Saudi Exceptionalism: Trump hates radical Islam, except when you can make money from it

‘It’s hard to fully capture the irony — not to mention sheer repulsiveness — of Donald Trump’s decision to make Saudi Arabia the first stop on his inaugural foreign trip as US president.
The decision marks yet another rapid rhetorical turnaround for Trump. Candidate Trump was not a fan of the Saudi kingdom. In fact, he was not shy at all about calling Riyadh out in ways that his political opponents dared not dream of.
In early 2016, he asked the hosts on Fox & Friends: “Who blew up the World Trade Center? It wasn’t the Iraqis, it was Saudi — take a look at Saudi Arabia, open the documents.”
When his main rival for president, Hillary Clinton, was accepting Saudi donations to her controversial charitable foundation, Trump had some more choice words. In a Facebook post he wrote: “Saudi Arabia and many of the countries that gave vast amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation want women as slaves and to kill gays. Hillary must return all money from such countries!”‘
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