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LISTEN: Khashoggi Praises Bernie Sanders in ‘Secret’ Interview

The journalist Rula Jebreal has revealed that she did a “secret” interview with Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi before his disappearance. Jebreal did the interview as part of a larger story she was writing for Newsweek about Saudi Arabia, Khashoggi’s homeland. On October 19, Newsweek decided to make the audio of the interview public. You can listen to that audio here, and you can also read the full transcript here. The full story, on Newsweek’s site, is available to read here.

Jebreal doesn’t say exactly when she carried out the interview with Khashoggi. She writes that she didn’t put it up sooner because they were speaking in confidence; the interview was never meant to become public. But after Saudi Arabia confirmed that Khashoggi was dead, Jebreal changed her mind, and said she wants everyone to hear Khashoggi.

During the interview, Jebreal asked Khashoggi about the need for reform in Saudi Arabia. Khashoggi said that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, is basically just a “tribal leader” with no true interest in reform.

And Khashoggi said that part of the problem is that nobody in Saudi Arabia can stand up to the crown prince. He said there is also no real pressure being brought to bear on him by the international community. Khashoggi said that in the United States, the only politician who seriously criticizes MBS is Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator and one-time presidential candidate.

Khashoggi told Jebreal, “First of all, there is no political movement in Saudi Arabia that could pressure him, number one. And the world is happy with him. Do you see anybody in America except for Bernie Sanders who is calling for putting pressure on MBS? I only saw Bernie Sanders, but no one else.”

https://youtu.be/OLODW9JsExQ

Sanders and Warren are heading for a stand-off

Bernie Sanders thinks he has a lock on his supporters. Elizabeth Warren thinks she can get enough of them, and enough elsewhere to run regardless. Allies and supporters are anxious they’ll destroy both their chances, and kneecap progressive politics along the way.

Some close to Sanders feel like Warren was trying to muscle him out of the race, and laugh at the idea that she will be able to compete with him for his supporters. Some close to Warren feel like Sanders has an outsized sense of his power over the nomination and his chances to actually win it or beat Donald Trump.

“She’s engaged in a chess game where she’s moving her pawns around and she’s trying to demonstrate to many people, including Bernie, that not only is she running, but is fully capable of running, and is so far ahead that you should just give in to her,” said one key player in Sanders’ world.

Warren’s opening flop last week with her DNA test has his team thinking she might not be so hard to beat after all.

Sanders hasn’t decided about running, though it weighs heavily on him to make sure Trump loses. Part of the thinking behind his week-long cross-country tour campaigning for other candidates is testing how much his appeal has held up (so far, to over-packed overflow rooms). As Sanders decides whether to run again, advisers often cite the 45 percent of the primary vote he got in 2016, though the senator himself thinks less about getting deference from his performance two years ago than drawing on the strength he’s continued to build since.

He and Warren are ideological allies who have developed a good working relationship—not friends, but warmer with each other than most senators are. He respects her, thinks she gets it, despite the distinctions she’s recently made to point out that she, unlike the Democratic socialist from Vermont, is “a capitalist.” Sanders invited her to appear at a few events he hosted. They did some web videos together. Showdowns were avoided, like when Sanders declined to endorse his old ally Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic primary for Ohio governor earlier this year because it would have put him at odds with Warren, who had immediately backed her protégé Richard Cordray in the race.

Warren is close to pulling the trigger on a run, and spent the last two years putting together the pieces for a campaign, accelerating since the end of the summer. This included some deliberate overtures to Sanders’ world, like reaching out to Nina Turner, the former Ohio state senator who now runs the Sanders-inspired group Our Revolution, and to RoseAnn DeMoro, the former head of the National Nurses Union, which spent millions and went all out for him in 2016.

ABC News’ Paula Faris interviews Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke

Giant ‘Beto’ sign stays, Houston-area couple tells HOA officials who want it gone

A Houston-area homeowners’ association says an order to remove a giant sign painted on their front lawn isn’t a political matter, but one of the HOA’s bylaws.

A Katy couple thinks it’s because their neighbors don’t like Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke.

Matthew Duffy, a retired Marine, and his wife, Shannon Bennett, started painting the sign that reads “Beto” in giant letters Oct. 14 and ran afoul of the Chesterfield Community Association shortly after that, the Houston Chronicle reported.

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The couple received a visit from HOA officers while they were painting their sign and were told it was a violation of deed restrictions.

We researched this very carefully before we did it, and I don’t believe that we’re violating any of the deed restrictions,” Bennett said, according to the Chronicle. “[HOA president Nicolas Jessett] said that we’re violating the landscaping requirement and it’s a nonpermanent change.”

Bennett and Duffy counter that they are in compliance with the state’s property code.

“The [email subject line] says political sign violation and then in the body it says you’ve violated the landscape declaration,” Duffy told Katy Magazine. “I know I’ve violated their sense of political affiliation, but that’s it.”

Teen Climate Activist to Crowd of Thousands: ‘We Can’t Save the World by Playing by the Rules Because the Rules Have to Change’

Addressing some 10,000 people in Helsinki on Saturday at what some campaigners are calling Finland’s largest ever climate demonstration, 15-year-old Greta Thunberg urged marchers to fight for the major systemic changes that experts have said are necessary to limit greenhouse gas emissions and avert a looming climate catastrophe.

“Today we use 100 million barrels of oil every day. There are no politics to change that. There are no rules to keep that oil in the ground, so we can’t save the world by playing by the rules because the rules have to change. Everything needs to change and it has to start today,” declared the Swedish teenager, who traveled to the capital city of her nation’s Nordic neighbor for Saturday’s massive march.

“A lot of people say that Sweden or Finland are just small countries and that it doesn’t matter what we do,” Thunberg added. “But I think that if a few children can get headlines all over the world just by not going to school for a few weeks, imagine what we could do together if we wanted to.”

Thunberg garnered international media attention when, ahead of Sweden’s September election, she refused to attend school and instead protested outside the Swedish parliament, handing out educational pamphlets to passersby. Now that the election has passed, the self-described “climate radical” and others who have joined the strike return to school for four days each week but still protest on Fridays.

“We young people don’t have the vote, but school is obligatory,” she told The Local in August. “So this a way to get our voices heard.”