The night America's doomed ruling class gorged on lamb, blood, and oil

Apparently, time really does heal all wounds — even those caused by the bone saw of a murderous prince and his personal goon squad after they hacked an intrepid Washington Post opinion journalist into pieces for speaking the truth about a corrupt and contented regime.

It’s hard to believe now, but there was actually a very brief time — in 2018, to be exact — when corporate America and even some political leaders pretended to have enough morals to resist this stone-cold killer with bags of money: Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS.

It wasn’t just Oval Office-bound candidate Joe Biden who’d promised (falsely) to make MBS “a global pariah” after the CIA stated the obvious, that the crown prince was behind the barbaric murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Six years ago, some of the nation’s top business leaders — like the CEOs of J.P. Morgan Chase, Ford, and Uber and Donald Trump billionaire pal Stephen Schwarzman — abruptly ditched a high-profile Saudi investment forum, and a few businesses totally cut ties with the oil dictatorship.

In 2025, any pretense of “corporate social responsibility,” let alone shame, in America’s C-suites is as outdated as dial-up internet. Schwarzman — who cancelled his 2019 flight to Riyadh but not his Blackstone Group’s lucrative ties to the Saudi wealth fund — toasted MBS at a White House dinner Tuesday night, as did Ford CEO William Clay Ford Jr.


https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/ceos-dinner-trump-bin-salman-20251123.html