David Bell

I'd be like, do you really want that?

Never trust the prince when he's like, oh, I want a journalist to hold my feet to the fire.

Are you kidding me?

Accountability?

That's what kings love.

I mean, I'm not blaming him.

Like, it's just like, I, it's just like, you can see it all unfolding here.

I'd go like, oh, okay.

Yeah.

I'll write about it.

I guess.

Yeah.

In the fall of 2017, having silenced his most powerful detractors, MBS's security forces launched a crackdown on their little enemies and

80 dissidents were arrested.

Most were clerics who were either too conservative or too progressive.

The rest were political reformers.

And as Ben Hubbard writes, individuals who had annoyed MBS and his aides in some way or another.

One was an economist who had questioned the wisdom of privatizing a romco.

Another was a poet who had called on journalists to avoid harsh language in a dispute with Qatar.

So these are just guys getting arrested for bugging, you know, Turkey or Mohammed bin Salman, you know, for any reason.