Some members of the media linked the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and U.S. resident, to President Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric about American media.
Khashoggi, a harsh critic of the Saudi regime, was last seen walking into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on Oct. 2. A team of Saudi operatives allegedly killed and dismembered Khashoggi, according to Turkish officials.
“Journalists around the world are increasingly fair game these days at the hands of their autocratic governments — or at the hands of just plain thugs. And President Trump’s assaults on journalists as ‘the enemy of the people’ are surely exacerbating the problem,” The Boston Globe charged in an editorial on Khashoggi’s disappearance.
CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill claimed in a HuffPost op-ed that “the United States, and more specifically the Trump administration, is complicit in Kashoggi’s death.” (RELATED: Nine Brett Kavanaugh Stories The Media Got Wrong)
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is “a tyrannical thug who has been emboldened by Donald Trump’s disregard for human rights in American foreign policy,” wrote New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg.
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank argued that it’s “fair” to “ask whether Trump’s practice of labeling journalists the enemy of the people emboldened the people who reportedly killed Khashoggi, and those responsible for renewed crackdowns on the press around the world.”
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