In the Wall Street Journal’s headline Thursday, Saudi Arabia announced it would ramp up oil production, “setting the stage for Joe Biden’s visit” to Saudi President Mohammed bin Salman before the end of the month.
It “marks a reversal for Biden, who repeatedly criticized Saudi Arabia for the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” a Washington Post columnist. “As a candidate in 2020, Biden said he would make them pay and make them outcasts.”
Bloomberg and others had already been projecting Biden’s visit to MBS as part of a negotiation to stem the “U.S. gasoline price spiral” months before the midterm elections.
On Thursday, the New York Times initially only reported the White House’s response, by spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre, that “Biden remains committed to making Saudi Arabia a pariah after the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.”
It wasn’t true, the paper showed hours later, confirming that “Biden will travel to Saudi Arabia, ending his pariah status,” which ended up in the headlines. And “he will meet with Mohammed bin Salman, who was held responsible for the murder.”
DEMOCRACY ‘IN A VERY PASSIONATE WAY’
Reuters highlighted from Washington that “Biden and Bolsonaro will have broad talks at the Summit of the Americas” next week. The White House cited “food security, climate change and recovery from the pandemic,” the agency said.
That is, the American will not prioritize democracy in the meeting of both. “The offer of a bilateral meeting [por Biden] helped convince Bolsonaro, according to people familiar with the matter”, to be at the summit – which was threatened with failure, due to low attendance.
“Asked whether Biden would raise concerns about Bolsonaro’s questioning of the electoral system, his adviser for Latin America, Juan Gonzalez, said only that the US ‘has confidence in Brazil’s electoral institutions,'” the agency recorded.
CNN Brasil interviewed the Itamaraty’s Secretary for the Americas, Pedro Miguel da Costa e Silva, who is negotiating the meeting and also foresees “many topics of a rich, positive, varied agenda”. Asked about “how the US sees the elections”, he replied:
“In the contact I had, in the high-level dialogue with the two American undersecretaries, it was treated in a very fleeting way, in which they highlighted the trust they have in Brazilian democracy. That was all that was said. There was no debate on this topic. .”
