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In Bonanza for Arms Industry, Trump Announces Record $142 Billion Weapons Sale to Saudis
"I like him a lot," Trump said of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a prolific human rights violator. "I like him too much."
May 13, 2025
In what the White House described as "the largest defense sales agreement in history," U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a deal for prolific human rights violator Saudi Arabia to purchase $142 billion worth of arms from a dozen different American companies.
The White House unveiled the sale as Trump visited Saudi leaders including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the kingdom's capital city of Riyadh on the first leg of a Mideast tour, with stops also scheduled in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
A fact sheet published by the executive office said the arms sale involves "air force advancement and space capabilities, air and missile defense, maritime and coastal security, border security and land forces modernization, and information and communication systems upgrades."
"Oh, what I do for the crown prince."
Reutersreported that military-industrial complex titans including Lockheed Martin, RTX—formerly Raytheon—Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and General Atomics are involved in the deal. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia reportedly discussed the potential sale of Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets to the kingdom, but it remains unclear if the Trump administration will allow the transfer of the highly advanced warplanes.
The agreement is part of a broader Saudi commitment to invest $600 billion in the United States, which the White House said will "strengthen our energy security, defense industry, technology leadership, and access to global infrastructure and critical minerals."
Trump and his relatives, including son-in-law Jared Kushner, enjoy close personal and financial relations with the Saudi royal family, which has poured billions of dollars into their business ventures.
During a signing ceremony, Trump—who apparently fell asleep during the proceedings—joked that the Saudis should invest $1 trillion.
Business leaders including Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk—who is also the de facto Department of Government Efficiency chief—OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, CitiGroup CEO Jane Fraser, and the heads of investment firms including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Blackstone Group also traveled to Saudi Arabia.
Critics including congressional progressives and anti-war groups have long opposed U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which stands accused of a litany of human rights violations including bombing and starving civilians in Yemen, massacring African migrants, and the 2018 murder of journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi.
In 2019, during Trump's first term, Congress passed three bipartisan bills aimed at blocking an $8 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partner in the U.S.-backed war on Yemen, the United Arab Emirates. Trump vetoed the legislation. His successor, former President Joe Biden, paused U.S. arms transfers to Saudi Arabia and the UAE but subsequently lifted the freeze despite pleas from human rights defenders.
The record arms sale comes amid Trump's effort to broker a diplomatic normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel. The president is no longer demanding that the Saudis normalize relations with Israel as a precondition for a civilian nuclear cooperation deal, a move that reportedly alarmed Israel's far-right government.
Trump lavished praise on the Saudi monarchy in a rambling speech in Riyadh on Tuesday, hailing bin Salman as an "incredible man."
Trump gushes over MBS: "We have great partners in the world, but we have none stronger and nobody like the gentleman right before me. He's your greatest representative. And if I didn't like him, I'd get out of here so fast. He knows me well. I do. I like him a lot. I like him too much."
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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 13, 2025 at 9:01 AM
"We have great partners in the world, but we have none stronger, and nobody like the gentleman that's right before me, he's your greatest representative, your greatest representative," Trump said. "And if I didn't like him, I would get out of here so fast. You know that don't you? He knows me well."
"I do, I like him a lot. I like him too much, that's why we give so much, you know?" the president continued. "Too much. I like you too much!"
"Oh, what I do for the crown prince," he added.
Trump also announced that the U.S. would lift sanctions on Syria and restore relations with the country's new government, a move the peace group CodePink called "good news."
"The bad news is he's making new arms deals with Saudi Arabia, jeopardizing diplomacy with Iran, and continuing to ignore the U.S. and Israel's genocide in Gaza as they drop bombs on hospitals," the group added.
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Dr. Martin Luther King's Prophetic Warning: Denouncing the Merchants of Death
We all have a choice to hold ourselves accountable in the face of Dr. King's warning that we are approaching spiritual death.
Jan 13, 2025
Over the past three years, a collective of volunteer researchers, lawyers, and commentators created The Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal, dedicated to holding accountable four weapon manufacturing corporations based in the U.S. Their tribunal amassed copious evidence to prove that Boeing, Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon), and General Atomics (a company which manufactures weaponized drones) are guilty of committing war crimes. On January 15, 2025, as the world marks the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, a press conference will announce the tribunal's verdicts and release the report of 10 international jurors who have weighed the evidence submitted to them.
Of necessity, the evidence was culled from examining a limited range of devastatingly criminal U.S. "forever wars," of brutal and needless wars of choice. The tribunal focused on specific U.S. war crimes and crimes against humanity in the invasions, occupations, and aerial assaults that followed the "9/11" attacks in 2001.
What if we could enlarge the tribunal, bringing before it war crimes occurring right now, the U.S.-assisted massacres we watch in real time on our phone and computer screens?
Certainly, one witness we would beg to appear for testimony would be Dr. Husam Abu Safiya, who was the director of Gaza's Kamal Adwan Hospital when such a place existed. The tribunal would wish to amplify his testimony on the harrowing weeks of siege during which Israel subjected his hospital to artillery and aerial bombardment. They would help to record his story of witnessing assassinations targeting medical staff, field executions of people clutching white flags in an attempt to surrender, the hospital's forced evacuation with at-gunpoint humiliation stripping of women and girls. The initial attacks disabled the hospital's operational capacities by targeting power generators and oxygen production equipment, but now an iconic photo shows Dr. Abu Safiya walking toward an Israeli tank through collapsed buildings and rubble. The tribunal would like to interview him, but he is being held without charge by Israel's military.
Our tribunal would surely turn to three of the world's most crucial international human rights groups for testimony.
On December 5, 2024, Amnesty International concluded that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Its research documents how, during its military offensive launched in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, "Israel has unleashed hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously, and with total impunity."
On December 19, 2024 Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, Doctors Without Borders) stated that "repeated Israeli military attacks on Palestinian civilians over the last 14 months, the dismantling of the healthcare system and other essential infrastructure, the suffocating siege, and the systematic denial of humanitarian assistance are destroying the conditions of life in Gaza." The report says there are "clear signs of ethnic cleansing" by Israel as it wages war in Gaza.
Also issued on December 19, 2024 was a report from Human Rights Watch, entitled "Extermination and Acts of Genocide," stating that Israel has killed thousands of Palestinians in Gaza by denying them clean water, which it says legally amounts to acts of genocide and extermination.
Corroborating the testimony of healthcare workers and human rights advocates in Gaza would be Pope Francis' January 9, 2025 message to international diplomats. Pope Francis denounced Israel's ongoing war in Gaza, calling the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave "very serious and shameful." Pope Francis referenced the deaths of children who froze to death because of Israel's destruction of infrastructure: "We cannot in any way accept the bombing of civilians. We cannot accept that children are freezing to death because hospitals have been destroyed or a country's energy network has been hit."
Recommendations made by jurors in the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal call for major weapon makers to pay reparations for suffering caused. They echo the words of Pope Francis, whose message to the assemblage of diplomats made this appeal:
With the money spent on weapons and other military expenditures, let us establish a global fund that can finally put an end to hunger and favor development in the most impoverished countries, so that their citizens will not resort to violent or illusory solutions, or have to leave their countries in order to seek a more dignified life.
Considering such testimony from so many diverse sources, one might expect that U.S. lawmakers would reevaluate their murderous, unwavering support of Israel. Instead, on January 9, 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to sanction the International Criminal Court in protest of its arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister.
Who are the criminals? U.S. news coverage of five former or current presidents gathered for the funeral of President Jimmy Carter never hinted that hideous wars of choice along with massive increases in weapon sales had marked the administration of each of the five. There was no mention of President Joe Biden's order to send $8 billion dollars of weapons to Gaza. This gathering of U.S. presidents is referred to as "The World's Most Exclusive Club." Exclusive indeed. What other club of so few has caused so much suffering to so many?
On April 7, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famously insightful, prophetic speech about another illegal U.S. war of choice—"Beyond Viet Nam: A Time to Break the Silence"—in which Dr. King said, "Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken: the role of those who make peaceful resolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments."
Dr. King's verdict, in this speech, on the momentous first anniversary of which he was taken from us, was that "this business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
The four defendants before our tribunal certainly did their part to pressure these five other criminals toward their varied crimes, but we all have a choice to hold ourselves accountable in the face of Dr. King's warning that we are approaching spiritual death. One step toward reconciling with wisdom, justice, and love would be to demand the release of Dr. Husam Abu Safiya from an Israeli prison so that we could humbly learn from him about war crimes and reparations.
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'The Genocide Gentry': Weapon Execs Sit on Boards of Universities, Institutions
"This research provides a view into just how embedded the corporate, profit-fueled war machine is in our higher education and cultural institutions," said one campaigner.
Sep 18, 2024
A trio of human rights groups on Wednesday announced a new interactive initiative exposing what the coalition is calling a "Genocide Gentry" of weapons company executives and board members and "54 museums, cultural organizations, universities, and colleges that currently host these individuals on their boards or in other prominent roles."
The coalition—which consists of the Adalah Justice Project, LittleSis, and Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE)—published a map and database detailing the "educational and cultural ties to board members of six defense corporations" amid Israel's ongoing annihilation of Gaza, for which the U.S.-backed country is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
" Israel has destroyed every university in Gaza and nearly 200 cultural heritage sites since October 2023, using bombs and weapons manufactured by the companies included in the Genocide Gentry research," the coalition said. "As of April, these attacks have killed more than 5,479 students and 261 teachers and destroyed or critically damaged nearly 90% of all school buildings in Gaza."
"Universities across the country including the likes of Columbia University, Harvard University, the University of Southern California, and New York University have remained largely silent on Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza," the groups added. "Behind closed doors, these same universities are hosting executives and board members of the companies manufacturing the weapons used in these attacks as board members, trustees, and fellows."
Members of the Genocide Gentry include:
- Jeh Johnson, Lockheed Martin board of directors: Johnson is currently a Columbia University trustee, and sits on the board of directors at MetLife and U.S. Steel. Columbia University notably shut down student protests demanding divestment from weapons companies like Lockheed Martin.
- Brian C. Rogers, RTX board of directors: Rogers is currently a trustee of the Harvard Management Company, tasked with managing the $50 billion endowment. Notably Harvard administrators have cracked down on students demanding divestment from weapons companies like RTX, formerly Raytheon.
- Catherine B. Reynolds, General Dynamics board of directors: Reynolds is a trustee of the Kennedy Center and sponsors a fellowship at New York University, which has also cracked down on anti-genocide protests and recently enacted a policy equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
"Students on university campuses across the country have not only been demanding divestment, but transparency," said Sandra Tamari, executive director of the Adalah Justice Project. "Transparency about their institutions' investments, partnerships, donors, and decision-makers, and their connections to individuals and companies directly enabling and profiting off war and genocide."
"This research helps provide some of this transparency by illuminating just how embedded the interests of the weapons industry are within our institutions, so we can begin chipping away at the power and influence that they wield," she added.
ACRE campaign director Ramah Kudaimi noted that "as part of its genocide since October 2023, Israel has targeted universities and cultural centers across Gaza, destroying campuses, museums, libraries, and more."
"That this is all backed by the United States means U.S. educational and cultural institutions have a responsibility to consider what their role is in helping end these war crimes, and that starts with reconsidering their connections with the weapons companies profiting from the destruction," Kudaimi said.
Munira Lokhandwala, director of the Tech and Training program at LittleSis, said: "This research provides a view into just how embedded the corporate, profit-fueled war machine is in our higher education and cultural institutions. Through this research, we show how the defense industry shapes and influences our civic and cultural institutions, and as a result, their silence around war and genocide."
"We must ask our institutions: What role are you playing in whitewashing war and destruction by inviting those who profit from manufacturing weapons onto your boards and into your galas?" she added.
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