[John King, Cnn Anchor:] Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thank you for sharing your day with us. The secretary of state meets with the Saudi king and the crown prince as Turkey's president says the crime scene at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul has been scrubbed and repainted. Plus, a high-stake Texas showdown. Ted Cruz and Beto O'Rourke debate tonight. Brand new CNN polling releasing this hour shows the Democrat behind despite non-stop national attention and gangbusters fundraising. Debate night in Arizona was last night. That's another race critical to any Democratic hope of retaking the Senate.
[Rep. Martha Mcsally , Arizona Senate Candidate:] While we were in harm's way, she was protesting our troops in a pink tutu.
[Rep. Kyrsten Sinema , Arizona Senate Candidate:] Martha has chosen to run a campaign based on nasty smears and false attacks. And I expect you'll see more of that this evening.
[King:] Back to politics later. But we begin with what one adviser calls perhaps, quote, the most consequential decision of Donald Trump's presidency, how to respond to the apparent death of the Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. "The Washington Post" columnist was last seen alive two weeks ago two weeks ago entering the Saudi embassy in Turkey. Sources tell CNN the Saudi regime now preparing a report that says he was killed while under, quote, an interrogation that went wrong. The secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, all smiles meeting today in Riyadh with the Saudi king, the crown prince and the foreign minister. Pompeo and the prince, who is the defacto ruler, reaffirming the strong and old alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Pompeo spoke with the president after those meetings. The White House says what happens next depends on just what Pompeo was told, and what the Saudi regime does to explain what happened. But key members of the Republican Senate say they are already planning action.
[Sen. Marco Rubio , Florida:] I can tell you that a separate branch of government that I belong to, the Senate, in the Congress, I believe will act in a bipartisan way. And this is going to alter the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia for the foreseeable future.
[King:] The Republican majority leader, Mitch McConnell, on the other hand, taking a more cautious route.
[Sen. Mitch Mcconnell , Majority Leader:] Well, I think it's good the president sent the secretary of state out to talk to the king. We need to find out first what happened before deciding what kind of response is appropriate.
[Unidentified Male:] You do think there will be some type of response if these allegations are true?
[Mcconnell:] I can't imagine there won't be. But I think we need to find out what happened.
[King:] CNN's Jeff Zeleny joins us live from the White House. Jeff, take us inside the thinking there as the president heard from Secretary Pompeo, what next?
[Jeff Zeleny, Cnn Senior White House Correspondent:] Well, John, there's no question that despite what else the president is trying to focus on attention on today, this is a diplomatic crisis that is escalating by the day. And the president, I am told by officials here, is agitated by the news coverage of this. He's agitated by the rush to judgment on this. Now, he is having a phone call. As you said, he had one earlier this morning with his secretary of state, who he dispatched to the region. He was scheduled to have lunch with him earlier today. That was the only thing that was on the week ahead schedule, if you will. So there are no public events on the president's schedule. I'm told he's in the residence of the White House this morning watching television, talking on the phone with his advisers on other matters. But he clearly is agitated about the Saudi Arabian news coverage. You can see in a tweet he sent out this morning saying, I do not have any business interests in Saudi Arabia. I do not have any involvement in that. Well, that is something that is not necessarily 100 percent accurate there. He has talked repeatedly about how Saudi investors have invested in some of his apartments, some of his other matters here. But, clearly, the president unnerved by this and they're not sure where this is going from here. They're waiting for the Saudi government to issue this report, which is already being you know, eyes are rolling across Washington and indeed around the world here. But the president we're not scheduled to hear from him today. Republicans on Capitol Hill and others are talking about this loudly. So we will see what the president does on this. You mentioned the smiles, John. That is one other thing that is being criticized here. The secretary of state smiling as he walked into that meeting. Most people in Washington certainly do not think this is a laughing or smiling matter. John.
[King:] Not in the least. Jeff Zeleny, live at the White House, appreciate the fresh reporting. With me in studio to share their reporting and their insights, Julie Hirschfeld Davis with "The New York Times," CNN's Phil Mattingly, "Bloomberg's" Toluse Olorunnipa, and Lisa Lerer with "The New York Times." The president's upset. What is he upset at? Is it not a basic threshold minimalist expectation that one would expect the president of the United States to express more outrage and to hold out the possibility of a stronger punishment than he has given? He knows a lot more than we do. And what we know is pretty shocking.
[Julie Hirschfeld Davis, White House Correspondent, "the New York Times":] Well, I mean, we've seen this before, that this president does not make it a point to go out and make an affirmative statement about human rights or basic conduct that he expects United States allies and adversaries to carry out. And he didn't do that in this case. And he went solely on the denial that he said was given to him by the king, the denial that was given to Jared Kushner by the crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, who's being held responsible for whatever it was that did happen here. And I suppose it's possible that having gone out affirmatively and basically, you know, given the benefit of the doubt to the Saudis here, he is feeling burned. That he feels that now they're going to admit that, in fact, something did happen, and this man was killed. And whether it was premeditated or not, that they were responsible for it. And he feels that he has sort of vouched for a regime that is now going to come forward and say it did something wrong. That being said, normally a president would, in a situation like this, withhold judgment. Like you heard Mitch McConnell do there, say, we need to know what happened, but this is of grave concern. People will pay consequences for what's happened here. And having not done that on the front end, I think he feeling that he's, you know, been unfairly criticized. But this is a this is a role that we expect the president to play in this country, no matter what the facts are, that you that you affirmatively lay out what the United States values are, how we expect people to be treated, whether citizens of the United States or not, and then you say, OK, you know, show us the evidence of what happened.
[King:] I don't think it's a bar that any president should not expect to think that, number one, you should stand up for values, including American values. But the president has also has been dismissive of, he's not a citizen. It happened over there, not here. Why should I care? We've seen this before.
[Lisa Lerer, National Political Reporter, "the New York Times":] Yes, I mean, look, I think it's not just, you know, dealing with this on the front end. It's sort of dealing with it in the pregame. This is not the situation is unusual, but the dynamics at play here have been the dynamics with Saudi Arabia for decades. This is a country that's an ally, but it has you know, presidents have always had to walk this fine line between, you know, the relationship, the productive relationship with Saudi Arabia, and the human rights abuses. The country's support for radical, you know, Islamic terrorism, things like that. So this is not a new situation. But clearly at the front end, when they were building this new relationship with the new leader, when they were going to Saudi Arabia for this splashy tour, they did not the president and his team did not lay out the conditions. Like, yes, we want to have a new relationship with you, but there are certain things you can do not. You cannot embarrass us. You cannot put us in these kinds of situations. That diplomatic work was clearly not done at the front end and now he finds himself in this really not only difficult situation but pretty embarrassing situation for him and his, you know, foreign policy team.
[Toluse Olorunnipa, White House Reporter, "bloomberg":] And he's made it somewhat more embarrassing by sort of floating up these new theories about rogue killers.
[Lerer:] Right.
[Olorunnipa:] It almost sounds like he's learning about this information as the rest of the American public is, even though he's the head of the executive branch.
[Lerer:] Right.
[Olorunnipa:] He has all of the intelligence assets at his disposal. And it sounds like he knows nothing, you know, more than a week after this event happened. It sounds like he's learning about this through the newspapers and through the media, just like the rest of us, and that just does not make him seem like the commander in chief in charge of the situation. It sounds like he's just sort of trying to figure out what's happening. And he's been saying for the last week, you know, we're going to get to the bottom of this. We're going to find out what happened. Nobody knows what's happened. And, you know, the American intelligence community is famed as the best in the world. The president has all of that at his disposal. And he could get access to all this investigatory information. It doesn't appear that he has or if he has he's not letting it on. And, instead, he's spreading out these he's sort of out of left wing out of left field ideas about rogue killers or, you know, a mistake that may have happened.
[King:] Which is angering key members of Congress, not as much because what the Saudis are accused of here is beyond reprehensible. Kidnapping, essentially, interrogating, killing and dismembering a journalist. There's a lot of focus on that. He's a human being. Whether he's a good human being or a bad human being, he's a human being. And they're accused of kidnapping, torturing, killing, dismembering and then lying to the world about it. The president has not taken a firm stand. Listen here to Senator Lindsey Graham, who, on most issues of late, is with the president. On most issues of late has defended the president. Listen to what he says here, not just that the president has to do more. Listen to how far Lindsey Graham goes.
[Sen. Lindsey Graham , South Carolina:] Nothing happens in Saudi Arabia without MBS knowing it.
[Unidentified Female:] So what does the president do, sanction them?
[Graham:] It's up to the president. But what I would do I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to sanction the hell out of Saudi Arabia.
[King:] Sanction the hell out of Saudi Arabia, Phil, but but this is the key part, the MBS figure to me is toxic. He can never be a world leader on the world stage. His father, the king, is 82 and not in great health. The prince runs the show. He's in his early 30s. Lindsey Graham is saying, for this relationship to have a new chapter, after this horrible chapter, MBS has to go.
[Phil Mattingly, Cnn Correspondent:] Senator Graham, who is a hawk, who has defended what the president what this administration has done in their Middle East policy, which is of which Saudi Arabia has become essentially a fulcrum to what they've been doing over there, and you can tell that he almost feels personally wronged. And you can also tell and this has been something, kind of an undercurrent on Capitol Hill for the last year or so, that people are uncomfortable with the direction that MBS has gone on certain issues with what he did at the hotel with prominent business leaders, with what he's done throughout the country. And the concern that you can't just paper over this if it gets and gets more aggressive. It's now gotten more aggressive. And you see that Lindsey Graham feels like he's been almost personally attacked by what has actually happened and what has taken place because of how often he's defended Saudi Arabia, because of how often he's visited the kingdom. I think there's a couple things here. One, the rubber is going to meet the road in less than 120 days, right? When they're talking about sanctions, what Congress did, or what members of the Foreign Relations Committee did, is they sent a letter triggering a 120-day review on the Global Magnitsky Act, which essentially allows people to freeze individual assets or deny travel to specific individuals going up to the highest levels, including potentially MBS. The president doesn't have to necessarily take that action, but he does have to respond with the findings in those 120 days. That's kind of the baseline for the sanctions you're looking at right now. But there's also the overall relationship with members of Congress. Saudi Arabia, as we all know, has very close relations and extreme money ties to just about every corner of this town, and just about every member of Congress regardless of party. And when you see those things start to fray, when you see people no longer willing to look past things because they're a close ally, that's a significant problem for the country.
[King:] That's a good way to put it. They have they have bought the blinders for years.
[Mattingly:] Yes.
[King:] They have bought the blinders for years. It's time to drop them. And it would help if it started at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We'll keep an eye on that story. Up next for us here, three weeks until Election Day. What we're learning from brand new CNN polling on a huge Senate race in Texas.