united states took it upon himself to stand before the cameras and defend the honor of the saudi monarchy. the king firmly denied any knowledge of it. he didn t really know. maybe i don t want to get into his mind, but it sounded to me like these maybe could have been rogue killers. who knows. it s unclear if the rogue killers hiypothesis is somethin donald trump thought up on his own or if it came from saudi king salman or if the president of the united states was trying to set the stage for what very much looks like a cover up of murder from the saudi government. here now deputy national security advisor under barack obama and nbc political contributor ben rhodes. the phrasing is the same, rogue operators. it sounds like the president was floating the cover up trial balloon for the saudis this morning. right from trump s lips to your reporting. and, look, chris, we have to be very clear here. anybody who has worked with the saudis knows that is a top down
going to find out the truth. the folks going in there, the turkish forensic scientists, are going to find very little by way of any evidence, is my guess. i think i want to get your reaction. president trump this morning floated the idea that maybe it was some rogue operators, the king denies it. senator chris murphy, a democrat of connecticut, obviously very critical of president trump, on the foreign relations committee tweeted in response, quote, been hearing the ridiculous rogue killers theory was where the saudis would go with this. absolutely extraordinary. they were able to enlist the president of the united states as their pr agent to float it. do you agree? listen, this whole idea that this was an accident is bogus. accidents don t require planning. we know that jamal went to the consulate. he was told to return at a certain date. when people go into interrogation, they usually don t bring bone saws to dispose of a body. that requires planning. this was all reported by
accountable, raise issues when they come up in meetings. but if this has always been a difficult issue in their relationship, given the military-to-military sales, this president has given license . they knew he wouldn t be vocally outspoken, whether it was rendition or obviously more than that. let me ask a question. if it comes out that the saudis do do what cnn is reporting they re preparing to do, acknowledge that they killed khashoggi, but they say it s an accident and rogue operators, does president trump then accept their explanation and move on? or is he going to be forced by congress to do more? listen, obviously, there was some talk last week of the magnitsky act being implemented and the president having to do that would be an investigation. and say we re going to have sanctions against a country or not. and you ve heard some on the
mbs mbs can convince the business world he was not involved in this. let s talk about this with my experts. you worked for the obama white house. what you know of saudi arabia, is it possible that there were rogue operators, 15 of them, that fly into turkey and integrates and whether it s accident or not, kill this person? is it possible that would happen without the king or the crown prince knowing about it? no. highly unlikely. highly unlikely that the king or the crown prince wouldn t know about the operation, highly unlikely that two planes would have flown in without them knowing about the operation. and remember, this all happened in the embassy. so it s not as if it was happening in another country or a hotel or another location. you know, i think the saudis have not been the best not had the best record on human rights for decades, as you alluded to. that is certainly the case. past presidents or past administrations have done slightly more to hold them
by t definitelies by the saudis, marco rubio put it rather starkly. so the only two things that could have happened is, he s alive and somehow still in there, or he s dead and the saudis are the ones who did it. there is no other explanation for it. because if there was video of him leaving, they would have shown it by now. let s discuss with our experts. so president trump, perhaps, is going to be given a hand where he came out and said it was rogue operators. and then the saudis perhaps actually put that forward, and the rest of the world says, that s really hard to believe. it is. but is it also disturbing to watch. put the comments together this morning about rogue killers with lesley stahl s question of trump about putin killing people the people in skripal. isn t there a missing degree of empathy there? like, we re talking about people that have been murdered. and he doesn t care to express any sympathy for the families? we have that sound. let s play that. this is presid