RED CARPET FOR RIYADH

Trump criticized a murdered journalist as “controversial.” That’s no justification for his assassination, the journalist’s widow told What A Day.

• Republicans and Democrats alike blasted former President Joe Biden for giving Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a fist bump in 2022. Why? Because it came four years after Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered with a bone saw inside a consulate in Turkey — in an act that U.S. intelligence concluded was carried out with approval from the Saudi government. The crown prince, better known as MBS, took responsibility. But he denied personally ordering the killing, or any foreknowledge — and he never formally apologized.

• Trump seems hellbent on making Biden’s controversial fist bump look like small potatoes. Today, Trump defended MBS, the man who earned the nickname “Mohammed Bone Saw” after Khashoggi’s death. “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about, whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen,” Trump said, referring to the slain journalist.

• Hanan, Khashoggi’s widow, disputed Trump’s characterization of the killing: “This is not justification to murder him,” she first told What A Day. “Jamal was a good, transparent, and brave man, [while] many may not have agreed with his opinions and desire for freedom of the press.”

• Since the murder, Hanan has been trying to receive any remains of her husband for a proper burial, a formal apology from the crown prince, and financial compensation from Saudi Arabia for her troubles. “What happened has destroyed my life,” she said in an interview. “I’m still having to carry this heavy [baggage] and it’s affecting me healthwise and emotionally.”

• While Hanan has been in contact with the White House, she said that responses have been slow and “they are more staying away from me now.” She hopes that Trump, as a family man himself, will get where she’s coming from. “He will understand what I deserve after seven years of hell,” Hanan said.

Trump’s royal treatment for the crown prince is yet another sign of his brazen corruption, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told What A Day.

• How much would dinner at the White House run you? Trump repeatedly touted Saudi investments in the United States today, up to $1 trillion. Trump also pledged to sell F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, and there could be more deals on nuclear energy and artificial intelligence coming. This comes a day after the Trump Organization announced plans to build a crypto-tied resort in the Maldives with a Saudi real estate developer.

• “This looks like another corrupt deal with a Gulf country,” Murphy said. “This is pay-for-play. If you invest in Trump’s businesses, if you make him money, if you give money to his family members, then he is going to give you favorable national security treatment. And that’s now happening with the Saudis — totally unexpected but heartbreaking and an absolute disaster for American national security.”

• The optics no longer matter to Trump. He’ll sit alongside a notorious strongman, shake his hand warmly, call him as a close friend, and defend the grisly execution of a journalist employed by an American news outlet, without blinking an eye.

“There’s just no doubt in my mind that that is a quid pro quo in exchange for their investment and favorable treatment to his cryptocurrency,” Murphy added.

FILE FIGHTERS… EXTINGUISHED!

House Speaker Mike Johnson got beat so badly that even he voted to release the Epstein files today. Here we go!

The House nearly unanimously passed a bill calling on Trump’s Department of Justice to release the Epstein files. Only one Republican, Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana, voted against the measure, explaining his rationale in a head-scratching rant on X.

Hours later, the Senate agreed to pass the bill, too. Now, it’ll be sent off to Donald Trump’s desk for his good ol’ John Hancock — an inevitable ending to this saga… which Trump could have achieved months ago, all by himself.

WHAT ELSE?

The White House intervened in the federal investigation into alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate and his brother, ProPublica reports. Trump officials reportedly criticized federal investigators for seizing the brothers’ devices and pushed for them to be returned. Here’s the kicker: The official was Paul Ingrassia, the 30-year-old lawyer with a self-proclaimed “Nazi streak,” who once served as the Tates’ personal lawyer.

Federal agents will expand their immigration crackdown to Raleigh, North Carolina, the city’s mayor announced. It’s unclear how large the operation will be, but agents arrested more than 130 people in Charlotte over the weekend, raiding public parking lots and even a church.

Trump says a lot of disrespectful crap, but he’s coming under fire for a particularly jarring remark to a female reporter who asked him about the Epstein files. “Quiet, piggy,” he sneered. “Disgusting and completely unacceptable,” CNN’s Jake Tapper tweeted.

How much does tech freak Elon Musk really make? It’s nearly impossible to comprehend how much money he has. But the Washington Post created a handy tool, in which you can see how much he makes compared to literally everyone in your occupation. For example: “The 41,550 news analysts, reporters and journalists in America make a combined $4 billion per year, $96 billion less than Musk’s average payment.”

“Part of the internet just stopped working,” read a headline from The Independent this morning. That’s basically true: A Cloudflare outage caused sites including X and ChatGPT to shut down for several hours. You know… I think shutting those two sites down occasionally would probably be good for all of us. Can we run this back next week?

On that note, even Google’s boss says you shouldn’t “blindly trust” everything AI tells you. “This is why people also use Google search, and we have other products that are more grounded in providing accurate information,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told the BBC.

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE EMAIL…

A panel of three federal judges blocked Texas from using its recently-redrawn congressional districts in next year’s midterms. That’s a huge blow to Trump’s agenda: Texas was the first state to redraw to gain more Republican House seats, igniting a nationwide redistricting war. “The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” the ruling reads. “But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”

Fraud investigators at Fannie Mae found no evidence that New York Attorney General Letitia James had committed mortgage fraud, despite the Trump administration’s claims, according to court filings. It’s a beautiful thing, watching Trump’s dubious cases against his perceived enemies fall apart.

Pope Leo called on the United Nations to take “concrete actions” to fight climate change, saying that God’s creation “is crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat.” He also took a subtle shot at the Trump administration: “What is failing is the political will of some.” Tell ‘em what you really think, Leo!

Instagram promoted its new AI tool by using an image that appears to show Trump kneeling before a satanic demon. A Meta spokesperson said that the “user-generated content … has been removed from this recommendation surface as it violated our protocols for promotions.” It’s unclear how that image came to be used in the promotion, but props to The Daily Wire for catching this one. I never thought I’d give Ben Shapiro’s media company props in my life, but we live in strange times.

An Australian prisoner is challenging a ban on eating vegemite while locked up, saying that it’s his “human right” to consume the bitter spread, which basically tastes like eating a bouillon cube. This is one human right I don’t think I want.