Robert Evans

I don't know that John Kerry's that funny a man.

In his butt.

Yeah.

Salman comes to power as king in 2015, as we talked about last episode.

And he very quickly removes the guy who had been crown prince that the old king had wanted to succeed after King Salman.

And he makes Mohammed bin Nayef the crown prince.

And this is why, right?

MBN is the natural pick to be crown prince because he's the guy who has been dealing with the war effort, right?

He's the guy who protected the country, who saved it from al-Qaeda.

He's a natural pick.

He put his ass on the line.

He took someone else's ass in an explosion, right?

Yeah.

And a lot of Americans cheer this development as the best thing to happen to US power in the Middle East for generations.

The CIA could hardly have handpicked a better successor.

Best of all, as they saw it, Nayef was a legitimate hero in Saudi Arabia.

He wasn't someone whose reputation they had to prop up.

We don't have to make this guy into a puppet.

He's already a hero, right?

Right.