Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who lived in the United States and worked for the Washington Post, died a gruesome death in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

His captors began cutting him apart as he screamed for his life. They dismembered his body and took it … somewhere.

A U.S. journalist dies at the hands of murderers from a country ruled by a mega-rich family. And the president of the United States cannot find the words to declare his abject horror at what happened to this man?

Donald J. Trump continues to sidle up to authoritarians. We have Russia. There is North Korea. Or the Philippines. Trump cannot condemn these rulers for the hideous acts that occur under their rule? So it is now with Saudi Arabia, an ostensible ally of the United States of America.

Let’s remember, though, that 15 of the 19 terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia.

Sure, Trump has declared the “event” in the consulate to be “awful” and “unacceptable,” but then he buys into the Saudi government’s lame explanation that Khashoggi died in a fistfight with his captors.

Are we to believe that these monsters then dumped his body somewhere, anywhere after a fistfight?

How the U.S. president can accept this phony explanation is stupidly mind-numbing in the extreme.

Sickening.