After Pensacola shooting, new concerns raised about Trump's support for Saudis

WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group) — A fatal mass shooting by a Saudi Arabian national at a Florida naval base has sparked fresh scrutiny of President Donald Trump’s unwavering support for the Saudi royal family, but experts doubt the possible terrorist attack will have much impact on the Trump administration’s relationship with the kingdom.

“King Salman of Saudi Arabia, he just called to express his sincere condolences and give his sympathies to the families and friends of the warriors who were killed and wounded in the attack that took place just recently, just this morning, in Pensacola, Florida,” Trump told reporters at a White House event Friday.

Mohammed Alshamrani, a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the Saudi air force, had been training in the U.S. for two years before opening fire in a classroom building at Naval Air station Pensacola Friday morning, and he reportedly took advantage of a provision that allows non-immigrants to buy a gun if they have a hunting license. In public statements, the Saudi government has stressed he did not represent the Saudi people and it is prepared to cooperate with the investigation.

While President Trump readily accepted Salman’s condolences, several Democrats called for a more confrontational approach to Saudi Arabia in the wake of the shooting. A spokesman for former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, told Reuters Trump has given the Saudis “a blank check to act with impunity around the world” and Biden would “reevaluate” the alliance if elected.

“This is a relationship that has serious problems,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who is also running for the 2020 nomination, said on ABC’s “This Week.” “And the fact that this president seems, in a very transactional way, doubling down on the relationship, and telling us it's because of just financial interests, is unacceptable.”

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., questioned the responses of other administration officials like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who emphasized the Saudi government’s expression of sympathy.

“It’s unnerving how eager everyone in this Administration is to be PR agents for the Saudis,” Murphy tweeted Saturday. “I’m glad they are sad and cooperative, but ask yourself - would this Administration do this for any other country besides Saudi Arabia? Just so weird.”

Concerns are not only coming from the president’s frequent critics. Some of his most reliable congressional allies are taking a harder rhetorical line toward the Saudis than the White House.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., whose district includes the Pensacola base, said on “This Week” that the incident should “inform our ongoing relationship with Saudi Arabia.” He added that he had spoken to the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. and emphasized to her that the Saudi government must not interfere with the investigation and Saudi intelligence should cooperate if needed.

“We need to have a review of this program and it's my belief that as Secretary Esper is looking at the recordkeeping, the accounting for these Saudi nationals that are in our country, the continuous observance and monitoring of their activities to ensure that there's not radicalization, while that’s going on, we should pause this program,” Gaetz said.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., also called for the training program to be suspended and for the Saudis to provide more cooperation.

“The Saudi government has got to step up and say there will be full cooperation, they will make sure every student sits down with the FBI and gives up all the information so that we know exactly what happened here,” he said on Fox News. “It’s disgusting this happened.”

Trump’s seeming deference to the Saudi government in the immediate aftermath of an apparent terrorist attack against a U.S. military base revived broader questions about his administration’s stance toward the kingdom. Critics on the right and left have previously accused the president of allowing malfeasance by the Saudis to slide to protect strategic and economic interests.

“On Friday, a Saudi air force officer studying at the Naval Air Station Pensacola shot dead three Americans and wounded eight others,” wrote Max Boot in a Washington Post op-ed. “Instead of expressing outrage or vowing vengeance, or even waiting for all the facts to come in, Trump sounded as if he were auditioning for the job of press secretary at the Saudi Embassy.”

According to Hassan Mneimneh, a scholar at the Middle East Institute, Trump affirmatively communicating the king’s condolences suggests he has no intention of reassessing his relationship with the Saudis, but his opponents are certain to turn up political pressure, especially given the role of Saudi citizens in past attacks on U.S. soil.

“It’s clear President Trump is satisfied there should not be policy implications to this event,” Mneimneh said. “However, we can expect the political opponents of President Trump are going to link this incident to Sept. 11... and, therefore, highlight the fact that the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. ought to be under scrutiny.”

The extent of that political pressure may depend on the outcome of an investigation and the full extent of Saudi involvement in the attack, said Simon Henderson, director of the Persian Gulf program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. If Alshamrani acted alone, it might be easier to dismiss.

“If it’s a crazed individual, this is unfortunate but it’s a criminal act,” Henderson said. “If it involved others, it takes on a different dimension and it could be labeled as terrorism... If it’s terrorism by a Saudi in the United States, this has not only legal implications, but it has political implications.”

Investigators have not yet verified Alshamrani’s motive, but they are treating the shooting as a likely act of terrorism. Though no evidence has been reported directly tying Alshamrani to terrorist groups, a Twitter account believed to belong to him denounced the U.S. for supposed crimes against Muslims and quoted Osama bin Laden.

“I'm against evil, and America as a whole has turned into a nation of evil,” the account, which has now been suspended, tweeted shortly before the attack.

Several other Saudi nationals have been questioned in connection with the shooting, including at least one who filmed part of the incident. None have been accused of playing any role in Alshamrani’s actions.

There are currently 852 Saudi nationals in the U.S. participating in military training. Given the importance of security cooperation for both countries, the program is unlikely to be shut down, but experts expect more stringent vetting procedures to be put in place.

“I think the fundamental character of the relationship will not change but there will be further measures taken to make sure this major lapse will not be repeated,” Mneimneh said.

Henderson also sees little reason to believe this White House would drastically shift its posture toward Saudi Arabia over the Pensacola shooting unless there turn out to be deeper connections to the government that are not yet apparent.

“If this shooting down in Florida turns up a broader conspiracy, then this really does become a problem,” he said.

After the Obama administration’s diplomatic overtures toward Iran sparked tension with Riyadh, President Trump and the Saudi royal family sought to cultivate a more positive relationship from the start. The president visited Saudi Arabia on his first foreign trip in office in May 2017 and he defended the Saudi role in a blockade of Qatar that other administration officials had criticized soon afterward.

When Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018, allegedly under orders from Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Trump persistently resisted calls to punish the Saudis for it. Weeks after the death, his administration approved the transfer of sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.

The White House has also pushed back against efforts to hold Riyadh accountable for human rights abuses in the Saudi-led war against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, vetoing a congressional resolution to end U.S. military support for the Saudi effort in April 2019. In July, Trump vetoed three bills that would have blocked the sale of $8 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

President Trump has often been explicit in linking his defense of the Saudis to billions of dollars’ worth of arms sales—though he has also vastly inflated what Riyadh is spending on U.S. weapons—and combating Iran’s influence in the region.

“They have been a great ally in our very important fight against Iran. The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region,” he said in a 2018 statement casting doubt on the CIA’s assessment that Prince Salman directed Khashoggi’s killing.

In an interview with NBC News earlier this year, Trump downplayed the Khashoggi incident and argued trade with the Saudis was too important to jeopardize.

“I’m not like a fool that says, ‘We don’t want to do business with them.’ And by the way, if they don’t do business with us, you know what they do? They’ll do business with the Russians or with the Chinese,” he said.

Though Trump is atypically blunt about it, Mneimneh said similar considerations have weighed on other presidents in dealing with the kingdom.

“If we look to his attitude toward Saudi Arabia in context, in substance it’s not different from the attitude of all presidents since the beginning of the relationship,” he said. “However, in terms of the optics of it, the optics have been sort of a problem.”

Henderson pointed to the decision to allow 160 Saudi nationals, including relatives of Osama bin Laden, to leave the U.S. in the week after the 9/11 attacks as one example of previous administrations making questionable choices in service of preserving the relationship with the Saudis.

“The classic one is 9/11, when George W. Bush had to take this into account, and on reflection, might have made the wrong call,” he said.

Mneimneh expects the Saudi government will now provide whatever cooperation the Trump administration and U.S. law enforcement request in the course of the investigation. The kingdom may also offer more flexibility on other issues to avoid losing Trump’s trust.

“The truthfulness in King Salman’s statement is the Saudi government is totally embarrassed by such an event and will seek on its own to make sure it does not get repeated,” he said. “As important as the relationship is for President Trump, it’s by an order of magnitude more important for King Salman and his son.”

Looking ahead, though, Henderson does not share that confidence.

“They promised full cooperation,” he said. “How much cooperation? It’ll be less than full and slower than we want it to be.”