Before President Donald Trump flouted longstanding tradition by choosing Saudi Arabia as the destination of his first foreign visit as president, where he was lavished with gifts and reportedly struck a record-setting arms deal with the kingdom (after his administration called the CEO of Lockheed Martin to get a cheaper deal for the Saudis); before he took part in the male-only sword dance in Riyadh; before he ramped up support for the widely criticized Saudi-led war in Yemen; before he undermined his own secretary of State’s position by siding with the Saudis in their alarming diplomatic row with the Qataris—before any of this, Trump actually castigated Saudi Arabia.
In fact, candidate Trump went as far as saying—twice in one day, in February of 2016—that Saudi Arabia was behind the 9/11 attacks. During the presidential debates with Hillary Clinton, Trump admonished the Clinton Foundation for receiving contributions from the Saudis, saying, “These are people that kill women and treat women horribly and yet you take their money.”
Since then, Trump has allowed more than a billion dollars worth of arms to be delivered to Saudi Arabia, according to a new analysis of U.S. Census Bureau export data conducted by The Daily Beast. In the first eight months of 2017, a total of $1.56 billion worth of arms have been delivered from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia; during this period, the U.S. has more than doubled its bombs, missiles, and ammunition deliveries to Saudi Arabia, and nearly doubled the deliveries of armored fighting vehicles like the M1 tank, when compared with the first eight months of 2016, under the Obama administration.
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Despite campaign promises, arms shipments to Saudis skyrocket under Trump https://t.co/nE1uo1PePU
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) 16 October 2017
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