Jared and the other crown prince
by digby
Now we know why Trump likes the new Saudi Arabian despot so much.
“The Saudi Vision 2030 is increasingly turning out to be a failure in economic terms. It has more and more the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme. This new city, Neom, in the Gulf of Aqaba that is supposed to attract five hundred billion dollars of investment and where normal rules of Saudi society aren’t going to apply—meaning women can do things—will have more robots than people. This isn’t serious. This is the kind of thing used to divert people from the real issues,” Riedel said.And the consequences look like they may be perfectly Trumpian too:
The Crown Prince’s regional strategy has also either stalled or backfired, too. “His signature policy is the Yemen war, which has come home to haunt Riyadh,” Riedel, now at the Brookings Institution, said. “Its Qatar blockade is a failure. It wants Qatar to be like Bahrain, just an appendage. And Qatar hasn’t given in.”
As David Ignatius wrote in The Washington Post on Sunday, the 32-year-old crown prince has developed a special relationship with the person closest to holding that title in America - Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser.
According to Ignatius, the Saudi royal was emboldened to make his move by the support he has received from members of Trump’s inner circle, who view him as “a kindred disrupter of the status quo” with a Trump-like combination of populism and personal wealth. Kushner is seen as key among these backers, and spent days with the prince during a trip to the kingdom last month. “The two princes are said to have stayed up until nearly 4 a.m. several nights, swapping stories and planning strategy,” Ignatius reported.What could go wrong?