In the Oval Office, Donald Trump calls his meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “a great success.” Outside, critics hear something else.

By Carlos Taylhardat | November 19, 2025

As cameras click in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump leans toward Mohammed bin Salman with the ease of someone greeting an old partner, not a controversial ally. The Saudi crown prince, immaculate in white thobe and black bisht, sits inches away. A reporter raises the question everyone knew was coming: Jamal Khashoggi.

Trump waves it off.

“You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about,” he says.

“Whether you liked him or didn’t like him, things happen. But he knew nothing about it. And we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest.”

Within hours, the quotes loop across cable news. Human-rights advocates call it a whitewash. Editorial boards accuse Trump of rewriting history to keep the deals flowing. The president, for his part, calls the encounter “a very positive meeting” and talks up what he describes as billions of dollars in investment, a new defence pact, F-35 fighter jets for the kingdom and the elevation of Saudi Arabia to “major non-NATO ally” status.

That split between Trump’s language of success and others’ alarm is the heart of this story. Some see a bold, transactional partnership with a young reformer who can help stabilise oil markets, counter Iran and anchor a changing Middle East. Others see a dangerous signal that the United States is prepared to forget a murdered journalist and a decade of repression in exchange for jets, jobs and flattering words.

Behind that argument sit two competing narratives about Mohammed bin Salman himself and a quieter “silent story” about what ordinary Saudis and ordinary Americans actually want from each other.

Narrative 1: Mohammed bin Salman, the Progressive Prince

For supporters, the story of Mohammed bin Salman doesn’t begin in the Oval Office. It begins on Saudi streets.

In less than a decade, the crown prince has pushed through a wave of social changes that, to many Saudis under forty, feel revolutionary. The once-feared religious police have been stripped of their power to arrest. Cinemas have reopened after decades. Concerts, mixed-gender events and international sporting tournaments have become fixtures in Riyadh and Jeddah.

Most symbolically, the world’s last ban on women driving ended in 2018. Until then, Saudi Arabia was the only country on earth where women were forbidden by law to drive; thousands relied on chauffeurs just to get to work or take a child to the doctor. Under reforms championed by Mohammed bin Salman and enacted by his father, King Salman, women now hold driving licences, commute to their own jobs and sit, literally, in the driver’s seat of daily life.

All of this sits under the banner of Vision 2030, the state-backed plan to diversify the economy away from oil into tourism, logistics, artificial intelligence, entertainment and high-end services. The kingdom is pouring money into giga-projects such as NEOM on the Red Sea, new cultural districts and the infrastructure needed to host the 2034 FIFA World Cup. For investors and young professionals alike, Saudi Arabia is marketing itself as the G-20’s young, cash-rich outlier.

For many urban Saudis, especially women entering the workforce, these changes are not just slogans. They mean being able to drive themselves to a job in tech, attend a concert with friends, or launch a start-up without navigating layers of petty bureaucracy and informal gatekeepers. In this narrative, Mohammed bin Salman is the impatient son of a generation that moved too slowly, willing to confront conservative clerics and entrenched elites in order to drag his country into the twenty-first century.

Seen from that angle, Trump’s embrace is pragmatic, even overdue. The president praises the crown prince’s “incredible” human-rights record, hails him as “one of the most respected people in the world”, and frames the visit as a cornerstone of his foreign policy. The White House rolls out flyovers, red carpets and a black-tie dinner, and in return, the crown prince talks about boosting Saudi investment in the United States from hundreds of billions to as much as one trillion dollars.

Supporters call this realism. Energy security, defence cooperation and investment, they argue, are too important to be held hostage to one horrific crime from seven years ago. They note that U.S. intelligence had already concluded Mohammed bin Salman was responsible back in 2021; the world did not stop doing business with Saudi Arabia then, and it is not going to now. Better, in this view, to shape his reforms from inside the partnership than to push him toward Moscow or Beijing.

And what about the shadows: the dissidents jailed, the Yemen war, the murdered journalist? In Narrative 1, those are framed as the ugly price of rapid change in a hard part of the world. History, supporters say, is full of leaders who liberalised their societies while keeping a tight grip on politics. The hope is that over time, social and economic opening will create pressure for more space on speech, not less.

Narrative 2: Mohammed bin Salman, the Other Side

The second narrative starts where the first would rather move on: with a bone saw in Istanbul.

In October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi insider turned critic and writer for The Washington Post, walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to pick up documents for his upcoming wedding. He never walked out. Turkish intelligence later described his killing and dismemberment by a team of Saudi agents. A declassified U.S. intelligence assessment in 2021 concluded that Mohammed bin Salman had approved an operation to “capture or kill” Khashoggi.

The crown prince has always denied ordering the murder, while saying he accepts “full responsibility” as the country’s de facto ruler. For his critics, that combination of disavowal and ownership is the point. They see the Khashoggi case not as an aberration but as a window into how power actually works under his rule.

Under Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi authorities have detained clerics, businessmen, intellectuals and even women’s-rights activists who campaigned for the very reforms now advertised as his achievements. The 2017 “Ritz-Carlton purge” saw dozens of princes and tycoons held in a luxury hotel until they signed over assets. The interventions in Yemen, launched while he was defence minister, helped turn an internal conflict into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with airstrikes and blockades contributing to famine conditions.

Critics look at that record and then listen to Trump in the Oval Office. Asked about Khashoggi, the president calls the journalist “extremely controversial”, says “a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman”, insists the crown prince “knew nothing about it”, and admonishes a reporter: “You don’t have to embarrass our guest.” For Khashoggi’s widow and colleagues, it sounds like a second burial — this time of the facts.

From this perspective, the White House pageantry is not just tone-deaf; it is dangerous. By elevating Saudi Arabia to major non-NATO ally status, promising advanced fighter jets and cheering a $1 trillion investment pledge, the United States is sending a message that sheer strategic weight — oil, money and geography — can erase almost anything. When Trump praises the crown prince’s human-rights efforts while rights groups still document long prison terms, travel bans and torture of activists, critics hear the old bargain: one set of values for our friends, and another for everyone else.

In Narrative 2, Mohammed bin Salman is not a two-sided character at all. The social opening and mega-projects are understood as tools of consolidation. Bringing football superstars, global tech CEOs and entertainment brands to Saudi Arabia, this argument goes, is part of a deliberate strategy: make the kingdom so woven into global business and sport that confronting its abuses feels too costly.

Where the first narrative sees a necessary partner leading a risky transformation, the second sees something more familiar: another hard-edged ruler being rewarded for being “our strongman” despite, and sometimes because of, the fear he inspires.

The Silent Story: Lives Between Reform and Repression

Beneath those two loud narratives runs a quieter one: the daily lives of people trying to make sense of both.

For a young Saudi woman working at a new fintech firm in Riyadh, Mohammed bin Salman may genuinely represent opportunity. She can drive herself to the office, travel abroad more easily, and pursue a career that her mother never could. Her city has book fairs, concerts and football matches with international stars. Her Instagram feed bears little resemblance to the Saudi Arabia her grandparents knew.

For her cousin, who posts one too many sharp tweets or questions the wrong decision, the same leader may feel like a constant, invisible threat. Phone calls go oddly quiet. A relative disappears into pre-trial detention. A travel ban arrives without explanation. The line between “modernisation” and “don’t cross this line” is not drawn in public law but in private fear.

Migrant workers see yet another side. They build the stadiums, hotels and towers that symbolise Vision 2030 and the coming World Cup. Labour reforms have improved conditions on paper, but rights groups still document exploitation and abuse. For those workers, debates in Washington about “strategic partners” sound distant from the cramped dormitories and construction sites where they spend their days.

And then there are Americans themselves. Polls show deep scepticism about Saudi Arabia among U.S. voters, especially after Khashoggi’s murder, but also concern about gas prices, jobs tied to arms exports and a lingering belief that the United States should shape events in the Middle East rather than simply react to them. Many people hold both thoughts in their minds at once.

At 3 Narratives News, we wrote recently about how media often split into camps that only tell one side of a story. The Trump–MBS meeting is a stress test for that instinct. If you start the tale with women driving and mega-projects, the crown prince can look like a bold reformer whom America would be foolish to shun. If you begin in a soundproofed room in Istanbul, or in a Yemeni village after an airstrike, you may never get past anger.

The man in the middle does not change between those versions. What changes is which parts of the truth we choose to look at first and how much of the rest we are willing to remember when we decide whether his visit, and Trump’s meeting, were a “great success” or something far more complicated.

Key Takeaways

• In the Oval Office, Donald Trump defended Mohammed bin Salman over Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, saying “things happen” and insisting the crown prince “knew nothing about it”, even as U.S. intelligence has concluded otherwise.
• Supporters of Mohammed bin Salman highlight his Vision 2030 reforms, including lifting the world’s last ban on women driving, curbing the religious police and opening Saudi society to entertainment, tourism and foreign investment.
• Critics see a ruthlessly centralised system in which social opening is paired with mass arrests of dissidents, a devastating war in Yemen and the killing of Khashoggi, making Trump’s warm embrace a worrying signal to other strongmen.
• The new U.S.–Saudi package — from a major non-NATO ally designation to proposed F-35 sales and a $1 trillion investment pledge — deepens strategic ties just as questions about values and accountability resurface.
• Between these narratives lie the quieter experiences of young Saudis, migrant workers and ordinary Americans whose lives are shaped by both the reforms and the repression, and who will live with the long-term consequences of this relationship.

Questions This Article Answers

1. Why did Donald Trump’s latest meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spark such strong reactions at home and abroad?
2. What reforms has Mohammed bin Salman introduced inside Saudi Arabia, including on women’s rights and social life, and how significant are they?
3. What did U.S. intelligence conclude about Mohammed bin Salman’s role in Jamal Khashoggi’s killing, and how do Trump’s comments contrast with that assessment?
4. How do arms deals, investment pledges and the “major non-NATO ally” designation fit into the broader U.S.–Saudi strategic relationship?
5. Who is most affected by the tension between reform and repression in Saudi Arabia, and what gets lost when we focus on only one side of Mohammed bin Salman’s story?

For more on how we navigate competing truths in foreign policy, see our explainer “Who Can We Trust? Legacy Media, Alternative Media and the Case for Two Truths” and our recent piece on Venezuela, “Trump, China and Venezuela: Four Reasons This Standoff Matters.”