Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the newly named senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has been caught impersonating former Senators Jeff Flake and Bob Corker. One of McCaul’s first noteworthy actions in the new post is to criticize President Trump for exercising his constitutional authority regarding relations with foreign countries, in this case Saudi Arabia.
McCaul clings to the myth that Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi citizen who was murdered last year in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, was an authentic, independent voice for democracy and human rights. Reality be damned, McCaul, and others in the NeverTrump-dominated Republican foreign policy establishment, regard President Trump as a bad man who somehow should be held responsible for a host of evils in the world, including this murder. They ignore the evidence that Khashoggi was in fact a rogue intelligence agent and that the “narrative” since his murder has been a remarkably effective influence operation by Turkish and Qatari state intelligence.