On the menu today: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia effectively purchases the world of professional golf, and new evidence points to the Ukrainian government as the saboteur of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

Selling Our Institutions

The leadership of big, prominent, influential, and popular American institutions is for sale to the highest bidder — and very often, sovereign-wealth funds of brutal regimes are the highest bidder.

After the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of the Saudi Arabian government, the U.S. government needed to tell the Saudis: “We’ve always had differences, but this time you’ve crossed a line, and we cannot avert our eyes from this. He was a U.S. green-card holder. Even if he had ties to the government of Qatar, what you did to him cannot be justified by any wrongdoing he did. We are not ending our diplomatic relationship, but your actions have damaged our relationship, and it will take time to repair this damage.” That’s more or less the reaction I called for at the time.