Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., vowed in a “Meet the Press” interview that Congress would dole out swift punishments if Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was killed and dismembered by Saudis.
“I will say this to you with full confidence,” he told Chuck Todd on NBC Sunday morning, “If this is proven to be true, there's going to be a response from Congress, it's going to be nearly unanimous, it’s going to be swift and it’s going to go pretty far. That could include arm sales but could include a bunch of other things as well.”
Khashoggi went into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 to gather paperwork that would allow him to marry his Turkish fiancée. He hasn’t been seen since. The Post said U.S. intelligence services intercepted communications of Saudi officials discussing a plan to lure him back to the kingdom.
Trump last Wednesday said he did not want to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia over the disappearance because it would hurt America, but several senators have suggested the move.
Todd questioned Rubio on whether Trump’s stance came across as the United States putting a price on its human rights policy.
“I would have phrased it very differently,” Rubio told Todd. "Arms sales to Saudi Arabia are important, not because of money. He's right when he says they'll buy it from somebody else. When they buy it from us, they need training, the sort of things that give us leverage over them. There's advantages to arm sales that have nothing to do with money. That said, our moral credibility, our ability to call [Vladimir] Putin a murder, because he is, our ability to call [Bashar] al-Assad a murderer, because he is, our ability to confront [Nicolas] Maduro in Venezula, or any of these human rights atrocities like we see in China, all of that is undermined and compromised if we somehow decide that because an ally who is important did that, we're not going to call it out.”
"When all the evidence is in, we'll see. ... Ultimately, I do believe the White House will do something significant about it."
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