All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I'm the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism, and I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy, and all available for you at scotthorton.org.
You can sign up for the podcast feed there, and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthortonshow.
All right, you guys, introducing Ben Freeman.
He's from the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative.
That's not boring.
It just sounds like a bunch of words, but wait a minute.
It's the Center for International Policy, and they're not hawks.
They're all right, and this is called the Saudi Lobby in 2020, and that is, Ben's speciality is foreign governments and their influence in Washington, D.C.
It's a hell of a lot more than we have.
I know that.
Welcome back to the show.
How you doing, Ben?
I'm doing great, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
Happy to have you here.
Great work as always.
The Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative, and when you say that, you really mean it.
I read through here the part where you talked about how you did this, and it was you and your staff went poring through all of the firsthand sources as best as you could from government records detailing who is lobbying on behalf of Saudi Arabia in this case, and then, so tell us all about that, and also in there somewhere if you could work in an answer about how much lobbying takes place within that system versus without it.
Oh, man, that's a good one.
Okay, I'll try to work it in, Scott.
Yeah, basically what we did in this analysis, we went through every single one of the Foreign Agents Registration Act filings.
Those are the FARA filings you hear about.
We went and looked at every one of those that was done on behalf of Saudi Arabia.
Now, this was literally hundreds of documents and thousands of pages we had to look through, and we tracked everything.
We followed the money from the foreign government, from Saudi Arabia to these firms, and then we followed the money from the firms that was going out to members of Congress and campaign contributions, and we also followed what they were doing, what they were up to, what FARA calls political activities.
We tracked 2,834 of them done just on behalf of the Saudis by these firms.
What we found from this analysis, it's pretty, I think even by the Saudi lobby standards, it's pretty incredible.
We found that they were active in almost half of the states in the U.S., 22 different states they've really branched out into now, and they were still contacting members of Congress over 700 times, too.
You name it, from K Street to Congress to Main Street America, the Saudis were seemingly everywhere in 2020.
Yeah.
And then, so $13 million, sounds like a lot to me, but can you really bribe a whole world empire with 13 million lousy bucks?
Scott, I think I've said it before on your show, but I got no problem saying it again.
We're cheap.
We'll sell out real cheap here in the U.S., and what I mean by that is it really doesn't take a lot to move some of these lobbying firms, to get them to work on behalf of this brutal regime, this brutal Mohammed bin Salman.
In fact, when the National Intelligence Committee comes out with this report about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, and they confirm, in fact, it went all the way up to Mohammed bin Salman, some of the people that they named in between him and guys further down were people that had actually signed contracts with some of these lobbying firms that we analyzed.
They were asked about it afterwards, they were like, hey, are you going to keep working for him?
And they said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're going to keep working for him, and you know that they were just implicated in the murder of Khashoggi, right?
And they said, yeah, yeah, we're aware of that, but they're going to go ahead and keep taking their $100,000 a month retainers.
How do you like that?
Well, money is green, you can trade it for stuff.
And now, one of the things you talked about before on the show was a lot of the times they have a workaround where they just hire lawyers and have the lawyers make the donations, and then it becomes how opaque who the lawyers are working for.
You could still look that up, or you've got to find that out.
Yeah, yeah, you still have to look it up.
Unfortunately, we did the hard work for you and your listeners.
If you check out the report, we- But I mean, those lawyers, you're saying, in other words, they do have to report that even when it's not a lobbyist, it's a lawyer doing it, it's essentially categorized in the same sort of place where you can find it for us, at least?
Yeah, that's right.
They report the campaign contributions in these FARA filings.
So what we do then, we take all that money, they've got to report all their campaign contributions, and they also have to report any time they meet with a member of Congress.
And so we sort of play connect the dots here, and we see what matches up, how it matches up.
And basically what we found in this report, as we found previously when I've talked to you in other reports, is that the money tends to follow who they're contacting.
The money goes to the elected officials that they're contacting on behalf of the Saudis.
In fact, we found 34 different members of Congress who both met with Saudi lobbyists and received campaign contributions from them.
And these times aren't that far apart either.
In fact, we found 11 cases where a member of Congress or their staff was contacted by a Saudi lobbying firm on the exact same day they received a campaign contribution from that firm.
In some cases, it was the exact lobbyist who met with a member of Congress who's making that campaign contribution.
So it's like they're not even trying to hide it in some cases.
But as I think I've said before on your show, Scott, unfortunately, all of this is perfectly legal.
It is illegal for a foreign government or a foreign national to give money directly to a political campaign.
What it's not illegal to do is for them to hire a lobbyist who can then make a campaign contribution to those same members of Congress that they need to influence.
That still today is perfectly legal.
It's amazing.
And then, and I always still get a kick out of how low these prices are.
I remember reading that Lockheed spends $14 million.
That was one year back.
I don't know when, 2009 or something.
I just, are you kidding me?
$14 million?
I'm not good at decimal points on the fly and all that kind of thing, but that's the slightest bit of the money that they cash in government checks in the first place that then they have to turn around and recycle back into bribing the government to keep sending them those checks.
I mean, man, what a racket.
You're talking tens of billions a year, hundreds of billions a year, even for Lockheed from the government.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, the return on investment is amazing.
I think that the last figures I saw, I think it was over $40 billion in 2020 government contracts for Lockheed.
And so if you start to do the math like you just did, like the return on investment there, man, it's pretty good.
And it really is just steak dinners and maybe a little companionship at night, a little bit of cocaine.
And that's really it, right?
I mean, yeah, you certainly hear some crazy stories like that, for sure.
You know what?
Here, let's have a real nice steak and some wine and then you're going to do what I want.
And then the congressman, it's not his money.
What the hell does he care?
You're going to finance my opponent if I don't, right?
Okay.
Right.
Right.
I mean, the other thing they do, too, like the interesting thing that we found with this research, too, is like speaking of Lockheed Martin, you know, a lot of the firms that Lockheed hires to lobby for them are the same firms that some of these foreign governments are hiring.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For example, the McKeon Group, it was founded by former House Armed Services Committee chairman Buck McKeon.
His firm works for both the government of Saudi Arabia and Lockheed Martin.
So when Buck McKeon walks into some of his former colleagues office, because he was a congressman.
He used to work with all these folks.
When he walks into one of their offices and he says, hey, man, go ahead and push through that Saudi arms sale, he's hitting the button for two of his clients, not just one.
Two for one special for Buck McKeon.
Awesome.
Hold on just one second.
Be right back.
So you're constantly buying things from Amazon.com.
Well, that makes sense.
They bring it right to your house.
So what you do, though, is click through from the link in the right hand margin at ScottHorton.org and I'll get a little bit of a kickback from Amazon's end of the sale.
Won't cost you a thing.
Nice little way to help support the show.
Again, that's right there in the margin at ScottHorton.org.
Hey, you want to know what industry is recession proof?
Yes, you're right.
Of course, pot.
Scott Horton here to tell you about Green Mill Super Critical Extractors.
The SFE Pro and Super Producing Parallel Pro can be calibrated to produce all different types and qualities of cannabis crude oils for all different purposes.
These extractors are the most important part of your cannabis oil business.
For precision, versatility, and efficiency.
GreenMillSuperCritical.com.
Hey, y'all.
Scott here to tell you about Zippix Toothpicks.
They're full of nicotine is the thing about it.
Personally, I miss the stuff terribly and I'm really looking forward to getting back on it.
Seems like they'd be perfect for smokers and vapors who can't afford to stop working and go outside for a break all the time, or for those traveling in planes, trains, and buses and ferries and such.
It's the most affordable way to get your nicotine on the market and they taste great and come in all different flavors.
Use promo code Scott Horton and get 10% off Zippix Toothpicks at ZippixToothpicks.com.
What about the Israel Lobby and their overlap here?
Israel Lobby doesn't do a lot with Saudi Arabia.
It's an interesting time to talk about the Israel Lobby with everything that's going on there right now.
I actually haven't heard a lot coming out of the Israel Lobby in the last few days.
There's not a lot of overlap between the Israel Lobby and the Saudi Lobby because a lot of what the Israel Lobby does, it's sort of a domestic base and so they don't have to register a lot of their work under FARA.
So we don't see a lot of the same firms overlapping with them in the Saudis.
I guess, yeah, they get to play everything the other way.
They're like, hey, we're the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
It's fine.
Right.
There's a reason the A is first.
What a scam.
Same as always.
So, yeah, this is the funny thing about Mike Flynn, right?
They framed him for treason and all these lies.
But the deal was actually that he was representing Turkey and even crossing the line, even after he'd been named the incoming designated national security adviser for Trump, he's still cashing in on representing the Turks and even, you know, their whole intrapolitical war with what's his name?
The imam in exile.
I forgot.
Gulen.
Yes, exactly.
Thank you.
Yeah.
You know, taking sides, cashing checks to take sides and all that right as he's coming into power and all that got obscured as corrupt as that was with the false accusations that he was a traitor on behalf of the Russians, which was the most insane, preposterous accusation that you could probably make up.
But anyway, this guy was a former head of the DIA telling me works for Putin.
If you're really telling me that, then sorry, I'm off on a tangent, but it seems like the consequences would be much swifter, much more severe if that was actually true.
Right.
Yeah.
No, that's not what this is at all.
OK, sorry.
Anyway.
Right.
Yeah.
Now you're right now.
I'm sorry.
So tell me this, man.
What kind of organized peace groups can afford to pay how much in this kind of lobbying?
I know there are other means of different levels of effect.
Is there any competition saying to the Congress, listen, you don't have to take Saudi money, take ours to vote against what they want, and you'll be just as whole on the bottom line there and it'll be fine.
No, we're we're we're so outgunned.
No pun intended.
It's not even funny.
Even thinking in the think tank landscape where I work, you know, organizations like the Center for International Policy, the Quincy Institute and some others who are where I guess I'm biased, but I think, you know, we're saying the right things and, you know, having an honest foreign policy that's not driven by defense manufacturers and warmongers.
We're so outgunned in the think tank space because that the think tanks are splashing our I'm sorry, the defense contractors are splashing money all around town at think tanks too.
And so when we get to the debate of ideas, you know, a lot of times our voices that, you know, the voices for for for peace and sensibility are often drowned out by the war industry.
Yeah.
Well, it's the biggest honeypot in the history of the world.
That's what William S. Lind called it.
And I can't think of a bigger one.
No, no, for sure.
I mean, when you look at defense contracting, you're talking half of the DOD budget now goes to contractors.
Half.
And so we're talking about over three hundred billion dollars that's going out in contracts on an annual basis.
That's just extraordinary.
You know, that's more money just to those contractors than any other government agency.
It's unbelievable the scale here.
Yeah.
And of course, it just means that much less accountability because it's the responsibility is diffused in that many more places.
So you know, you have a government project mixed then with the direct profit motive of private companies to just where the whole game is, who can embezzle how much?
I mean, what other game would they be playing?
Providing an effective service at a reasonable price or something like that?
Come on.
Why would you do that if you can just buy your influence for pennies on the billion dollars?
And in some cases, it cannot be profitable to provide the product on time as requested because you can make so much more money, you know, modifying it later, you know, with delays, you know, change orders, all these other things can it can up the cost.
The taxpayers are footing the bill, but for some of these contractors, you know, it can be profitable to have these delays and these these changes after market.
Yeah.
Which, by the way, the headline today in Defense One, they're ditching the F-22.
Yeah, okay, we got to admit the F-35 is a piece of garbage, but the F-22, it's great.
Yeah, it's really not that great.
We're going to go ahead and get rid of that.
In fact, they're saying they're going to keep the F-35.
That's the joke.
They're going to keep the F-35, get rid of the F-22, and then F-16s and F-15s.
What's an NGAD?
I'm afraid to ask.
Oh, the next generation fighter.
They're just beginning to screw us on here.
Right.
We've not yet begun to be pleased on that one.
I think about that.
Just beginning a brand new F-22 slash F-35 type project for the next jet after that.
And they've been working on these since 1987 or something.
Yeah, yeah.
I was just talking with somebody about this the other day about the F-35.
The first time the F-35 program got funded was in 1996.
Twenty-five years ago, we taxpayers started paying for this plane that is still not fit for combat.
And so before it's even fit for combat, we're told that we're going to start another program for the next generation.
How can we possibly have confidence in this system?
Yeah, I have no idea.
And by the way, I'm pretty sure I'm right that 87 is involved here in the sense that that was at least when it was first proposed and drafted up that this is going to be our next fighter.
I'm surprised it took them that long to start funding it.
But I think I had that right still, that it was the end of the Reagan years, even before Bush Sr.
I think that was the F-22.
Yeah.
I'm sorry?
I think that was the F-22.
Oh, okay.
I think you're right that 87 was the first year of the F-22 funding.
Which is also incredible, you know?
Right.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, Robert Gates gave a speech where he's like, you can't even bomb anything with an F-22.
You can only shoot air to air missiles with the thing.
I mean, what is it good for?
Except it looks good in a Transformers movie for an, you know, Army or Air Force recruitment pitch.
But otherwise, the thing is useless.
We bomb people on the ground who can't possibly fight back with Air Forces.
You know, that's the history of American wars.
People can read that speech.
You know, Robert Gates says he's canceling the F-22.
He wants to focus on the F-35, which, of course, can't hit anything on the ground either.
But at least it's supposed to be able to.
And that's the real qualitative difference we're talking about here.
Right.
Right.
Where it gets frustrating for me, too, is that I think what gets lost, or maybe it's a little less known when we talk about the military-industrial complex, is that I want to add an F into it to say the military-industrial foreign influence complex.
Because a lot of these governments, you know, they're lobbying in lockstep with the big defense manufacturers on a lot of these weapons programs.
And, you know, their big, you know, the foreign influence industry is a half-billion-dollar industry in and of itself.
And so, you know, when you have this multimillion-dollar Saudi lobbying operation that's in there with a multimillion-dollar Lockheed operation also in there with a multimillion-dollar Raytheon lobbying operation, man, like, the deck is just stacked against you if you're somebody that's in there to lobby for peace.
Or are that just a lobby for sensible spending of taxpayer dollars?
The deck is just really stacked against people like us now, unfortunately.
Yeah.
Okay, you guys, check it out.
The new book is finally done.
Enough already.
It's time to end the war on terrorism.
It's available in paperback and Kindle.
Also, the audiobook is coming, although that might take a little while.
For all those who participated in the big fundraiser of 2019, I have the list, and you will be getting all your stuff as soon as my boxes of wholesale copies arrive.
Thank you so much to everybody for your support of the show and of the Libertarian Institute.
And I hope you like the book.
Hey, guys, Scott Horton here for ExpandDesigns.com.
Charlie Abbott and his crew do an outstanding job designing, building, and maintaining my sites, and they'll do great work for you.
You need a new website?
Go to expanddesigns.com slash Scott and save 500 bucks.
Hey, guys, check out Listen and Think audiobooks.
They're at listenandthink.com and, of course, on audible.com.
And they feature my book, Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, as well as brand new Out Inside Syria by our friend Reese Ehrlich, and a lot of other great books, mostly by Libertarians there.
Reese might be one exception, but essentially they're all Libertarian audiobooks.
And here's how you can get a lifetime subscription to Listen and Think audiobooks.
Just donate $100 to The Scott Horton Show at scotthorton.org slash donate.
So now, look, the big missing part of this conversation, obviously, is Yemen and backlash against, you know, you mentioned Jamal Khashoggi there, but even part of the backlash against that was people, even in Congress, started paying more attention to Yemen.
Some of them had actually been surprisingly good on it for a while, just because of how absolutely horrible it is.
Someone had made them face that at some point.
And then, so, that means that we're not just talking about the Saudis in any given year, right?
This has kind of reached a fever pitch on Yemen, and they have to really kind of spin and cover for the fact that this Mohammed bin Salman, you know, would be future king for the next 30 years or something.
Usually these kings in Saudi Arabia take over in their 70s or something.
You know, this guy's going to take over in his 30s and be a king, you know, I guess he's in his mid-30s now.
He's going to take over and be the king for decades, maybe, and he's already worn out his welcome with a lot of people here, and they have to somehow cover for that, right?
That's right.
Yeah, that's right.
That's exactly right, Scott.
And is that working?
I mean, they're dumping in more money than ever before because they know they have a crisis with Yemen?
That's a big part of it.
We talk about this a little bit in the report about basically how blunder after blunder for the Saudis has led them to really lack credibility in Washington right now.
You know, so many, and it doesn't matter, Republicans or Democrats right now, seemingly everybody is upset with the Saudis for one reason or another.
And you know, Yemen's a huge one.
It's been an ongoing one.
The blockade of Qatar is another one, Khashoggi, which we mentioned, but also don't forget about a year ago when the pandemic first started, they had this oil war with Russia and they basically dropped the price of oil down to nothing because they went into this oil war with Russia.
That led to this huge backlash from all these members of Congress from oil-producing states too.
So the Saudis, after all this, they basically made a calculated move and they said, we got a beltway problem, we got a D.C. problem, let's take it to the states.
And this is what we found in the report that was so interesting.
They spent more time in middle America, almost twice as much time, almost twice as much political activity they spent outside of D.C. as they did inside D.C.
What they're trying to do now is this sort of, it's kind of like a, I call it a grassroots campaign for a Gulf monarchy.
They're trying to drum up support in places like Iowa, places like Alaska, Maine.
They met with the Maine Lobstermen's Union.
They're meeting with all these, you know, small town kind of businesses, you know, state and local officials too.
What they're trying to do is highlight the business connections that these places have with Saudi Arabia.
You know, nevermind Yemen, nevermind, you know, Khashoggi, nevermind the human rights issues or any of that stuff.
Let's just talk about money and let's just talk about how much money Saudi Arabia can bring to this area.
And then what they're doing, they have another lobbying firm that works for the Saudis who then goes back to D.C. and sends around press releases from these events and tries to basically spin these events off as if they're, or they organically, they just happened on their own, you know, as if the Princess Rima was just invited out there to give a talk and it wasn't completely orchestrated by another Saudi lobbying firm.
And the verdict, frankly, like it's clear why they're doing it, Scott, but I think the verdict is out on whether it's going to work or not and whether they can pull the wool over our eyes once again.
Yeah.
It really is a unique circumstance to have a guy who's starting out this way where he's so guilty of war crimes for the last six years and America's helped him all along.
No question about that.
But you know, and you see it should be difficult for him going forward.
It should be.
I mean, and you know, it's funny, everybody, I think myself, maybe first and foremost, I was very critical of Trump's relationship and his ties with the with the Saudi regime.
And so I was a little hopeful with the Biden administration.
But then one of the first things that we get is when I mentioned earlier that the National Intelligence Assessment regarding Jamal Khashoggi pointed a finger directly at Mohammed bin Salman, you know, said he was to blame.
And then we all sort of sat there for 24 hours and we're like, OK, you told us he did it.
Now, what are you going to do?
You're going to punish him?
And then the Biden administration comes out and says, no, we're not going to punish Mohammed bin Salman.
And so it was almost like, you know, it's such a backhanded thing to do to say you're going to provide it.
You're going to say you have the evidence that goes directly to him and yet you're not going to do anything about it.
Right.
Very frustrating.
Yeah.
Well, and they claim that they were calling off all support for Saudi other than helping them shoot down incoming drones and missiles, but that they would cease all support for Saudi's war in Yemen.
And then a month later, Admiral Kirby said, well, we're still, of course, providing maintenance for their air force, which was one of the four things on the list that supposedly they were stopping doing.
And then, no, of course not.
We're still leading from behind in that war as ever.
Right, right.
Exactly.
I sort of knew when they made that announcement and they use the word offensive operations and I sort of chuckled to myself like, oh, OK, so we're just going to pretend that we're not going to help him anymore.
Got it.
I mean, I really thought that because there's so much pressure on this against the Democrats on this, it wasn't like out of the good of Andrew, not Andrew, Jake Sullivan's heart or anything like that, but that there's so much pressure on the Democrats.
And it's really it's just a few things on the list, right?
Resupply of bombs, maintenance, and then all the intelligence and logistics help.
And if you're calling off all that and Kirby, Admiral Kirby, the spokesman for the Pentagon after Biden's statement a couple of days later, he went down the list and said, we are the president has given us this order.
We are ceasing this support.
And I thought I did.
I thought that that much was true.
At least we'll see how it goes.
But for now, it seems like that order must have really been given to them.
But then I guess not.
And maybe it is just like with Donald Trump, where they can belay whichever order they feel like and just do whatever they want or what.
But it was the same guy, Admiral Kirby, who said, what are we going to have two weeks ago that?
Oh, yeah.
No, of course, we're still working on their planes.
I mean, what do you expect us to do?
Stop that.
Right, right.
We're still hoping to keep the planes in the air that are killing civilians and airstrikes.
No worries.
Exactly.
Yeah, it's all just an abstraction.
Who cares anyway, from their point of view, they just don't even care.
Wouldn't even bother him for a minute, I guess now.
So help make famous the names of some of these firms that work for the Saudis, for Lockheed and these other interest groups.
You mentioned.
Oh, happy to.
Please go ahead.
Yeah, I already mentioned the McKeon Group, which is founded by Buck McKeon, former member of Congress.
But, you know, he's kind of a small player for the Saudis, actually.
The biggest player, then the one that's sort of leading this charge of the Saudis influence campaign in the States is a new player on the scene.
It's a firm out of Iowa called Larsen Shanahan Slivka Group.
They're also known as LS2.
And their primary business is as a public relations firm, kind of in the heartland of America.
And so they're leading this charge.
They're reaching out to local journalists.
They're reaching out to, you know, state and local officials, legislators, chambers of commerce, you know, pretty much anybody you can think of that, you know, that might be kind of a local who's who.
They're getting in touch with them and they're sort of making this stateside roadshow happen for the Saudi embassy.
Behind them, we've got we've got two of kind of the big staples of the Saudi lobbying enterprise.
And one is Corvus Communications.
They're also known as MSL Group.
And Corvus has been with the Saudis since just after 9-11.
Corvus is the firm that, you know, I affectionately think of as the Saudis, you know, seeing the fallout from 9-11 and seeing, you know, all of the, I think, you know, justified anger at them coming out.
This Corvus is the public relations firm.
They hired right after that to kind of do spin control for them after 9-11.
And they've been they've been with them ever since.
And they get a ton of money from the Saudis.
And in fact, one year, just a couple of years ago, right after Khashoggi was killed, actually, they got over 10 million dollars in just a couple of months after Khashoggi was murdered.
They, of course, said it was for work that was previously done.
But it's astounding the amount of money that firm has made from the Saudis.
Yeah, man.
And then, yeah, one thing I meant to mention earlier was I had seen something where I guess the local media even thought it was funny that they had these really slick kind of glossy magazines promoting Saudi and the royal family.
And they were in the tabloid section at the grocery stores for all the housewives to buy there with the National Enquirer and Ms. Magazine or not Ms., whatever, you know, good housekeeping, whatever crap they have there.
It's been a while since I was at one of those checkout lines.
I always go through the self-checkout.
You know what I'm talking about.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The women's magazines there.
And they're stacking them there.
And people were looking at that going, well, who the hell are you trying to persuade in this suburb?
You know, I mean, nobody here even thought about Saudi Arabia before one way or the other.
We don't even care.
And now you're trying to impress us with this weird magazine.
Like what is this?
And you obviously put a lot of money into publishing.
It's all real slick and glossy, full color, you know, high quality print or pages, you know what I mean?
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember this.
And I remember seeing it, too.
I don't do self-checkout.
I guess that that's my confession here.
I'm maybe too lazy.
But I remember seeing that in the counters and having the exact same thought, you know, do they really think this is going to influence folks here?
Do they think, you know, a glossy magazine is really going to do the trick?
Or I mean, number two, do they think somebody would spend five bucks on that thing?
You know, I just don't think most people I go to the grocery store with would bother spending five bucks on on a magazine about Saudi Arabia, regardless of whether they knew some of the stuff that we're talking about here.
Which is just goes to show what gangsters these PR firms are, too.
They're like, look, your highness, we're going to figure out a way to spend all this money.
So come on with it, you know, right, right.
And I think, too, for a lot of these folks, you know, especially somebody like Mohammed bin Salman, you know, he's a little bit of an egomaniac.
And so even if it doesn't work in the traditional sense of, you know, PR changing the narrative for for him, somebody like him, if they can just go back and say, you know, we've got this glossy magazine of you in the Saudi royals, it's in, you know, every grocery store across America.
If they can just come back and say that, you know, that's a win for him and that's a win for him because he'll keep making the paychecks come into their firms.
Yeah.
Well, that's the American way.
All right.
Thanks very much, Ben.
I sure appreciate it.
You bet, Scott.
Always a pleasure.
Have a great day.
Oh, yeah.
All right, you guys.
Thanks so much, Ben Freeman.
And you got to check out this report.
Now I got a page up here.
It's the Saudi lobby in 2020 at the Center for International Policy.
Ben Freeman from the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative.
The Scott Horton Show, anti-war radio can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A., APS radio.com, www.kpfk.com, www.scotthorton.org and www.libertarianinstitute.org.
