Just hours after Joe Biden greeted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with a fist bump ahead of a long meeting between the pair, the US president was still insisting his visit to Saudi Arabia had nothing to do with the kingdom’s day-to-day leader.
“I didn’t come here to meet with the crown prince,” Biden said, pointing to his agenda, which included a summit with other Arab leaders.
For weeks ahead of his visit to Saudi Arabia, the White House sought to use the summit to deflect criticism of the contentious trip to a nation Biden had pledged to treat as a pariah. But it is the images of the president engaging Prince Mohammed — the man who US intelligence concluded authorised the operation that led to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi — that may be the most enduring legacy of the trip.