"Stuff Happens": Trump Casually Dismisses Khashoggi's Brutal Murder During Lavish Welcome for Mohammed Bin Salman

In a jaw-dropping moment that stunned the world, President Donald Trump brushed off the 2018 Saudi assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi with the words "Stuff happens" during Wednesday's red-carpet reception for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the man U.S. intelligence says personally approved the killing.

The visit, Bin Salman's first to the White House since the gruesome murder, was pure spectacle: trumpet fanfares, a full Marine band, a military flyover, and glowing praise from Trump, who called the crown prince a "very good friend for a long time" and boasted of his record on "human rights and everything else."

The two leaders announced deals potentially worth nearly $1 trillion, including F-35 stealth fighters for Saudi Arabia on the same terms as Israel, advanced AI chip sales, and a mutual defense pact.

But when an ABC reporter asked how Americans could trust Bin Salman given CIA findings that he ordered Khashoggi's dismemberment, Trump snapped: "You're talking about somebody who was extremely controversial… A lot of people didn’t have sympathy for that gentleman. Whether you liked him or not - stuff happens."

The Murder That Shocked the World: Jamal Khashoggi

Jamal Khashoggi was a Saudi insider from one of the kingdom’s elite families (cousin of billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi). He started as a bookseller and journalist, got close to the Muslim Brotherhood in his youth, and even interviewed Osama bin Laden in the early 80s – back when he saw him as a “beautiful and brave” figure before bin Laden “succumbed to hatred.”

Khashoggi spent years bridging secular and Islamist worlds, serving as unofficial spokesman for Prince Turki al-Faisal in London and Washington. But his relatively liberal views got him fired twice from Saudi newspapers, once for letting a writer criticize Ibn Taymiyyah (founder of Wahhabism), and again for questioning strict Islamic rules.

When bin Salman rose to power, he offered Khashoggi the classic olive branch: an advisory role. Khashoggi turned it down on moral grounds and out of fear for his safety. He fled to self-exile in Washington, becoming a regular Washington Post columnist, slamming bin Salman's “one-man rule” and founding DAWN (“Democracy for the Arab World Now”) to fight the regime.

Bin Salman saw him as a threat, an old intelligence-community insider with access to royal secrets. In private messages, Khashoggi called him a “beast” and a “vampire” who “wants more victims the more he consumes.”

The Diplomatic Trap in Istanbul

Khashoggi wanted to marry his Turkish fiancée Hatice Cengiz. To do that, he needed a “marital status” document from the Saudi consulate in Istanbul proving he was divorced.

On September 28, 2018, he visited the consulate, felt totally safe, said the atmosphere was “comfortable.” They told him to come back on October 2. The Saudis used those four days to plan the hit.

Early on October 2, a private Gulfstream jet from Riyadh landed with 9–15 Saudi security and intelligence agents, members of the “Rapid Intervention Group.”

At 1:14 p.m., Khashoggi walked in, handing his phone to Cengiz outside with instructions to call for help if he didn’t come out in an hour. Consulate CCTV was disabled, hard drives removed.

Within minutes he was dragged away screaming: “Let go of my arm! Who do you think you are?” They told him he was being taken back to Riyadh. Squad leader Maher Mutreb shouted “Traitor!”

His last words: “I can’t breathe.”

The murder took seven minutes. Forensic expert Salah al-Tubaigy (nicknamed “Dr. Death”) suggested the team put on headphones and listen to music while he dismembered the body with a bone saw. Khashoggi was cut into 15 pieces.

During the operation, Mutreb was on Skype saying “Tell your boss - the deed is done.” U.S. intelligence concluded “your boss” meant MBS.

The body parts were wrapped in a rug and driven away in a black Mercedes van. Neighbors later reported a weird sudden barbecue by the consulate pool, apparently to mask suspicious activity and destroy evidence.

Meanwhile, the Saudis sent a laughably bad body double (Mustafa al-Madani) out the back door in Khashoggi’s clothes, but with a full head of hair and different shoes.

Saudi denials crumbled under Turkish leaks: first they said Khashoggi left normally, then that he died in a “fistfight gone wrong,” finally admitting a premeditated operation.

General Ahmed al-Assiri was scapegoated. But bin Salman and his close aide Saud al-Qahtani walked free. Khashoggi’s sons were invited to a filmed handshake with bin Salman, later received royal compensation, and in 2020 publicly “forgave” the killers, conveniently sparing the convicted Saudis from execution.

Trump's "stuff happens" line echoes his long-standing protection of Bin Salman, whom he once shielded from sanctions despite bipartisan fury in Congress. As the president put it in 2018: strategic interests and Saudi money outweigh everything else.

Indeed, he flatly rejected his own intelligence community's conclusions, insisting Bin Salman "knew nothing about it" and scolding the journalist for "embarrassing our guest." The crown prince, stone-faced, called the murder "painful" and "a huge mistake," promising it would never happen again.

For many, Wednesday's embrace in the Oval Office, complete with handshakes, praise, and mega-deals, signaled the final burial of the Khashoggi affair, where human rights took a distant back seat to dollars and realpolitik.