Trump Tells MBS That He Will Sell Saudi Arabia the F-35

WSJ Opinion: Potomac Watch

The Wall Street Journal

Society & Culture, News

4 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Donald Trump welcomes Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the White House, touts promised investments in the U.S., and says he will sell F-35 stealth fighters to the Saudis. Is the U.S. driving a hard enough bargain, since the Saudis still haven't joined the Abraham Accords? And what about civilian nuclear energy? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.
0:08.9	President Trump welcomes Saudi crown prince Muhammad bin Salman to the White House to talk investments,
0:15.6	armed deals, and much more. But is the White House driving a hard enough geopolitical bargain,
0:20.8	especially if President
0:22.4	Trump intends to sell the Saudis the F-35 fighter jet? Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with the Wall
0:29.8	Street Journal. We're joined today by my colleagues on the editorial page, editorial board members
0:35.6	Elliot Kaufman and Kate O'Dell. The White House
0:39.1	rolled out the red carpet on Tuesday for Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.
0:46.6	Not a state visit because he is not technically ahead of state. That is the king and his father.
0:53.8	However, warm welcome there in the White House, a black
0:57.8	tie dinner on Tuesday night, and then on Wednesday, an investment business conference in Washington.
1:05.3	Let's listen to President Trump talk a little bit about that. One of his favorite topics,
1:09.5	deals, deals, deals. And I want to thank you
1:12.5	because you've agreed to invest $600 billion into the United States. And because he's my friend,
1:18.3	he might make it a trillion, but I'm going to have to work on him. But it's 600, we can count on
1:24.7	600 billion, but that number could go up a little bit higher.
1:29.1	Yes, sir, I don't know.
1:30.0	We'll see.
1:31.1	But we appreciate it very much.
1:33.7	So Saudi is going to be investing at least $600 billion, and that means investments in plants, in companies, money on Wall Street.
1:43.4	And what it really means for everybody that really counts
1:47.2	his jobs, a lot of jobs. And here's another section of that White House meeting. This is President
	...

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