Soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk joined President Donald Trump in celebrating Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday with a pseudo-state dinner at the White House.
After a day of announcements, a tuxedo-strapped Trump made another during his opening remarks, delivered from behind a gold eagle embossed podium in the East Room: the United States is designating Saudi Arabia as a major non-NATO ally.
“I’m just telling you now for the first time because I wanted to keep a little secret for tonight,” he told the crowd, ranging from Saudi dignitaries to business heavyweights, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Apple CEO Tim Cook, of Salman. “I just heard him say, ‘Oh, that’s nice.’ That’s another point you won today.”
Trump alluded to his star-studded audience, joking that he and Salman had attracted “so many other unbelievable dignitaries, I won’t talk too much about you because we’ll be here all night.”
But that did not prevent the president from mentioning Ronaldo, who captains both Saudi Pro League club Al-Nassr and Portugal’s national team.
“This room is loaded up with the biggest leaders in the world, business, sports,” he said. “My son is a big fan of Ronaldo, wherever Ronaldo is. … I and Baron got to meet him, and I think [Baron] respects his father a little bit more now, just the fact that I introduced you.”
Amid the glitz and the glamor, Trump appeared unrepentant regarding the biggest news to emerge from his informal press conference in the afternoon with Salman: that Trump sided with the crown prince, Saudi Arabia’s prime minister and de facto leader, and his repeated denials that he ordered the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi despite the president’s own CIA concluding otherwise.
“It is indeed my honor to welcome to the White House a great friend and a man of leadership, vision, courage, and strength, His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” Trump said. “We had a big day today, a very big day for both countries. We’ve gotten to know each other well over the years, and he has become a true partner for peace and prosperity for our countries and for the world and for peace in the Middle East, which was a crowning achievement for both of us. And I just want to say that Crown Prince Mohammed, we’re delighted to have you with us at the White House.”
Earlier in the evening, Trump greeted Salman on the White House’s South Lawn for the second time on Tuesday, surrounded by an honor guard, who, unlike the president, was not sheltered from the rain under a white canopy.
The president was accompanied by first lady Melania Trump, who was wearing an emerald green floor-length strapless Elie Saab gown, and the U.S. Marine Corps band for Salman’s arrival.
Trump and Salman spent roughly four hours together on Tuesday before the evening’s soiree after the president met the crown prince on the South Lawn for the first time in the morning, the latter time accompanied not only by a band, but also a military flyover of three F-35 and three F-15 airplanes, in addition to horses.
Before their meeting in the Oval Office and lunch in the Cabinet Room, during which they signed multiple deals on U.S.-Saudi mutual defense, nuclear energy, rare earths, mining, artificial intelligence, health, tourism, and investments, Trump provided Salman with a tour of his so-called Presidential Walk of Fame, a collection of presidential portraits hung on the West Colonnade near the now-paved Rose Garden.
Trump then invited members of the press into the Oval Office for part of their meeting, making remarks before taking questions for more than 40 minutes.
During those opening remarks, Trump praised Salman’s human rights record despite his own CIA concluding that the crown prince ordered the assassination of Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018, as well as Saudi Arabia’s disputed role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“We have [an] extremely respected man in the Oval Office today, and a friend of mine for a long time,” Trump said. “A very good friend of mine. I’m very proud of the job he’s done. What he’s done is incredible in terms of human rights and everything else.”
But Trump became increasingly antagonistic in response to reporter questions about Salman’s record and his own, as his family explores business opportunities in the Middle East and with Middle East partners.
“I have nothing to do with the family business,” Trump told the reporter, after calling ABC News “fake news.” “They do business all over. They’ve done very little with Saudi Arabia. Actually, I’m sure they could do a lot, and anything they’ve done has been very good.”
He added of Khashoggi, a United States resident: “You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about, whether you like him or didn’t like him; things happen, but he knew nothing about it. And we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”
But it was when the same reporter asked him why he was not proactively releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files after Congress overwhelmingly supported a bill doing that on Tuesday that Trump exploded.
TRUMP DEFENDS SAUDI CROWN PRINCE WHILE DOWNPLAYING KHASHOGGI MURDER: ‘THINGS HAPPEN’
“I’ll tell you something, I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and it’s so wrong,” he said. “And we have a great commissioner, chairman [Federal Communications Commission head Brendan Carr] who should look at that, because I think when you come in and when you’re 97% negative to Trump, and then Trump wins the election in a landslide, that means obviously your news is not credible, and you’re not credible as a reporter.”
Trump and Salman will be reunited on Wednesday at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum, following a preview in which the crown prince announced plans to invest $1 trillion in the U.S. This announcement comes after the pair initially stated during the president’s trip to Saudi Arabia in May that the crown prince would invest $600 billion in the United States.