Attention to the Unseen

Politico reports: President Donald Trump on Monday suggested that “rogue killers” may be responsible for the disappearance of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, while also dispatching Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to meet with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman. “We are going to leave nothing uncovered,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House. “With that being said, the king firmly denied any knowledge of it. … I don’t want to get into his mind, but it sounded…

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McClatchy reports: Republicans who support President Donald Trump have grown fearful that the White House is unprepared for the onslaught that may await them in January. If a “blue wave” succeeds in giving the Democrats control at least of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections in November, Democrats will have the power to subpoena documents and force administration officials to testify about a slew of scandals, including aides using private email for government business, agencies spending taxpayer money…

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The Avi Selk writes: Previously spotted in D.C. gift shops and jigsaw puzzle boxes, a fantasy print of President Trump entertaining Abraham Lincoln while every other Republican president in history watches now hangs outside the Oval Office. The portrait was shown hanging in Trump’s personal dining room during his “60 Minutes” interview Sunday, and the freeze frame instantly went viral, baffling people with questions such as: How did the painting get to the White House? Why does Trump look nearly…

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Nicholas Kristof writes: [I]ncreasingly it seems that the crown prince, better known as M.B.S., orchestrated the torture, assassination and dismemberment of an American-based journalist using diplomatic premises in a NATO country. That is monstrous, and it’s compounded by the tepid response from Washington. President Trump is already rejecting the idea of responding to such a murder by cutting off weapons sales. Trump sounds as if he believes that the consequence of such an assassination should be a hiccup and then…

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The Washington Post reports: When President Trump chose Riyadh to make his debut on the world stage last year, he was placing a bet on Saudi Arabia, which serenaded him with military bands, dazzled him with a flyover of fighter jets and regaled him with a traditional sword dance. The mastermind behind that wager — the White House adviser who convinced Trump to visit Saudi Arabia for his maiden foreign trip and who choreographed a veritable lovefest between the new…

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The Washington Post reports: When he hosted last October’s glittering global investment conference in Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had the world at his fingertips. Thousands of investors, corporate chieftains and government leaders flocked to the kingdom to hear the charismatic young heir to the Saudi throne outline his plans for modernization of the reclusive kingdom, and to be invited along for the ride and the profits. “Only dreamers are welcome to join,” Mohammed told his audience. As…

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James Miller writes: Just a few weeks ago the world was preparing for a massive humanitarian and geopolitical disaster in Syria. The Syrian military and its Russian and Iranian allies were preparing to retake Idlib province, the last stronghold of the rebels who have been fighting the President Bashar Assad’s rule for the last seven years. Experts predicted that such an attack would have dire consequences. Syria’s rebels and civilians have both been displaced from every other corner of the…

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Sandy Tolan writes: Mohammed Nimnim carries the water for his family. On a scorching late morning last summer, the 15-year-old pushed an old wheelchair piled high with empty plastic jugs through Gaza’s Shati (Beach) refugee camp. He rattled past modest groceries, makeshift tire shops, and graffiti praising Gaza’s martyrs, down broken concrete lanes, and toward the local mosque, where sputtering taps provide the family’s only source of drinking water. No luck. Although it was 94 degrees and oppressively humid, the…

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Robert Kagan writes: Sometimes a particular event, the fate of a particular individual, becomes a symbol of a global, historical trend. The reported murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Post contributor, in a consulate in Istanbul is one of those moments. It symbolizes the departure of the United States as a restraining force against evil actors in the world. Saudi Arabia is a small nation that cannot defend itself without the support of the United States, and therefore…

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