The Briefing with Jen Psaki
Real purpose of Trump's Mideast trip comes into focus as his explanations fall apart under scrutiny
14 May 2025
Jen Psaki takes a closer look at Donald Trump's specious explanations and dubious promises as he heads on a trip through the Middle East where his personal business interests seem more relevant than the business of the United States.
Full Episode
Okay, everyone, I mean, this was the scene on Capitol Hill today. Members of the disability community, you can see them right there in the video, showed up at a House committee meeting to protest Republicans' proposed changes to Medicaid in their budget bill, changes that the Congressional Budget Office says could cause millions of Americans to lose insurance coverage. What better to protest?
Now, the people there, you can see them all. They're voicing their freedom of speech right there. They interrupted the meeting with shouts of, no cuts to Medicaid, no cuts to Medicaid, and were promptly escorted out of the building by police officers. 25 of them were arrested. And then, even after all that, Republicans went forward with their first step toward enacting those Medicaid cuts.
And that all created what I would consider quite a split-screen moment today, because as those concerned citizens you just saw protesting in the House what the impact of Medicaid cuts would be on their lives and many of the lives of their friends and colleagues around the country, where was Donald Trump?
Well, the President of the United States was nearly 7,000 miles away, sitting in a gilded palace surrounded by billionaires.
Now, the stated reason for his visit to Saudi Arabia and his palling around with the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, and a man perhaps best known for personally approving the murder of an American journalist, was to get them to invest in American businesses.
Trump claimed at the outset of his trip that he was going to get the Saudis to invest a whopping $1 trillion in the US, which is a lot of money. But it turns out his math was pretty far off, because MBS said his country plans to invest $600 billion in the US, well short of Trump's $1 trillion figure. Still a lot of money. Still a lot of money.
But there are more wrinkles to it, because the New York Times looked into this, and they noted neither the Trump numbers or the Saudi numbers are remotely even possible. Here's what they said. The figure Mr. Trump is seeking exceeds the value of all assets in the kingdom's hefty sovereign wealth fund, meaning there's no way they can come up with that money.
One expert told The Times, quote, I don't see how they get anywhere close to $600 billion, let alone $1 trillion. That's where we are with the math. Then that leads us to today. When Trump arrived in Saudi Arabia, he was met with big signs boasting that the Saudis would be investing $300 billion. You can see the sign right there. They literally made that signage in advance in the US.
I mean, they made it, but they made it for the trip. Now, that is obviously quite a bit less. It's actually less than a third of what Trump originally said. Let's be honest, this is something we have come to expect, right, from Donald Trump. He loves to move the goalposts, and he's moved them constantly all the course of the time he's been in office, certainly during his first administration.
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