Ned Price: Trump Gave ‘License and Impunity to Regimes Around the World’ to Kill Journalists

EXCERPT:

PRICE: "Well, it is a virtual certainty, Andrea, that the president has not been forthright about the American people about what he knew and when he knew it. He said Tuesday of this week, days after Jamal Khashoggi disappearance, days after the Turks had started to say --  to tell the press that they believed he had been murdered inside of consulate. On Tuesday the president of the United States says I know nothing about that. That is nearly impossible. It's nearly impossible because we've since learned thanks  to the 'Washington Post' reporting that the intelligence community had foreknowledge of the the threat to Jamal Khashoggi, and we know, we can be assured that given the close relationship between Turkish and American intelligence that the Turks have been very closely sharing their intelligence with the American intelligence officials who are in turn almost certainly have been briefing the president. So it is not ingenious of the president to say on Tuesday that he knew nothing. But he did something also that was remarkable yesterday, he put a price tag; he put a price tag on America’s identity, on America's values and America's character. And he said it is $110 billion -- you're right that it is closer to $25 billion, but either way it doesn't matter, he put price tag on who we are as a people, what we stand up up for and what we will not [indecipherable]. And when he said that you know Jamal Khashoggi I'm not sure that he was a U.S. citizen, he's right he was a U.S. resident but it doesn't matter. By saying that he gave license and he gave impunity to regimes around the world to carry out their wort impulses on journalists, on their critics, on anyone who would criticize them, and that's remarkable from the U.S. president."