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https://Twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/1 ... 2219812870

In Trump’s pre-recorded interview with Fox, it emerged that he told the TV channel that Khashoggi’s killing in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last month was “very violent, very vicious and terrible”. The Turkish authorities had said soon after Khashoggi went missing that there was audio tape of his killing, although the White House was slow to acknowledge this.

After telling Wallace that he wouldn’t listen to the tape, during the Fox interview at the White House, the presenter then asks him: “Why don’t you want to hear it, Sir?”

The president replies: “It’s a suffering tape. It’s a terrible tape. I’ve been fully briefed on it.”

In the subsequent Twitter discussion, some people were saying that OK, but Trump should maybe read a transcript. Others said such things as "How can he comment on something he’s never heard?"

Maybe I have not scrolled far enough to notice, but surely the main point is this:

All the people on the tape were speaking Arabic.

Trump does not, so far as I know, speak Arabic (does he speak any languages apart from English? Who knows?). So what would be the point of his listening to a tape with maybe a bit of shouting at the start, then just the sound of people doing unidentifiable things to the body? OK, maybe some sawing noises at one point.

But a translation of what was said (as opposed to a mere transcription) would be a different matter. Apart, that is, from the widely reported story that he refuses to read any briefing paper longer than a page or so. He may also, of course, be reluctant to put himself in a position where he can no longer deny that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia was responsible for ordering this murder, if he has heard that reference to this is made on the tape.

So why didn't he just say 'Because it's in Arabic', an explanation that would have made sense to everybody listening?

Chap wrote:So why didn't he just say 'Because it's in Arabic', an explanation that would have made sense to everybody listening?

Because he doesn't want to hear a man screaming while being tortured to death, perhaps?

Dr. Shades wrote:

Chap wrote:So why didn't he just say 'Because it's in Arabic', an explanation that would have made sense to everybody listening?

Because he doesn't want to hear a man screaming while being tortured to death, perhaps?

Just listening to the tape would have been quite pointless, because all that would have shown would have been that something violent occurred (but given that this was a team of professional killers against one man, not for long). The language barrier would have stopped anyone who did not understand Arabic from getting the vital information, such as who these men were reporting to, whose orders they were acting under, and so on.

The point is, however, that Trump needs to have read translations of the vital evidence from the tape about whether the Crown Prince ordered this killing. He seems likely to have wanted to distance himself from that for reasons of political convenience.