For Donald Trump, the bottom line on Saudi Arabia takes precedence over human rights

President Donald Trump’s declaration on Tuesday that he will not hold Saudi rulers accountable for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi distilled the president’s foreign policy approach to its transactional and personalised essence.

Nearly two years into his presidency, Trump is unswerving in his instinct to make everything – from trade to terrorism, from climate change to human rights – about what he sees as the bottom line.

“We may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr Jamal Khashoggi. In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” Trump said in an oddly brisk statement laying out that the US business and security relationship with Saudi Arabia, and with its designated next leader, is paramount.

He cited arms sales with the kingdom, its role as a bulwark against Iran and the threat of higher oil prices as risks to the United States if his administration ruptured the relationship over the Khashoggi killing.

The statement was issued as Trump prepared to head to his golf resort in Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday and in the wake of the CIA’s conclusion that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the October 2 killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor and US resident.

The nothing-to-see-here tone, the fractured syntax and falsehoods and the abundance of exclamation points were pure Trump – and as far from the massaged, nuanced products of past White Houses as one could imagine.

“It’s ‘America first’,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday before departing for Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. “For me, it’s all about ‘America first’. We’re not going to give up hundreds of billions of dollars in orders, and let Russia, China, and everybody else have them.”