President Trump’s response to the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is pathetic and sad.

Despite a mounting pile of objective evidence up including audio and video recordings implicating the Saudis as the party responsible for Khashoggi’s gruesome murder, Trump has doubled down in defense of the crown, reiterating their denials when pressed by media.

“The king firmly denies any knowledge of it,” Trump said when asked about the murder and Saudi Arabia’s potential ties to it, as reported by the Washington Post. “He didn’t really know, maybe, I don’t want to get into his mind, but it sounded to me like maybe it could have been rogue killers, who knows? We’re going to try get to the bottom of it very soon, but his was a flat denial.”

Trump’s sympathy for both King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman has only emboldened over time.

“Here we go again, when you know you’re guilty until proven innocent,” Trump told the Associated Press, who later reported Trump went on to compare the global criticism of Saudi Arabia to the allegations of sexual assault against Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Admittedly, Trump did bring up the multiple lucrative arms deals between the United States and Saudi Arabia as a reason to not push forward in condemning them — doing so could potentially damage the already rocky relations with have Saudi Arabia.

However, many outlets, including The Washington Post who Khashoggi wrote for, have pointed out Trump also has several non-Presidential business ties with the Saudi government. The ties date back to the 1990s, including personal gifts and real estate purchases, creating a potential source of bias.

That’s not even getting into the fact that no one knows for sure what story Khashoggi was writing or what he had found out prior to his killing.

Regardless, even with the arms deals being a factor, there is no excuse for our country’s poor reaction to the situation.

“There isn’t enough money in the world to purchase back our credibility on human rights,” stated Marco Rubio in a CNN interview.