Trump: Saudi Arabia paid us $1 billion for troops. Pentagon: Not fairly.

Throughout an interview on Laura Ingraham’s Fox Information present Friday evening, President Donald Trump made a surprising announcement: Saudi Arabia was paying the US $1 billion to ship US troops to defend it from Iran.

“We’re sending extra [troops] to Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia is paying us for it,” Trump stated. “I stated, ‘Hear, you’re a really wealthy nation. You need extra troops? I’m going to ship them to you, however you need to pay us.’ They’re paying us. They’ve already deposited $1 billion within the financial institution.”

Critics, together with Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI), slammed the transfer, accusing Trump of utilizing American troops as “paid mercenaries.” “He sells troops,” Amash tweeted.

On MSNBC, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) raised the possibility that Trump deposited the Saudi cash in a private checking account and stated the president is “promoting our troopers as mercenaries to international governments.”

“It’s outrageous,” Lee added. “He doesn’t need to be the commander in chief of the USA of America.”

As is usually the case relating to Trump, the main points of this purported transaction with Saudi Arabia are murky. Ingraham didn’t ask any follow-up questions on it, and Trump didn’t supply any extra particulars.

Although the Pentagon did announce final October that it might ship troops to Saudi Arabia to defend the nation in opposition to Iran, there had been no reporting about Saudi Arabia financially compensating the US.

Trump’s feedback immediately raised questions: Into which checking account did Saudi Arabia deposit the $1 billion? What precisely are US troops doing over there? And did this transaction even occur, or was the president simply making stuff up?

Days later, we’ve realized a bit extra about what Trump was speaking about. And it appears that evidently the president, as he often does, was exaggerating.

In an announcement to Vox, Pentagon spokesperson Cmdr. Rebecca Rebarich stated, “The Division of Protection has engaged Saudi Arabia on contributing to US actions that help regional safety and dissuade hostility and aggression.”

However the assertion didn’t specify whether or not any type of monetary transaction came about — quite the opposite, it stated that “discussions are ongoing to formalize these contributions.”

Right here’s Rebarich’s assertion in full:

In step with the president’s steering to extend associate burden-sharing, the Division of Protection has engaged Saudi Arabia on contributing to US actions that help regional safety and dissuade hostility and aggression. The Saudi authorities has agreed to contribute to the prices of those actions, and discussions are ongoing to formalize these contributions. Contributions of this nature don’t result in the deployment of extra US forces, and they don’t drive DoD to tackle new missions or tasks.

“Discussions are ongoing” is sort of completely different than Trump’s unequivocal declare that Saudi Arabia had “already deposited $1 billion within the financial institution.”

Trump’s feedback got here throughout an interview by which he bragged about war crimes, instructed blatant lies concerning the FBI, and stated he feels no obligation to publicly detail the intelligence underpinning his determination to approve a army strike in opposition to an Iranian official that introduced the nation to the brink of warfare.

Any of these remarks from the mouth of the president would’ve probably generated a significant scandal in a earlier period. However three years in, Trump has normalized gaslighting and authoritarian rhetoric to such an extent that this interview with Ingraham barely registered as a blip on the information radar.

Sean Collins contributed reporting to this text.

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