Trump is pretending to believe the Saudis.

President Trump broke with his own intelligence agencies on Friday, appearing to accept Saudi Arabia’s explanationthat the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed by accident during a fistfight, while the United States’ spy agencies are increasingly convinced that he was assassinated on high-level orders from the Saudi royal court.

A fistfight for godsake. Right because journalists in their 50s always fling themselves into fistfights with 15 or 18 young beefy hit men and get accidentally beheaded as a result.

The growing evidence that Mr. Khashoggi, a Virginia resident and a columnist for The Washington Post, was killed on orders from the Saudi royal family has put Mr. Trump in an increasingly untenable position.

On Friday evening, the president praised the statement issued by the Saudi government, which confirmed Mr. Khashoggi’s death, as a “good first step” and a “big step.” Earlier, the prince and other senior Saudi officials had denied any role in Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance.

Kushner has been leaning on his daddy-in-law to stay tight with MbS.

But as Turkish officials leaked details of the grisly killing of Mr. Khashoggi and of the dismemberment of his body, the White House has become increasingly isolated in its defense of Saudi Arabia.

A stream of prominent Wall Street and tech executives canceled plansto attend an investor conference convened by the prince next week in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

Yes yes yes but Trump is busy holding rallies.

For Mr. Trump, who is on a three-day swing in the West before the midterm elections, the Khashoggi affair has become a distraction during a period in which he had hoped to campaign for Republican congressional candidates on a message of economic growth and the recent confirmation of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Just after answering questions about the Saudi announcement, Mr. Trump flew to a “Make America Great Again” rally in Mesa, Ariz.

Dude’s got important business to take care of.