Bernie Sanders slams Trump as White House prepares to welcome Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince MBS

WASHINGTON, DC: Senator Bernie Sanders took a jab at President Donald Trump as the POTUS is planning to welcome Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House on Tuesday, November 18.

The president has worked to form a close relationship with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince, hoping he will decide to establish diplomatic ties with Israel, which would be a major advancement of Trump's signature Abraham Accords.

Bernie Sanders says Trump 'prefers the Saudi model'

Bernie Sanders took to X on Monday late night and wrote, "Trump is welcoming MBS, the Saudi crown prince, to the White House. This is the dictator who had a U.S. columnist murdered for criticizing the Saudi royal family."

"Sadly, we have a president who prefers the Saudi model — an autocracy run by a trillionaire family — to democracy," he added.

Trump said on November 14, as he flew to Florida for the weekend, "We’re more than meeting. We’re honoring Saudi Arabia, the Crown Prince." 

Interestingly, the visit by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince cannot be classified as an official state visit as Prince bin Salman is not Saudi Arabia’s head of state. The position is held by his 89-year-old father, King Salman.

However, the crown prince has assumed almost all day-to-day responsibility for ruling the kingdom, and attends summits, other diplomatic engagements as Saudi Arabia's leader.

On the eve of the Crown Prince's first visit to the White House in more than seven years, the POTUS announced that the US would be selling F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia. It is a controversial step that could alter the military balance in the Middle East. 

Meanwhile, Trump said last week, "The Abraham Accords will be a part we’re going to be discussing. I hope that Saudi Arabia will be going into the Abraham Accords fairly shortly."

The prince last visited Washington in 2018, months before the death of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Turkey. 

Interestingly, a CIA assessment released afterward revealed that the Prince had likely ordered the killing, though he has long denied any involvement.

Trump-MBS meeting will focus on defense and business

Elizabeth Dent, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former director for the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula in the office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon stated, "A lot of the financial and economic and artificial intelligence deals that they announced that were very ambiguous six months ago, I think we might start to see some teeth from them this time around and hopefully get a little bit more clarity on what those deals actually are."

Trump announced a $142 billion arms package with the Saudis during the May visit, which as per a White House fact sheet, was the "largest defense cooperation agreement" Washington has ever done. 

The agreement covers deals with several US defense companies in areas including air and missile defense, air force and space advancement, maritime security and communications, the fact sheet revealed.

Meanwhile, he kingdom announced a $600 billion investment in the US spanning multiple sectors, including energy security, defense, technology, global infrastructure and critical minerals.