CNN’s Breathless Boot Makes Outrageous Trump/Khashoggi Claims

President Donald Trump is telling “dictators all over the world” they can “do whatever they want” to anyone anywhere after the apparent murder of columnist Jamal Khashoggi, CNN global affairs analyst Max Boot claimed Thursday on “CNN Newsroom.”

“President Trump has basically signaled that he doesn’t care. The only thing that matters to him is dollars and cents,” Boot (pictured above left) insisted.

“I mean, it’s shocking that he was more worked up about Canadian milk than he is about the death and dismemberment of this American-Saudi journalist.”

“So that basically sends a message to dictators all over the world, they could do whatever they want to their own people, they could even do whatever they want outside their own borders,” Boot continued. “President Trump hasn’t expressed any concern about that fact that the Russians are killing dissidents in the United Kingdom or about the fact of the Saudis murdering somebody in their consulate in Turkey.”

Khashoggi wrote opinion columns for The Washington Post and was born in Saudi Arabia. He holds a U.S. residency card — but that does not make him an American citizen.

“So this is a very bad day for dissidents and Democrats around the world,” Boot warned.

Khashoggi is not an “American-Saudi journalist,” as Boot claimed. Khashoggi wrote opinion columns for The Washington Post and was born in Saudi Arabia. He holds a U.S. residency card — but that does not make him an American citizen.

Mainstream media members have relentlessly piled on Trump for his response to Khashoggi’s having gone missing after he visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Reports now suggest he was murdered and dismembered by a Saudi death squad at the consulate.

Trump, who is trying to balance a working relationship with Saudi Arabia while holding the Middle Eastern nation accountable as facts surface, cautioned against rushing to judgment.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Saudi Arabian and Turkish officials this week, and Trump spoke by phone with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Monday.

The controversy has afforded anti-Trump media figures and Democratic lawmakers an opening to pounce on the president and blame him for not being sufficiently hard-line against the Saudis.

CNN even repeatedly aired a chyron on Thursday that said, “Is U.S. just giving Saudis more time to form cover story?” as Fox News’ Brian Flood noted.

Boot, who is also a columnist for The Washington Post, wrote a column on Wednesday titled “Trump has given every despot on the planet a license to kill.”

“If the Saudis carried out this grisly crime with high-level authorization, as the evidence would indicate, they did so at least in part because they anticipated that the American president wouldn’t care about the disappearance of another ‘enemy of the people,'” Boot wrote, alluding to Trump’s criticism of the fake news media.

“Other dictatorships are equally emboldened by America’s abdication of authority,” Boot added. “This is a good time to be a dictator — and a dangerous time to be a dissident. Trump has given every despot on the planet a license to kill without worrying about the U.S. reaction. Because, in all likelihood, there will be none.”

Trump told reporters Thursday that the U.S. will wait for a Saudi investigation into Khashoggi’s disappearance to conclude before “making a statement, a very strong statement.”

Related: Dems, Media Show Stunning Hypocrisy on Jamal Khashoggi Case

Pompeo also told reporters Thursday, “I told President Trump this morning we ought to give them a few more days to complete that so that we, too, have a complete understanding of the facts surrounding that, at which point we can make a decision how or if the United States should respond to the incident surrounding Mr. Khashoggi.”

Boot did not like these responses.

“It’s going to be a long wait if they’re looking for a serious investigation,” he complained. “I mean, asking the Saudis to investigate Jamal Khashoggi’s murder is kind of like asking Donald Trump Jr. to investigate the ties between the Trump campaign and the Russians.”

“The only way you’re going to get a fair and impartial investigation is to have it be done from the outside. I mean, the Saudis are not going to implicate their crown prince who is in charge of the entire state,” Boot added, predicting that Saudi investigators are “going to look for somebody to take the fall.”

Boot even claimed the Trump administration “seems to be colluding with Saudis in trying to come up with a cover story for this murder instead of trying to get at the truth.”

Watch this video: