After being widely criticized and mocked for dismissing concerns over the murder to Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, televangelist Pat Robertson has now changed his tune.
Last week, Robertson repeatedly insisted that people should not get too worked up over Saudi Arabia’s murder of a critical journalist because the nation is an important U.S. ally with whom we have a lucrative arms deal.
“You don’t blow up an international alliance over one person,” Robertson said last week. “I mean, I’m sorry.”
On “The 700 Club” today, Robertson had a radically different response to events, blasting the Saudis for engaging in premeditated murder and declaring that the U.S. cannot simply look the other way, regardless of what sort of arms deals or alliances exist between the two nations.
“The Saudis aren’t telling the truth,” Robertson said. “They’ve lied and lied and lied and it’s been dissembling and half-truth and a little here and a little there … It was a premeditated murder.”
Robertson then praised and paraphrased a recent New York Times column by Maureen Dowd as he accused the Saudi government of having “bribed their way into the hearts of Americans” and railed against the Saudi role in 9/11 and past support for Osama bin Laden.
“Oil or not, or arms deal or otherwise, we cannot be aligned with a group of people who have persecuted women and have kangaroo courts and have this religious police that is just incredibly bad,” Robertson said, as he called for Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman to be tried for Khashoggi’s murder.
“We still want to maintain a relationship with the Saudis,” Robertson continued, “but we cannot have this anymore, these things they’re doing. And we certainly cannot allow this man to go scot-free and we can’t excuse him or try to make any kind of accommodation with him. He is a murderer and he had a hit squad and there is no question that this was premeditated; this was a hit squad that came in, when they have body doubles and when they have bone saws and all this kind of stuff. There is no doubt they intended to kill this man, dismember his body, torture him and then hide the evidence and that is what they have been doing and nobody with any intelligence is buying it. They have been lying through their teeth.”
