Why Are The Rich Obsessed With Saudi Arabia?

Written By Leeja Miller

Sources:

Transcript:

Hi, it’s Wednesday, November 19, 2025, welcome to Why, America? I’m Leeja Miller. Today we’re talking about Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the United States. I don’t often cover these types of visits because it’s mostly a lot of fanfare and not much concrete comes from it, but this one is different and gives me pause because I think his visit highlights a lot of fucked up shit happening with the Trump regime and globally in a way that needs to be called out and examined. From abuses against journalists to looking the other way on severe human rights abuses in the name of accumulating more wealth, Saudi Arabia and its de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman have become normalized on the global scene and in the United States in a way that is indicative of a larger propensity for the rich and powerful of the world to put the rest of us aside any time there is money to be made.

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Okay so back up, here’s what happened over the last couple days to get us here. Yesterday, Tuesday, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, arrived in Washington to much fanfare. Trump and MBS sat down for talks that ranged from national security to nuclear energy to F-35 fighter jets. Together, the two leaders signed a defense pact including the potential sale of up to nearly FIFTY F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia. Lockheed Martin, the manufacturer of the F-35 fighter jet, touts it as “the most advanced fighter jet in the world.” The jets are designed to avoid detection and can be used for stealth attacks against enemy forces on their own soil. Each jet costs 80 to 110 MILLION dollars, each, according to reporting from Al Jazeera. Lots of countries have them, the US of course has the most of them, owning over 2000 of them. Other countries in the EU, plus the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore, and Israel also have a few. And Saudi Arabia wants in on the action. The reason Saudi Arabia hasn’t gotten them in the past is because of various diplomatic concerns, especially regarding Israel. The US and Israel have an understanding, officially called the “qualitative military edge” policy, wherein Israel should always have more firepower than any of its neighbors in the Middle East. Israel has 75 of these F-35s so a sale of 48 to Saudi Arabia technically wouldn’t overpower Israel’s fleet, but it’s a major consideration, especially given the fact that Saudi Arabia has refused to sign onto the Abraham Accords, created during Trump’s first term, which would normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. MBS refused to sign the accords unless the US made promises about Saudi security and agreed to help it develop a nuclear program for civilian needs, which Trump refused to do during his first term. So instead, MBS looked elsewhere, turning to longtime enemy Iran, restoring ties with the country in 2023 with the help of China–essentially playing the power dynamics between China and the US off each other–okay so you won’t help me, US, so I’m going to turn to your powerful rival China for help instead. Iran and China are allies, and now that Saudi Arabia has reconnected with Iran, that has pissed off Israel who also hates Iran. And since Israel has immense sway over US policy in the Middle East, that creates quite a little quagmire for the US to navigate. Which is why, despite Biden’s promises to treat Saudi Arabia like a pariah, Biden as president made an about-face and visited Saudi Arabia in 2022. This was claimed to be to normalize relations between Israel and the rest of the Middle East, but with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and growing sanctions against Russia for its hostile acts, the US desperately needed to find alternative energy to replace the energy produced by Russia and avoid excessive inflation on gas and oil prices. Biden also declared that the US would not walk away from the middle east region because of fears that the power vacuum left would be filled by China, Russia, or Iran.

And then of course there’s the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi was a close advisor to the Saudi royal family and the Saudi government for decades. After falling out of favor, he fled Saudi Arabia for the United States in 2017, where he wrote a monthly column in the Washington Post criticizing Saudi Arabia and MBS directly. In 2018, Khashoggi traveled to Turkey and visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain divorce documents from the Saudi government that would allow him to move forward with marrying his Turkish fiance. He first visited the consulate on September 28 and was told to come back at another time to get his documents. On October 2nd he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and never left. It was later revealed that Saudi operatives inside the consulate tortured, dismembered, and murdered Khashoggi. A UN investigation found that Khashoggi’s murder was quote “an extrajudicial killing for which the state of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is responsible.” And a US intelligence investigation found that the entire murder plot may have been orchestrated by MBS himself, something MBS has vehemently denied. When asked about the murder on Tuesday, Trump told a reporter not to ask such an insulting question and said that Khashoggi was pretty controversial, implying perhaps that it was okay for him to have been murdered. MBS took a more somber tone, saying they have made changes in his government to ensure nothing like that ever happens again, whatever that means.

And the murder of a journalist critical of the state of Saudi Arabia appears to be par for the course of human rights abuses in the country. Obviously a deep dive into the social and political history of Saudi Arabia is beyond the scope of this episode and of my expertise. If you want to do a deep dive, might I suggest checking out America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier by Robert Vitalis or Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power by Bradley Hope & Justin Scheck, and for a look more at the social aspects of Saudi Arabia, there’s Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea, and of course I welcome other recommendations in the comments. But suffice it to say Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses are well known and well documented–though of course many fall through the cracks as is the case anytime a large power commits atrocities against its own people. It ranks second among countries with the highest use of the death penalty as a form of judicial punishment–not many countries still do that as most consider it to be outdated and barbaric, but Saudi Arabia seems to use it with abandon, including to punish members of the LGBTQ community. Women’s freedom of movement is severely curtailed. MBS has been touted as a leader that is “modernizing” Saudi Arabia because he allows women to drive there for the first time, but his willingness to allow certain freedoms is mainly meant to improve his and Saudi Arabia’s reputation abroad and does not represent the full picture of gender discrimination in the country, which is still rampant and violent. Due process is frequently ignored and torture is commonly used during detention. Free speech is severely curtailed, not only for women but also for journalists and activists who are regularly imprisoned for various crimes relating to their exercise of free speech. Protests and demonstrations are also illegal. A spokesperson for Amnesty International stated “Beneath the progressive, glitzy image…lie horrid stories of abuses and violations. The world will not be fooled by sham fanfare.” Unfortunately, however, the world does largely seem to be fooled.

Well, perhaps “fooled” is the wrong word. And it lets the most powerful people on the planet off the hook too easily. “Fooled” implies they were tricked into believing that MBS has reformed the Saudi government and scaled back human rights abuses and so now everything was fine and dandy and the world can open back up for Saudi Arabia. There is nothing to indicate any of the world leaders have been “fooled.” For example, according to The New York Times quote, “After Mr. Khashoggi’s murder, some Western business executives and government officials backed out of Saudi Arabia’s global investment conference, including leaders of major American financial institutions. But by the following year, top deal makers were back at the event in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.” And Tuesday night following Trump’s talks with MBS, Trump threw a lavish black tie dinner at the White House for the crown prince, and the attendance list is indicative of just how willing the most powerful people in the world are to forgive MBS for the whole “ordering the violent murder of a journalist” and “other human rights abuses” thing. Water under the bridge, buddy! The New York Times did a good round up of those in attendance and their ties to Saudi Arabia. There was Elon Musk, who attended as his first return to the White House after his blow up with Daddy Trump. Elon has accepted Saudi investment funds for twitter as well as xAI, and xAI may be in talks with Saudi-backed AI company Humain for future projects. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple was there–Apple has done deals worth upwards of $2 billion dollars with Saudi Arabian companies. Michael Dell of Dell was there, Dell has gleefully partnered with Saudi Arabia, opening a fulfillment center there and is “exploring opportunities” with Saudi state-owned oil company Aramco. Jensen Huang of Nvidia was there, Nvidia has already announced a partnership with Saudi Arabian AI company Humain. Huang actually travelled with the President of the United States to Saudi Arabia back in May. Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, another major computer chip company, was also in attendance and is also in cahoots with the Saudi AI company. Mike Wirth, CEO of Chevron which has extensive ties with Saudi Arabia and its oil, was there. Jane Fraser, CEO of Citibank was there–the bank is cozy with Saudi Arabia and she is also co-chair of the US Saudi Business Council which facilitates business ties between the countries. Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of private equity firm Blackstone was there, because you KNOW the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, where a lot of the riches produced from oil exportation is held, is DEEPLY invested in private equity. And of course Don Jr was in attendance, he acted as liaison to the Gulf States during Trump’s first presidential campaign and he currently manages the Trump Organization, which has ties going back decades with Saudi Arabia and those deals have only ramped up since Trump took office a second time. But of course Trump senior has nothing to do with those deals this is totally valid there is no ethical concerns here.

And then of course, the specter of Jeffrey Epstein, which follows Trump wherever he goes, was floating over the lavish rococo dinner in the white house last night. The full extent of Epstein’s business ties with Saudi Arabia remains unknown, though the release of thousands of pages of messages last week indicated that Epstein also had a cozy relationship with MBS, who once gifted him a whole ass Bedouin tent. Epstein had a picture of himself with MBS prominently displayed in his mansion in Manhattan.

And so, with all this information swirling in our brains, I want to just connect some dots here that highlight just how fucked this all is. Because what we have in common here, between MBS and Trump and the abuses in Saudi Arabia and the people in attendance at last night’s dinner, there are some through-lines. First of all, when journalists question Trump on Epstein and on Khashoggi, there is an easy contempt that Trump uses to lash out at reporters, threatening to sue them or strip their licenses, calling individual reporters “piggy” in front of everyone, and then slyly glancing back at her to see her reaction. While questioning two power-hungry megalomaniacs on the murder of a journalist, a fellow journalist is attacked and silenced. There is no doubt in my mind that Trump admires MBS. He admires his strongman reputation. He admires how he gets away with atrocities relatively unscathed. He admires how he’s convinced the world he’s not so bad and uses his ostentatious wealth to win back favor with anyone he wants. Those are the type of people Trump admires and aspires to be. And I imagine the admiration is mutual, despite the fact that I think most people in positions of power and authority with access to gobs of money around the world think Trump is a fucking idiot. So that’s one, you know, throughline I wanted to point out–human rights abusers just hanging out and admiring other human rights abusers. Of course the extent of human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia are very different from those in the United States under Trump but I’m certain in many ways Trump sees Saudi Arabia as aspirational.

Okay and then the other throughline I wanted to point out is the connection between oil, because it’s always about oil, and the money it produces with tech and AI. The people in attendance at last night’s dinner were there for a reason, because they know that Saudi Arabia is fucking drowning in oil money, and they want a piece of it. Saudi Arabia owns about 20% of the entire planet’s known oil reserves. Aramco, the Saudi-owned oil company, is the most profitable company in the world, with earnings of nearly 200 billion dollars over the last year. Saudi Aramco is followed closely behind Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia in earnings. What do ya know. The only company that has managed to hold its own against the AI bubble is the Saudi-owned oil company. That tells you a lot about the state of the world we are living in and why those people were in that room last night. Not only does the world rely on oil produced in the Middle East to literally run, to power itself, it is also the money created by those oil sales that the major global companies are attempting to tap into, and that MBS is happy to dangle over their heads in order to get what he wants. And in order to get away with whatever human rights abuses he wants. And so even though Nvidia itself isn’t in the market for crude oil, it sure as hell is interested in entering a market that crude oil has flushed with cash, and MBS is happy to oblige so long as it comes with benefits for him and his rich friends in Saudi Arabia, too, as well as these global leaders turning a blind eye to his human rights abuses.

Hell, even Mr. Beast is trying to cash in on Saudi oil profits. He wasn’t at the dinner last night at the White House as far as I know, but I just want to take a moment to acknowledge this fever dream of an advertisement I keep getting fed when I’m trying to just unwind and watch my progrums at night. The advertisement is like if you took a Mr. Beast video and ran it through AI and out pops something so incoherent and flashy that you can’t actually tell what’s going on, but it looks like rides and games, and then Mr. Beast pops up like this weird giant but still you have no idea what the hell is going on, and then it ends with a bunch of call outs to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The first time I saw it I was like what the fuck is this fresh hell. Upon further inspection, it appears Mr. Beast, government name James Donaldson, age 27, has opened an theme park in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, in partnership with the government of Saudi Arabia, which includes the Beast Arena where visitors can engage in the types of games and challenges made famous on Mr. Beast’s YouTube channel. On the official “Visit Saudi” instagram, Donaldson makes the announcement that the park would open Nov. 13th while donning what appear to be a fresh set of the multi-millionaire special: veneers that are impossibly white and just a touch too large for the wearer’s head. The end of the video once again features the sponsors of BeastLand, which include the country of Saudi Arabia as well as commercial partners Dunkin Donuts, Coca Cola, and Dominos pizza among others. Watching the announcement generates a dystopic out of body experience where the 4th wall of late stage capitalism is broken and for one gleaming moment you feel the true weight of the hell on earth that extractive exploitative capitalism has wrought upon all of us.

And that is indicative of a larger lesson from this MBS visit to the White House. When you take a step back from the fanfare and the centimillionaires and billionaires filling the newly Gilded white house and all the pomp and circumstance and glitz and glamour you have a western country, a country in the “global north”, the United States and the many billionaires it has produced, attempting to continue to extract wealth from the Middle East by whatever means necessary. Upwards of 40% of the entire Saudi Arabian economy is made up of oil exports. That level of dependence on a single export creates instability. It means that while MBS and his cronies get to live in lavish riches, Saudi Arabia is one of the most unequal countries in the world when it comes to wealth disparity. Only a few people at the top get to enjoy the riches created by oil extraction, and many at the bottom have to live with the consequences of environmental degradation, with poverty and unemployment. This is the fate of countries the world over that have been exploited for their natural resources and left to rot when those resources ran out or the world discovered something new and shiny elsewhere.

DAWN is an organization founded by the late Jamal Khashoggi to advocate for human rights in the Middle East, they recently published an article on MBS’s visit to the White House saying quote “Those who casually describe Saudi Arabia as "changing" rarely explain what has actually improved. The right for women to drive, for instance, was not a generous gift from the ruler but the outcome of years of struggle and sacrifice by activists who endured exile, imprisonment, travel bans and torture. After the ban was lifted, many of those same women were detained and abused.

Likewise, the regime's highly publicised "social openness"—concerts, festivals and public events—serve mainly to whitewash repression, not to expand freedoms. If entertainment and cultural expansion were truly the objectives, they would be accompanied by political and civil reforms. Instead, citizens remain unable to question government decisions, criticize spending or discuss the realities of unemployment, inflation and growing poverty among the working class.”

“Indeed, the so-called "progressive" leader's reception in Washington has advanced only through such repression. Saudi Arabia is now enduring its harshest era of crackdowns, executions and censorship. Executions have reached record levels, even as state media once celebrated promises to limit the death penalty. Claims that arrests have declined ignore the grim reality that no activists remain free to be detained—nearly all have been silenced or have been forced to flee the country.”

That is the reality on the ground in Saudi Arabia while MBS and the richest people on the planet are wined and dined at the White House. And the reality is that everyone in that room knows, to some extent, that human rights abuses are happening in Saudi Arabia. They know that ample evidence exists to show the MBS probably ordered Khashoggi’s killing. They know that Trump wishes to be an MBS-like strongman here at home. They know that their dollars will go towards supporting a violent, oppressive regime both in the US and in Saudi Arabia and they do not care. It’s not about awareness, or telling them hey do you know where your dollars are going?? They don’t care, they never have and they never will. And I think that’s important to say because there were many years, many decades frankly especially after World War II here and in Europe including well into my lifetime, where the general public at large were lulled into believing that major corporations and their leaders operated from a place of at least disinterested benevolence. That except for you know whichever major oil producer is implicated in the latest spill or when court cases brought forth evidence of horrific abuse or widescale environmental contamination, aside from those isolated incidents there was a belief that a lot of corporations really bought into those Corporate Social Responsibility programs and those Diversity Equity and Inclusion programs, that women and minorities really mattered to them, that they cared about ethics, that they really did want to save the Amazon and ethically source their products and packaging, that they genuinely believed that their products could change the world for the better, that they really thought their employees were one big family. Not everyone bought into the narrative, of course, but I think with COVID, with Trump, with AI, and with the growing wealth inequality happening around the world and in our own country, that facade has been completely torn away. It is apparent to I think most of us, most of the general public, that profits are always the sole motivator. Profits over people, always. And it has become very apparent especially now that the second Trump administration has given them permission to drop the DEI facade and say how they really feel that not only do these companies not care, there is a palpable disdain for everyday people. As private businesses have been allowed to get away with harmful practices, as worker protections have been stripped away, as monopolization has run rampant, is has become clearer and clearer how much they fucking hate all of us. And they are getting more and more comfortable with being very blatant with their disdain. They fucking hate paying their workers any more than they are forced to, they will get cutthroat the SECOND there are murmurs of unionization, they will cut DEI programs and benefits the first second they are able to, they will lay off as many humans as possible in favor of AI that delivers worse products and services. They fucking hate their workers. But they also fucking hate all of us their consumers as well. They will bump up prices at the first opportunity to as high as they can possibly go. They will cut back on quality and cut corners wherever possible. They will lace shit with as many toxins as they can get away with if it means fewer steps for them and greater profits. Like at least, you know, in the 90s and prior to that these companies at least TRIED to make it seem like they gave a shit about us. Like think of Starbucks–in the 90s it was like the archetype of a business that really did a good job at seeming to give a shit about both its workers and its customers, attempting to create an inviting atmosphere, making baristas feel like members of a team, and people really bought into that shit. And I haven’t been into a starbucks in a long time but they are fucking hell holes now like no one enjoys being inside a Starbucks because it is clearly meant to be an experience that happens as quickly as possible at the lowest expense possible for the company, highest expense possible for the customers. Businesses get away with giving us crappier and crappier experiences and products for higher and higher prices because they can. Because the government that needs to step in and regulate against monopolization, labor abuses, price fixing, and other issues has been completely overrun with the very businesspeople who benefit from the lack of regulations.

And sorry I know we’ve gone off on a tangent but this does relate to MBS’s visit because it is a symptom of a larger issue wherein we have major tech giants and oil magnates scheming in public about how to fuck all of us over in order to enrich themselves further. How can new businesses come in and exploit Saudi Arabia for its resources or cheap labor. How can MBS further control and abuse his citizens and accrue military might in his region. Everything, all of this, all of geopolitical bullshit all of politics internal and external it is all a game being played by a small group of elite individuals who stand to gain even MORE money than any one human could ever spend in a lifetime and the “will of the people” has absolutely fucking jack shit to do with it. And this isn’t new with the Trump regime. Some of the abuses happening here on the ground are new. The feeling of instability is new. But Biden was also quick to skip on over to Saudi Arabia if it suited the geopolitical interests of wealthy leaders and the business owners who own them. And I think it’s important that we see that for what it is. Similarly to how we had been successfully lulled for many decades into believing that some businesses and wealthy philanthropists really do give a shit about the rest of us, we have also been lulled into thinking that this country is run by politicians who give a shit about us, too. Because we live in a democracy! What an amazing thing! A government by and for the people! We the people of the United States! All men are created equal! But in reality democracy has always ALWAYS been conditional to the whims of the ruling class. The extent to which THEY are willing to allow democracy completely dictates how this country functions. And they will ALWAYS put profits over people. Always. They will always show allegiance first and foremost to their class. Period full stop. And this has always been true but I feel like COVID has compounded with this second Trump administration to really strip away that veneer for a lot of us, myself included, I truly feel I have been radicalized especially in the last 11 months of this regime, and I think that’s apparent in the content I’ve been making. I grew up thinking George Bush was the worst and Obama was there to save us. I was absolutely lulled from a young age into feeling hope that it was through electoral politics and inspiring politicians like Obama and the two party system that the working class would find salvation but that has never been the case and it doesn’t matter who’s in the White House. In politics, EVERYTHING is a calculated power move, and power and democracy are never freely given unless first the people demand it and THEN the people in power figure out how they can coopt it and spin it into something that benefits them, either by giving a small concession in order to lull the people back into compliance or by somehow managing to capitalize on the message. In part, this is kind of the reality of politics–everyone has to compromise in order to make a system where millions of people exist function. Sometimes “giving a concession in order to lull people into compliance” is just a way to manage a state with many people with competing desires. How do we create equilibrium so that people have a general sense of stability. And I think that worked for a lot of people–white people mostly–for many decades, but the extent of the wealth stratification we are now experiencing makes it impossible to believe any sense of benevolence or policy made for the “common good” coming from this government. Even if a Democrat takes power in 2028 and somehow manages to undue the destruction of the Trump administration, it will be very difficult to convince the electorate that anyone in Washington gives two fucks about any of us out here unless and until we manage to get money out of our politics. Because money will always corrupt the system, and has always corrupted the system. And given how deeply entrenched the wealthy elite are in our politics, in both parties, given how much power they have through sheer concentration of resources, I sincerely don’t see a way in which the people would ever be put first again in this system, because we don’t matter to them and in fact we are an inconvenience to them. And that’s all I could think about looking at this gaudy White House dinner for MBS last night.

And we do have to continue living in a society that has a government, so I still think we have a civic obligation to tune into politics, to try to vote for people who might actually represent us, but it’s also important to rely, once again I know I’m a broken record, to rely on our communities, to find our voice and our power outside of the mainstream political system. They aren’t going to save us, we save us, and we do so through building community and relying on each other.

And if you’d like to support my work, consider joining here on YouTube by clicking the big join button below, or supporting me over on Patreon, patreon dot com slash Leeja miller, where you get access to all these episodes completely ad free. Thank you to my multi-platinum patrons Marc, Sarah Shelby, Art, David, L’etranger (Lukus), Thomas Johnson, and Tay. Your generosity makes this channel what it is, so thank you!

And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from Monday about the Epstein files.

Leeja Miller
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