Crossing the line in American politics

“Donald Trump might finally have crossed the line.”

Those were the opening words in a July 2015 Politico story about something presidential candidate Donald Trump said about John McCain.

Speaking at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, Trump was asked about his long-running feud with the Arizona senator, a man who, as a Navy pilot, spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison where he was repeatedly tortured.

“He’s not a war hero,” Trump told his interviewer. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

I remember thinking at the time that this was a bridge too far, that Politico was right, that this time Donald Trump had crossed the line — and that he had blown up his brand new political career.

Wrong!

Donald Trump didn’t cross a line when he said that — not when you take into account that he was elected president a year later.

Over the years Donald Trump has said a lot of things that reasonable people would think crossed the line. Except, we’ve repeatedly been wrong. And I’m not sure there’s anything he can do or say that would shock us anymore.

And by “anything” I mean … ANYTHING.

Which brings us to his recent meeting in the Oval Office with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS as he’s known. As is often the case, reporters were present. And when one of them asked about CIA findings that the prince approved the killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump defended his royal guest.

“You’re mentioning somebody [Khashoggi] that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you liked him or didn’t like him, things happen.”

He added that the crown prince “knew nothing about it.”

The cold-blooded murder — and dismemberment — of a “controversial” journalist is written off by our president with a verbal shrug — “things happen” — as if that somehow explains, or maybe flat-out justifies the murder. If you’re shocked, you haven’t been paying attention to Donald Trump for at least the past 10 years.

As for the part about how MBS “knew nothing about it” — the CIA would disagree.

As an editorial in the Washington Post explained it, “Exiled in Virginia, Khashoggi wrote on these pages about the Saudi regime’s repressiveness at home and recklessness abroad. This got under Mohammed’s skin. So, the CIA concluded in 2018, the crown prince ordered Khashoggi’s assassination. He was lured into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, where a hit team, including members of Mohammed’s personal security detail, used a bone saw to dismember him.”

But according to President Trump … “things happen.”

We live in a complicated world. Aligning America with Saudi Arabia has its benefits. Sometimes we have to do business with nasty characters. But writing off the cold-blooded murder of a “controversial” journalist with “things happen” is simply disgraceful.

But so was Donald Trump’s observation about John McCain. As things turned out back then, Mr. Trump didn’t cross a line — not one that involved his political survivability, anyway. And his “things happen” line now about the brutal killing of Jamal Khashoggi won’t cross any line either — except the line involving decency.

But that line has never meant much to our president.

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him @BernardGoldberg.