US\u2009President Donald Trump made an undiplomatic remark about close ally Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, saying he warned Saudi Arabia\u2019s King Salman he would not last in power \u201cfor two weeks\u201d without the backing of the U.S. military.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe protect Saudi Arabia. Would you say they\u2019re rich. And I love the King, King Salman. But I said \u2018King – we\u2019re protecting you – you might not be there for two weeks without us – you have to pay for your military,\u2019\u201c Trump said to cheers at a rally in Southaven, Mississippi.<\/p>\n
Trump did not say when he made those remarks to the Saudi monarch.<\/p>\n
Despite the harsh words, the Trump administration has had a close relationship with Saudi Arabia, which it views as a bulwark against Iran\u2019s ambitions in the region.<\/p>\n
Trump made Saudi Arabia his first stop on his maiden international trip as president last year.<\/p>\n
Trump called King Salman on Saturday and they discussed efforts being made to maintain supplies to ensure oil market stability and global economic growth, according to Saudi state news agency SPA.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia is the world\u2019s top oil exporter and the de facto leader of OPEC, which has been criticized by Trump for high oil prices.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month, Trump said OPEC members were \u201cas usual ripping off the rest of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe defend many of these nations for nothing, and then they take advantage of us by giving us high oil prices. Not good. We want them to stop raising prices, we want them to start lowering prices,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US\u2009President Donald Trump made an undiplomatic remark about close ally Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, saying he warned Saudi Arabia\u2019s King Salman he would not last in power \u201cfor two weeks\u201d without the backing of the U.S. military. \u201cWe protect Saudi Arabia. Would you say they\u2019re rich. And I love the King, King Salman. But I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43679,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43680,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43678\/revisions\/43680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}