the warmer side of the visit.  The family:

Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner called the president of Lockheed Martin, a major supplier of U.S. military equipment, for a lower price for the radar system as part of the deal…

Spirits were high, with Kushner greeting national security adviser H.R. McMaster with a high-five…

And what is a presidential visit without a little humor thrown in?

On Sunday, Melania Trump will make some cultural visits, while Ivanka Trump plans to hold a roundtable session on “women’s economic empowerment.”

In Saudi Arabia!  Get the joke?

You are known by the company you keep:

During a ceremony, Salman placed the King Abdulaziz al Saud Collar — Saudi Arabia’s highest civilian honor — around Trump’s neck.  The gold medallion previously had been bestowed on Russian President Vladimir Putin, British Prime Minister Theresa May and Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.

They say every president soon has you longing for the return of the last president:

What emerged as a veritable love fest between the two governments was a marked contrast to years of growing estrangement under President Barack Obama.

Obama, who sold about $115 billion in U.S. weapons to Saudi Arabia during his eight years as president, had slowed military cooperation with the kingdom in large part because of what it considered Saudi Arabia’s indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Yemen.

Ahhhh.  The good old days.  “Growing estrangement” would be a good policy in this case.

Can we send a few hundred thousand snowflakes to the kingdom?

American country star Toby Keith performed at a men’s-only concert in Riyadh on Saturday night, coinciding with Trump’s visit.

And I bet they were all white men.  Well, very, very light brown.

And now we know what Trump meant by “drain the swamp”:

The minister went on to borrow one of Trump’s favorite campaign slogans, saying that a new relationship between the United States and the Arab world could “drain the swamps from which extremism and terrorism emanates.”

Does this mean Saudi Arabia and the CIA will be flushed down the toilet?  I doubt it.

Not when there are hundreds of billions of dollars of huuuuge deals at stake.  In this case, silence is golden…literally:

…there was public silence from the U.S. delegation on the issue of human rights in Saudi Arabia…

Conclusion

Tillerson said the two nations have “like-minded” goals in the security and economic spheres.

“Like-minded”?  Yes; criminals, one and all.

Reprinted with permission from Bionic Mosquito.