For the life of me, I cannot believe that anyone would take advice from a royal from a country like Saudi Arabia, which treats women and homosexuals like second class citizens.
Prince Nosy Body…
Huffington Post: Representatives of foreign allies tend to tiptoe around the issue of U.S. elections, hesitant to risk offending a candidate who may later be elected president. But the ascension of real estate mogul Donald Trump to the position of the presumptive Republican nominee has compelled some foreign officials to try to sway American voters away from backing the bombastic candidate.
With carefully chosen words, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former ambassador to the U.S., warned against a Trump presidency. “For the life of me, I cannot believe that a country like the United States can afford to have someone as president who simply says, ‘These people are not going to be allowed to come to the United States,’” Turki said on Thursday evening, referring to Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country.
“It’s up to you, it’s not up to me,” Turki continued, speaking at a Washington Institute For Near East Policy dinner hosted at the Mandarin Oriental hotel. “I just hope you, as American citizens, will make the right choice in November.”
The former top Saudi intelligence chief is known for his close relationships with U.S. officials and his ability to charm an American audience, even as the United States grows more critical of the Gulf state’s dismal human rights record at home and high-casualty war in Yemen.
As a student in the 1960s, Prince Turki said he enjoyed “the spectacle” of American elections, which he described as “sometimes uplifting, other times the opposite.” Later on, as ambassador, he told U.S. lawmakers he should get a vote since American policies have such a direct impact on the kingdom.
“When we have elections in Saudi Arabia, you can vote there too,” Prince Turki assured the crowd, a self-aware joke at his own country’s undemocratic monarchical system of governance. (Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute and the moderator of the event suggested that if the prince enjoyed the “spectacle” of American elections so much, he should perhaps try them out in his own country.)
Read the whole story here.
DCG
