Part Two: Prince Mohammed Bin Salman: The Tyrant of Saudi Arabia

Robert continues the early history of Mohammed Bin Salman and the House of Saud. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Robert Evans?

  Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about Mohammed bin Salman for this week and next week with my former colleague and current friend David Pell. David.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:17Robert Evans?

  Hi. Where can the good and bad people on the internet find you?

• 0:21Speaker 01

  You know, before that, I realized, I don't think I've said, thank you for having me on. I didn't say that.

• 0:27Robert Evans?

  Oh, you don't need to thank me.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  I know. It's just a thing you say on podcasts. And it occurred to me, I was like, I didn't even say that. Anyway, thank you for having me on. You, you, you asked where you could find me. Google game fully unemployed, G A M E F U L L Y unemployed. It's a movie podcast, mostly in TV, or watch some more news hosted by Cody Johnston news show, like a talking head news show. I am the head writer over there. What I'm, I'm, I'm bossing people around.

• 1:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you're the, you're the, you're the king over there, just like Mohammed Salman. Kind of is in Saudi Arabia. And Dave, I would thank you for being the guest, but actually I'm going to thank you for watching my cat for half a year that one time.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Oh, that was a delight.

• 1:20Robert Evans?

  Bigger than ask than being on a podcast.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  That cat, that cat left a scar on me. I'm pretty sure I still have it somewhere.

• 1:28Robert Evans?

  That's good. She left some on me, too. She was a great cat.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Well, she, yeah, she, she, she got a bite on her.

• 1:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah, she got a bite on her.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  She also got along with my cat way more than my current second cat gets along.

• 1:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah, she, she and kitten were best friends for, well, like, again, like half a year.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49Speaker 02

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• 2:23Robert Evans?

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• 3:29Robert Evans?

  So, by the time Prince Mohammed bin Salman was born in 1985, the Saudi state had reached a level of what we might call catastrophic dependence on oil revenues. Aramco accounted for roughly 80% of state spending, which meant that any serious drop in oil prices rendered the state insolvent, living off its savings in order to continue spending. Nearly 2/3 of Saudi men were government employees, right? And that doesn't mean they're working. It just means they're government employees. Most of them aren't doing real jobs, you know? Most of the state jobs that they have are lifetime gigs that exist as a form of welfare. They're a way for the House of Saud to bribe enough of the free male population to ensure there's never too much unrest, because then you'll lose your job.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Like, I would be fine with a government that I guess you could call it bribing, but just paid us all to live. But that's what's happening here, right? It's just enough people so that they can screw other people.

• 4:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and they have to bring other people in the country to really fuck over, like, to have an underclass that they can fuck over enough, you know?

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:33Robert Evans?

  And this state of affairs leads to some complications because so many jobs are lifetime things. Giving raises to certain classes of jobs is financially untenable. If you give, like, everybody who has this job a raise, that's a meaningful percentage of the country, and you just can't afford to do that. Because you have to then keep that raise going for everyone who holds that job forever. Instead, the government gets into a habit of adding benefits to jobs, which are salary bumps for employees who have specific skills. Like, classes of workers will get an amount of money every year for knowing how to type, or knowing how to use, like, Microsoft Office. And workers who have these skills get these bumps. And there are so many of these bumps that, over time,

• 5:15Robert Evans?

  many workers get paid more as a result of all of the bumps to their salary than the actual base value of their salary itself. Saudi government employee benefits constitute between 10 and 150% of worker income by the late 20th century.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 5:31Robert Evans?

  It's, they get around this to try to avoid paying more money, and it winds up costing a huge amount of the national budget to do it.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Right, that really got away from them.

• 5:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah, they're robbing Peter to also pay Peter, yeah. Now, the fact that most people working in Saudi Arabia were not Saudi represented another issue. The state, again, tries to fix the problem by fiddling around the edges. They issue a novel benefit for employees in departments that have fewer than 50% Saudi workers. The idea is that if they give a benefit to these jobs, more Saudis will get jobs in these fields because these jobs have higher pay. But it actually discourages the hiring of Saudi employees. Because every worker in that field is like, if we hire any more Saudis, we won't get that huge pay bump. So we have to not hire any Saudis, we have to only hire foreign workers, right?

• 6:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's just a constant series of, like, really avoidable. It's like, you'd spend, if it was anyone other than a bunch of, like, princes who's never worked making these decisions, you'd be like, but wouldn't this just encourage them not to hire more Saudis?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  It's one of those situations.

• 6:37Robert Evans?

  Why are they gonna do a thing that gets their pay cut?

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Right. It's one of those things where you just have to kind of go like, all right, everybody stop. Let's start over. Like we, it's like we're building upon mistakes.

• 6:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Gonna do a scratch. Scratch on this country, guys.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, we gotta just take all the wiring out, put in new wiring.

• 6:55Robert Evans?

  It's like when you're working on a screenplay or a novel that just isn't coming together. Sometimes at some point, you just, you just have to throw the idea out, right?

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:03Robert Evans?

  And some people can't do that. It's like that, but with a country.

• 7:08Robert Evans?

  MBS's father, Prince Salman, during most of MBS's, all of MBS's childhood, is the governor of Riyadh. And Mohammed bin Salman is the first son of his dad's second wife, because, again, he'd had like six kids with his first wife, Sultana, but then she gets like this recurrent kidney infection and she can't have any more kids. So he kind of reluctantly gets a second wife, this lady Fara Bint Fala Al Hathlim, who is brought on to let him continue to have sons. And over the years, she gives him six more sons. Mohammed bin Salman is the oldest of these kids, right? So he's the oldest son from his dad's second family. On paper, again, he's the oldest son of the second family, so he should never have wound up anywhere near becoming the king, right? His dad shouldn't have become

• 7:52Robert Evans?

  the king, let alone him. He's even further down the line. He is the sixth son of the original king's 25th son, and was literally several generations removed from being in line for the throne. Mohammed bin Salman's early life was, in Ben Hubbard's words, "steeped in inherited and unearned privilege." He spends most of his childhood in palaces, socializing with other members of the royal family, almost to the exclusion of anyone else. When he travels from one palace to the other, it's in convoys of armored cars surrounded by bodyguards. He's raised mostly by a mix of nannies and tutors who watch over him on a daily basis alongside servants and other household staff who don't have the power to discipline him in a meaningful way. So most of the people raising him can't punish him.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  That sounds healthy.

• 8:37Robert Evans?

  Can't even yell at him. Exactly, exactly. You can be like, I can have your family killed, you know that? If you're mean to me.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  That's how you make a monster. Like that's like

• 8:45Robert Evans?

  Make a monster. Yeah.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's like if a group of people were like, hey, you know what would be funny? If we made a monster.

• 8:51Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  How do we do that? And that sounds like what you would do.

• 8:55Robert Evans?

  That's it's one of those things. There's a sweet spot because it's bad if a kid is always afraid that his parents are gonna hit him. But it's also bad if a kid knows no one he could possibly talk to will ever smack him in the mouth. Right?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 9:08Robert Evans?

  Like, it shouldn't be your parents, but you should know that if you moth off to a stranger, who knows what they'll do? Right?

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:13Robert Evans?

  As opposed to the stranger will be scared that you'll have their family killed. Right? One of those is worse than the other.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  He's, he's living on the holodeck. Like, that's what it is.

• 9:21Robert Evans?

  Exactly.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  It's a world exclusively built for him.

• 9:25Robert Evans?

  Exactly.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, you should go through.

• 9:27Robert Evans?

  Brain damage. Yeah.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, you should know that you could get a smack from somebody.

• 9:32Robert Evans?

  Someone, not your parents, but someone.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, a classmate, a guy, some guy at the bar, you know, like that's

• 9:39Robert Evans?

  Someone could put you in check if you're, if you're out of pocket enough, right? That's important for people.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Right, because it seems like you don't want to learn that late.

• 9:48Robert Evans?

  Right. Now, it's a measure of how fucked up this kid's upbringing is that almost no one in his life is allowed to call him by his real name. Right? That's how separated from the world this boy is.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  My God.

• 10:02Robert Evans?

  A handful of close friends and his family members can call him Mohammed bin Salman, right? To people actually raising him, who are largely servants, which are most of the people he talks to on a daily basis, they call him Tal Omrok. This means literally, may God prolong your life. But a more accurate translation is what people, like people, it's like your highness, right? That's what they mean when they call him Tal Omrok, right?

• 10:26Robert Evans?

  In recent interviews, MBS has claimed that his father took responsibility for organizing his and his siblings' educations. They were each assigned a book a week to read and would be quizzed on it. His mother used a lot of the family clout and money to bring in scholars and academics from around the kingdom to lead discussions with the royal family and take her kids on field trips. Per Hubbard's book, MBS, quote, "Both parents were strict. Showing up late for lunch with his father was a disaster," in Salman's words. "His mother was harsh, too. My brothers and I used to think, why is our mother treating us this way? She would never overlook any of the mistakes he made. He later concluded that the scrutiny made him much stronger." MBS is rather unique among the royalty we covered on the show in that we don't have

• 11:07Robert Evans?

  a lot of detail on his like early life, right? You get a lot of that with like European royalty because there's someone making notes of everything they do for like the entirety of their early life and we don't have that with him. He doesn't say much about his childhood and the people who would know more were mostly servants and state employees who again could be seriously punished if they told anybody and they never do. We know that Prince Salman, his father, continued to live with his first wife and family in a palace referred to in just as the White House. MBS's mom, who's his dad's second wife, raises the kids in another palace and so he's already the B family, right? He grows up knowing he's the B family, but his mom takes him and his siblings

• 11:52Robert Evans?

  to the main house regularly because she wants her kids to have face time with their dad, which guaranteed them a future in the power structure in the country. And as you might guess, this is awkward.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just such a perfect storm of like, we're going to give you an inferiority complex, but also still a palace.

• 12:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah, still a palace and no one can yell at you except for your dad and mom who will do it and then never raise you, right? That's all they're there for is to yell at you. Now, Sultana doesn't like her husband's second family, right? And her kids follow suit. The older kids, the first kids, treat all of the second kids like shit, you know? Like, the only people who can bully him are his half brothers, right? Like, they're the ones talking shit about him constantly. And MBS's early memories involve a lot of bullying from these siblings. He's also raised on stories of his royal ancestors that would have emphasized how normal it was for members of the Saud family to kill each other. While his paternal grandfather was King Abdulaziz,

• 12:55Robert Evans?

  his maternal grandfather had murdered the king's only brother. In The Man Who Would Be King, Karen House adds, "Indeed, MBS's maternal ancestor died on Al-Hithlaine's Ashman troops had wounded Abdulaziz in a 1915 battle that killed his only full brother. More than a decade later, Lane was treacherously murdered, bearing a letter of safe conduct signed by Abdulaziz, Alhith Lane and 11 companions with Abdulaziz's regional governor's son. While he declined to stay overnight, saying his men would come looking for him if he didn't return, his host refused to allow him to leave. When the Ashman tribesmen did arrive, their chief's throat was slit along with those of his 11 companions. Some Saudis see this treachery as parallel to that of a murder of a nearly a century later of Jamal Khashoggi,

• 13:36Robert Evans?

  the Washington Post columnist invited to a Saudi consulate in Istanbul and then murdered in 2018. So he grows up on stories of like his family members killing each other. And was told that this is like, this is what made your grandpa strong is that he killed this other grand member of your family.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Right. It's stories of like your grandfather fighting in the war, but it's fighting in the war against your other grandfather or something. Yeah.

• 14:01Robert Evans?

  His cousin who killed his brother. Yeah. So MBS grows up constantly mocked and derided by his older, more accomplished half brothers. And he is initially a shy and anxious boy. During a third grade play, he is so uncomfortable with the idea of performing in front of people that he can't take the stage when the moment comes, even though his dad, the governor of Riyadh is in the audience to see him. So one of the few times his dad shows up to see him do something, he's like, I can't be, I got stage fright. I can't show up on stage.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Listen, I feel for the kid. Like I don't want to go on stage either, but man.

• 14:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Man, that's a rough one. That's a rough one. His earliest memories would have involved a lot of rage at the religious police too. Again, movies and music are illegal while he's a child. Television exists in Saudi Arabia, but it sucks complete ass because you can't watch a lot of the TV that other people are watching. It's basically just news and boring religious discussions.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, we all grew up with those like weird neighbor kids who didn't have a TV. Yeah.

• 15:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And they develop a complex about it.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what happens.

• 15:06Robert Evans?

  His only entertainment option at home is video games because video games are a new enough concept that the actual fun police Saudi Arabia has, hasn't gotten around to banning them yet, right? Like they kind of get grandfathered in. So he is, he is for his whole life to the present moment, a huge video game nerd. Because it's just kind of the only cool thing he can do as a kid.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Incredible.

• 15:26Robert Evans?

  And in this way, his childhood's not that different from a lot of people listening. His first console was a Nintendo, followed by a Neo Geo, which he got when he was six. Biographer Karen House notes that he still has his original Neo Geo in his childhood bedroom at the family palace.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 15:41Robert Evans?

  Kept it. That thing's worth some money these days today, you know?

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Not that he cares, but yeah, you can sell it. You throw that up on eBay.

• 15:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  That'd be a hell of a buy.

• 15:51Robert Evans?

  As I said earlier, Prince Salman was not rich by Al Saud standards. That's again, MBS's dad. He was certainly in the top 1% in the country, probably still in the world, but that still puts him in the bottom 50% of the House of Saud. MBS was conspicuously aware of this fact as a child. His monthly allowance was equivalent to about 500 US dollars while he was a fourth grader. And it says a lot that he felt poor next to his cousins, the wealthiest of whom received about $5,000 a week, right?

• 16:19Speaker 01

  If you, if you gave me $500 as a fourth grader and brought me to the mall, I would die. Like, I would be dead from that somehow.

• 16:29Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that would get me killed.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:32Robert Evans?

  Uh, I would have overdosed on Warhammer models. Yeah, absolutely. Um, I would have had pewter poisoning or some shit.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Hmm. I'd find a way. I don't know how, but I'd die.

• 16:43Robert Evans?

  I would find a way.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:44Robert Evans?

  His, MBS's frustration with his family financial situation was compounded by the fact that things were worse for Prince Salman's second family. Again, they live in the second palace, they have a smaller cut of the family income, and when the family goes on vacation to Spain, Prince Salman takes his first wife and their kids to his mansion in Marbella, and MBS's mom and the kids have to stay at a hotel in Barcelona. Now, it's a nice hotel, right? But you're not staying in the palace your dad owns because you're not allowed there, because you're not the real family, right?

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:15Robert Evans?

  That's gonna fuck a kid up.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's again, perfect storm is like you have so much privilege, but also like the weird anger of someone who doesn't feel like they do.

• 17:26Robert Evans?

  Exactly.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  And we're giving you just nothing but video games, which I mean, I love video games, but something about that also.

• 17:33Robert Evans?

  No parental love, but all of the video games you can eat.

• 17:38Robert Evans?

  So as a father, Prince Salman was more hands on than most of his family. He sets an aggressive curriculum for his kids and he devotes a significant amount of money to their education, but he doesn't spend time to them with them face to face. He manages them like, like Sims, basically, right? Like he's a spreadsheet dad.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:55Robert Evans?

  MBS grows up with the distinct impression that his dad was prioritizing his first family, because he was. He watches with jealousy as one older half brother becomes the first Muslim astronaut and another gains international renown for helping American journalists during the first Gulf War. In more recent years, a rumor has spread that MBS was always his father's favorite. And this is true now, he's definitely, his dad has made him the crown prince. It doesn't seem to have been true back then. MBS himself told Karen House, I was, yeah.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  If my kid, if one of them was an astronaut, I feel like no one would even ask what the favorite was.

• 18:29Robert Evans?

  I like the astronaut more, yeah.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really tough to compete with an astronaut.

• 18:36Robert Evans?

  Easy, yeah. MBS himself told Karen House, I was not my father's favorite and then listed the names of four siblings that his dad preferred and the fact that he had a list ready to hand says a lot about this kid. Where he's like, no, I knew my rank, I knew my exact rank in the family.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  They had it on the wall, they had a letter board.

• 18:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah, they, they had a letter board and the astronaut was top.

• 19:03Robert Evans?

  One family associate postulated to House that, quote, "He felt a need to strive for distinction from an early age. This was stoked by his father, who treated his kids with his second wife like they were the B family, right? You know, like this is, this is the way that they're, he's like almost saying this to them. So MBS grows up with a bone to pick in regards to his half siblings and a burning sense that he has a great deal to prove if he's going to win his father's affections. This becomes more of an urgent deed as he gets older. By sixth grade, he's aged out of his shyness, and according to his recollections, he'd replaced his younger brother Turkey as the leader of his siblings. One of the few good sources we have on his childhood that isn't either MBS himself or someone who he could imprison for having something negative

• 19:46Robert Evans?

  said about him is a British tutor that his father hired to teach his son's English. This guy, Rashid Sakai, had been a teacher at a fancy school in Jeddah before the prince called him up in 1996 when MBS was 11. And he's one of our only sources who can be kind of objective about these kids in this period of time. Here's how he describes the family living arrangements when he went to work with the family. And keep in mind, these are poorer members of the royal family. "Once through the heavily guarded gates, the car would wind past a series of jaw-dropping villas with immaculate gardens maintained by workers in white uniforms. There was a car park filled with a fleet of expensive luxury cars. It was the first time I saw what looked like a pink Cadillac."

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 20:28Robert Evans?

  That's just like, yeah, that's his second, his second family's house.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Right. It's like when you read about Stephen Miller and you're like, his family had to downgrade. And it's like, what do you mean by downgrade? It's like, well, he still had maids and stuff and like servants.

• 20:43Robert Evans?

  Not as many maids.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was slightly smaller.

• 20:47Robert Evans?

  It was fewer maids than he thought he ought to have.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  And that fucked him up for the rest of his life.

• 20:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he never got over that.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:57Robert Evans?

  You know who isn't like Stephen Miller, Dave?

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Oh, hold on. No, just tell me.

• 21:04Robert Evans?

  The sponsors of this podcast, who are probably not Stephen Miller. It's not, there's not a 0% chance.

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• 21:43Robert Evans?

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• 22:42Robert Evans?

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• 22:53Robert Evans?

  And we're back. I've just looked, Stephen Miller is still not a podcaster, so we're doing good. He's not a sponsor? Not yet, not yet, not yet. We do look forward to him sponsoring the show, though. Yeah.

• 23:07Robert Evans?

  So we're talking about this guy Rashid Sakai, who starts teaching when like the the the second family of Prince Salman when MBS is 11. And he recalled that when he starts working for the family, he notices that MBS is close to the palace director and the palace guards, like the people who are like the servants who are kind of running the household, all really like this kid. He tends to prefer, MBS tends to prefer socializing with the guards to paying attention during his English lessons. Quote, "As the oldest of his siblings, he seemed to be allowed to do as he pleased. My ability to command the younger prince's attention would only last until Muhammad would turn up." So again, he's not the top of his family, but he's the top of the second family. So it's like, again, it's just constantly the worst of all worlds, right?

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:51Robert Evans?

  Where he's the, he's the head, the head of his small world, but he also regularly butts up against this other world where he's nothing, you know? Since his dad lives in a different palace and is seldom around, this means that MBS is effectively the man of the house from like sixth grade on. He is in charge in a very literal sense, and he gets to give orders to a staff of dozens of adults. He develops a habit of playing pranks, as Rashid recollected. "I still have a memory of him using a walkie talkie in our classes, borrowed from one of the guards. He would use it to make cheeky remarks about me and crack jokes between his brothers and guards on the other end."

• 24:25Speaker 01

  That's a very good prank.

• 24:28Robert Evans?

  That's not a prank at all. It's just being a dick.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:31Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Again, a teacher should have the right to like at least spray water at a kid if they do something like that, a little bit of water.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:38Robert Evans?

  You know, just like, like, like a cat, like a cat, exactly. Like stab it, stab.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  They had to give them like some sort of special pass for this stuff.

• 24:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Now, I'd be remiss if I didn't note that Sakai himself still says that he became fond of Muhammad and his siblings. He describes them all as curious to learn but keen to play around, just like his non-royal students. Sakai's account gives us an interesting insight into the bizarre world of royal family life. For example, quote, "On one occasion, I was taken aback when Muhammad told me that his mother, the princess, said that I had said that I seemed like a true gentleman. I had no recollection of meeting her. Saudi women royalty don't appear in front of strangers, and the only female I came across was a nanny from the Philippines. I was oblivious to the fact that I was being watched until the future heir to the throne pointed to some CCTV cameras on the wall. From that point onwards, I would always feel self-conscious in my lessons."

• 25:30Robert Evans?

  Like that's, that's the vibes here.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 25:33Robert Evans?

  Just all.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  I think about, I think about what like school teachers have to deal with in this country not being recorded. Like that is, oh God. No.

• 25:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Just, just a bad time. After several months on the job, the future King Salman, MBS's father, scheduled a meeting with all the different tutors that he'd hired for his children. Sakai initially thought that this might be a good opportunity to discuss the kids behavioral issues. So we can infer that despite his fondness for Mohammed bin Salman, Sakai did consider the kid to have a behavior issue. Quote, "When he appeared before us, the teachers instinctively rose up and I watched in awe as they approached the Riyadh governor one by one, bowed, kissed his hand and hastily conferred about the children and moved on. And when my turn came, I couldn't for the life of me bend like they did. I had never done it before. And before I froze completely, I reached out to take the future

• 26:25Robert Evans?

  king's hand and shook it firmly. I remember a faint grin of amazement on his face. However, he made no fuss about my faux pas." Now Sakai does not decide like I've already pushed my luck enough. I'm not going to talk about the fact that your kid's acting up in class. Uh, he says this is because he'd already decided to leave for the UK. But he does recall that afterwards, the house manager yells at him for not showing respect for the future king, right? That he's like, "You shook his hand? You fucking asshole."

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, this is a job where I'm not going to marry Poppins this. I'm getting the hell out of here. Like I'm not fixing this.

• 26:58Robert Evans?

  This is weird.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah. This can't be on me to figure this out.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  It's that feeling of like, if you speak up, they might go like, well, I have a different plan. We're just going to execute you. Like.

• 27:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah. We're going to kill you.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Get out of there.

• 27:14Robert Evans?

  We decided to go in a different direction.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:16Robert Evans?

  By the time he enters his teen years, Prince Mohammed had jettisoned the shy, awkward side of his personality. He continued to play pranks and act up in class and in public. His relatives described him as being frustrated and angry with a sharp temper that went off explosively for little to no reason. One of his earliest defining character traits is that he was completely unsatisfied with his family's level of wealth. In the fourth grade, again, he's, he's making about $500 a week as a fourth grader. So we're talking about like a pretty good monthly income for a 10 year old, but he complains again about the fact that his other relatives get more. Karen House describes the young prince as saying that his immediate family sat below the salt, right? Like that's the term for we're not making as much money as the other people in the royal family.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  It's hard, man, because if it's the, if it's the only life you know, if you go to your cousins and you're like, I have all the pogs in the world. And they're like, I have all the pogs in the world, plus several cars. And you're like, oh.

• 28:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I have custom pogs.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:14Robert Evans?

  Again, like, by the time he's in high school, it's normal for princes at his level to have Porsches or BMWs, but that's not good enough for him. He like, he, he, he can't stand having the same kind of fancy car as the other poor princes. I'm going to read a quote from the man who would be king here. Quote, "As a high school senior, MBS was old enough to get his first car. His father urged his son to get a car like the other boys had, luxury but low key. MBS declined. He had saved money from gifts his uncles had given him on Islamic holidays, and he was going to have the car he wanted, even though it cost nearly $230,000." So he buys the car, which is like a fancy Lamborghini, but he doesn't get a lot of time to show it off for long because I don't know, this might be surprising to you, Dave, 16 year olds are not ready to drive Lamborghinis.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  I was literally, my mind was flashing through my history of cars as you're saying that. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what you want to do. That's absolutely, I don't care how much money you have. Yeah. You want something you'll drag race with your friend on the highway or off road with.

• 29:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah. Give that kid a Lancer. Um, yeah. MBS rear in some poor fucker in Riyadh and totals his Lamborghini. He has to call a friend to be rescued. I don't, he's probably not drunk. He's probably just incompetent. I doubt the person he hits gets to file, imagine filing a claim against the fucking prince.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  I would run. Like I would literally on the street to see him and get the fuck out of there. Yeah.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Holy shit.

• 29:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah, what a horrible time. It's like hitting a cop car like fuck.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's like hitting a dinosaur. It's just like, I need to get out of here right now. That thing is gonna kill me.

• 29:59Robert Evans?

  A lamb, there's only one kind of dude driving a Lamborghini in Saudi Arabia right now. Now, the turn of the millennium brings several huge changes to Mohammed bin Salman's life, two of which bring a rapid and unexpected alteration to his chances at reaching the throne. In 2001, Prince Salman's oldest son, Fad, the guy who'd helped reporters during Desert Storm, dies unexpectedly of a heart condition. His second brother, Ahmed, who's 46 a year later, and like this is the guy who's like owned a Kentucky Derby winning horse. He'd been great at shit. Uh, he dies at age 44 of another heart related issue. In his biography, MBS, Ben Hubbard writes, quote, "The declared cause in both cases was heart attack, but the underlying reasons were never made clear."

• 30:43Robert Evans?

  Right? So were they poisoned? Were they killed at night?

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Heart attack in quotes, just big heart attack.

• 30:50Robert Evans?

  Quote, it's a little soft, right?

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:55Robert Evans?

  That said, MBS probably wasn't the culprit either way because he's just a kid at this point in time.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  It would be tough to live in a family like this and then there be an actual like genetic medical issue. Cause you might not even know, like it, what if it is just heart attacks? And they're like, well, we assume they were poisoned, so we're not going to look into that. I'm not going to go to the cardiologist.

• 31:15Robert Evans?

  Yeah, who knows? They're rich. Are they doing like coke or something like that? I don't know. Uh, does his mom orchestrate? Who's to say? It's entirely possible these are what they seem to be. Whatever the case, this shifts the family dynamics in very short order. For one thing, MBS's dad, Prince Salman, is devastated as his, and his most prominent biographers tend to agree, right? Uh, this presents a, an opportunity to MBS because his dad has other older kids from his first marriage. But by the time the two oldest sons die, they're all mature adults following their careers and ambitions, while MBS is just 16 years old and has nowhere better to be during his father's time of need and vulnerability than right by his dad's side.

• 31:58Robert Evans?

  So while the other older kids are off doing stuff, MBS starts showing up to support his dad while he's grieving, which is going to immediately put him in a better position, right?

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Um, yeah.

• 32:10Robert Evans?

  It's just, yeah, a smart play. It's not hard to see why this pays dividends for him.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And a convenient one where it might've even naturally happened where like you said, everybody else is fucked off doing other things. They don't seem like as interested in the family business, essentially.

• 32:26Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Now, the main consequence of these deaths isn't just that two names get pulled from the front of the line. It's that MBS and his dad get really close. People note that Mohammed bin Salman starts following his father to work on a daily basis and gets to watch him do the job of governing the capital. He starts to get a feel for how power works in the kingdom and he gets a lot of face time with his father. Power players in the state apparatus get used to seeing MBS as well, and he becomes a default part of increasingly large bits of the power structure. One thing he comes to understand is that his father wields power and influence within the Al Saud family. In his article for the Africa Report, Jihad Gillan writes, "As governor of Riyadh, he had access to a small private prison where

• 33:09Robert Evans?

  he could punish any badly behaved relatives for offenses such as public intoxication, unpaid hotel bills in Paris, and reckless driving. I have several princes in my palace at this moment," he bragged to the British writer Robert Lacey. "In this way, his position meant that he knew all the secrets, big and small, of the Al Saud clan and possessed incriminating information on many of them." Right? So he's, he's kind of able, his dad is, part of what MBS grows up seeing is his dad is padding his money and is, is kind of increasing his power by punishing a lot of his relatives who have less power. Right? And MBS becomes aware of like, oh, that's how you get ahead in the family, you know, is by getting leverage and wealth over your loved ones.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  It's like any family. You blackmail

• 33:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  the rest of your family. Yeah.

• 33:55Robert Evans?

  Exactly. Exactly. You put them in the, in the prison you keep for family members.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Exactly. Everybody needs a cousin jail. You need, just need one.

• 34:03Robert Evans?

  If I had a cousin jail, believe me, it would've gotten used when I was a kid.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Listen, here's the thing, Robert. It can be a shed. Like, it could be anything you need it to be. It's ideally, you want like a, you know, like, like a 10-person cousin jail.

• 34:19Robert Evans?

  If you have a pair of handcuffs, you have a cousin jail. Yeah.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Exactly. Exactly. If you have like a cinder block and some rope, you have a cousin jail.

• 34:28Robert Evans?

  You have a cousin jail. Anyone can have a cousin jail. So Ben Hubbard cites an interview with an anonymous member of the family entourage who claims, quote, "MBS's social life centered around using his royal privilege to help build bonds with the people. In the summer, his family would decamp for the Red Sea coast, where MBS would rent a fleet of jet skis for the young man, for the young men. In the winter, they would set up camp across the desert, where MBS would have the biggest camp, serve roast lambs on huge platters of rice, and keep fleets of buggies for the Bedouin who dropped by to greet the locals." In Ben's reading, one of Ben Salman's strengths is that he loved, or at least was able to convince his father and a lot of power brokers in the country, that he loved Saudi Arabia. While his cousins and siblings and half siblings loved the West and spent their time

• 35:12Robert Evans?

  in foreign countries, he was primarily like hanging out at home, right? This isn't totally accurate. He parties overseas a lot, and he violates the religious laws his family's supposed to abide by constantly. But he puts in a good show of liking Saudi Arabia, right? And that gets, that pays dividends for him, you know?

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, he's a rich kid. You have to party overseas. That's just what you gotta do.

• 35:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's just part of the life. Yeah.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:38Robert Evans?

  But you throw in some parties at home, too, you know?

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, he did it.

• 35:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And this, the fact this is a deliberate lie doesn't mean that his dad isn't convinced that his son feels this way. The evidence suggests that MBS is able to keep a sort of Jekyll and Hyde situation going for most of his adolescence and young adulthood. To his father, he's this disciplined, obedient, patriotic boy, the perfect successor. To a lot of his peers and relatives, he makes a habit out of petty crime and disobedience, stretching the limits of his royal immunity as far as possible. Per an article in the Africa Report, quote, "As a teenager, he was a bad-tempered troublemaker who sometimes behaved outlandishly, like the time he dressed up as a policeman so he could wander around a Riyadh shopping center. He was caught in the act by actual police officers, but they let him walk free when they realized who he was."

• 36:24Speaker 01

  He's doing like a Princess Jasmine. He's going out, he wants to blend in. But you, normally, when you want to blend in, you don't dress like a cop. That's the opposite of blending in. No, I mean-

• 36:36Robert Evans?

  He doesn't want to blend in, he wants to bully people.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it sounds really like real. My dad owns the dealership energy.

• 36:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Where like he's, he's a jerk, but he's a perfect angel to the family, to the people who

• 36:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Keeping him in that position. Uh, like

• 36:52Robert Evans?

  The folks he has to be good to. Yeah.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like he's doing a great job at being a shitty rich kid. Like he's, he's nailing it. It sounds like.

• 37:00Robert Evans?

  That's exactly right. Now, as a young man, one of the first revelations MBS has is that unlike many of his close relatives, he's going to have to work for his money. Now, to be clear, he's not going to have to work to have access to life of luxury and excess. He's guaranteed that as a member of the royal family, but he wants power and influence and his birthright isn't going to guarantee him that. It's become increasingly clear to him by this period that Prince Salman is in a lot of debt, both to other family members and to non-royal rich Saudi guys. MBS is keenly aware of this fact, and he's also paying a lot of attention to the financial situations of his closer relatives. During a conversation with one such cousin, he comes to the horrifying conclusion that his branch of the family is going to

• 37:41Robert Evans?

  get left on the sidelines per an investigation by Jihad Gillan, published in the Africa Report, quote, "While still a teenager, MBS told his father that he wanted to start a business, an atypical ambition for a Saudi royal family member, one that extracted nothing other than a smile from Salman. MBS's significant relationships with his male relatives are all based around either vengeance or imitation. As an insecure teenager, the cousin he most wants to imitate is his cousin Prince Al Wahid bin Talal, who's the richest man in Saudi Arabia. Reporting on bin Talal's earlier business dealings makes it seem like this is the kind of thing where MBS would regularly bring up his rich cousin during business deals to be like, I'll be richer than him in like two years. You know, like this guy's, this

• 38:26Robert Evans?

  guy's the cousin I most admire now, but I'm going to get more money than my cousin. Like you, you think he's rich now. You get in bed with me, I'm going to have even more money. Right? Um, he's not initially good at business. The first big business deal he tries to set up involves trying to buy, like trying to land a deal importing asphalt from Kuwait. And this falls apart, as do most of his subsequent business deals. Because despite having a lot of cunning and a work ethic that surpasses his relatives, he's not good at a lot of stuff. By age 16, yeah, exactly. Like he doesn't know things.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  I, I feel like being born into wealth, it's, it feels harder to be into business because it's like. It's like, it's like driving a GTA where like the stakes are not high enough for me to be good at this.

• 39:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  You know, if I, if I fuck up, eh, it'll be fine.

• 39:20Robert Evans?

  It's like, and like, if you get good at driving a GTA, that's fun, but you still fucked up enough that if you'd been a real person, you would have died a million times by that.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 39:30Robert Evans?

  Right?

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:30Robert Evans?

  Um, a case in point, at age 16, uh, he saved up about a hundred thousand dollars in cash, mostly from hawking gold jewelry and fancy washes. He got his birthday gifts from his like dad and uncles and he uses that money to launch an investment portfolio that he's going to try to turn into a personal fortune, right? He wants to turn this hundred thousand to millions of dollars so that he's independently wealthy. Gillen writes that, quote, "At first, the value of his share portfolio went up, but soon enough MBS was losing money and in financial ruin," as he would later admit. Like he, he takes a bath on all of this money because he's basically day trading and he doesn't know what he's doing.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:08Robert Evans?

  Now, the greatest, yeah, of course, the greatest advantage, again, just take that money in an index fund, man, you'd have been fine.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Give it to me.

• 40:16Robert Evans?

  You're fine.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Just give the money to me.

• 40:17Robert Evans?

  Give, give the money to Dave. It'll work out just as well for you.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:20Robert Evans?

  Um, the greatest advantage of being born into money is that a setback like burning your life savings at age 16 does not have any consequences. You're not going to starve and you're not going to fail to meet any bills. You're just going to have to keep saving up birthday Rolexes until you could try again. So he does that and he graduates high school as one of the top 10 students in Saudi Arabia. And I know you're wondering, did he really earn that honor or was it nepotism? And the best answer I can give is this, can you think of a real national education system that has a list of the 10 best students in the country? No, because that's stupid. Real, real countries don't do that.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  No, no, they don't. You're right. That's a good point.

• 41:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  I mean, it's almost like doesn't matter.

• 41:04Robert Evans?

  Best students in America.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. But it's like, what, what is going to happen? Is he not going to graduate? There's no world where it's like, is he a good student or not?

• 41:13Robert Evans?

  Fail him.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:15Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Maybe he's smart. We'll never know.

• 41:18Robert Evans?

  Guy whose teachers will get shot for not giving good grades has good grades. News at 11.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:25Robert Evans?

  Uh, speaking of people who might get shot.

• 41:30Robert Evans?

  Probably not our advertisers.

• 41:33Robert Evans?

  I think.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Solid, solid. Christmas.

• 41:36Robert Evans?

  Thank you.

• 41:39Speaker 03

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• 43:09Robert Evans?

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• 43:20Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So, we're talking about Mohammed bin Salman. He's graduated high school at this point. He goes to college at a university named after his great-grandfather, King Saud. I'm sure he earned his admittance the hard way. And he gets a law degree. He graduates second in his class, which again, I'm sure he did the honest way. By this point, Mohammed bin Salman decided to take another stab at trying to get rich on his own. He makes the smart move of finally reaching out to actual professionals, businessmen in Riyadh who are scared of pissing off the governor and wouldn't tell his annoying kid to fuck off. One imagines that Prince Salman puts in a good word with them on behalf of his son, and perhaps maybe brings up some blackmail gently. However, it happens, MBS winds up with

• 44:04Robert Evans?

  $800,000 to try his hand at starting another investment portfolio, right? Wow, he managed to bootstrap himself up again to having even more money to try to make money with.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 44:17Robert Evans?

  He invests in US corporations, and this goes better for him. In 2008, when he's 23, he starts investing in the Tadawul Exchange, which is the Saudi Stock Exchange, right? Now, since nearly all of the companies on the Saudi Exchange are owned or run by the government, AKA his family, it's pretty easy for someone like MBS to be do what we would call insider trading, which he would call calling his cousin who runs the company and says, hey, are you about to have any good news? Should I get some stock now?

• 44:48Speaker 01

  I'm surprised he even had to try. It reminds me of the Stonecutter Simpsons episode where they're all just letting Homer win, where it's like, do you even have to call? Like, yeah, they could just, yeah, man.

• 45:01Robert Evans?

  And it's a remark, it's a mark of how of how sketchy he still is at this, that he does get invested for insider trading. And now nothing happens to him, but he's still obvious enough that someone looks into it.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Who looked into that? That's incredible.

• 45:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah, like someone who got fucking bone sawed, that's who.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  Right. To do something so bad or illegal that someone's like, okay, this is gonna kill me, but I have to do something about this.

• 45:26Robert Evans?

  I just can't ignore this, man.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:30Robert Evans?

  Now, MBS's first years after graduation are a blizzard of firms and businesses launched by him, usually in partnership with someone who needed favors from his dad or the royal family. Because he is somewhat willing to do real work, he does get appointed to some actual jobs. Oh, they're again, they're nepo jobs. He's made Secretary General for the Riyadh Competitive Council. He's made special advisor for a foundation named after his grandfather, that sort of stuff. He creates his own philanthropic foundation cultivating leadership skills in young Saudis. He's got his little Abowski Urban Achievers program of his own, right?

• 46:06Robert Evans?

  And in 2009, he gets made special advisor to the governor of Riyadh, who is his dad. Now, this is probably the earliest clear sign that this middle son of Prince Salman had somehow engineered his way into being a favored son of the heir apparent. This still puts him nowhere near the running for throne or for the like running the entire kingdom.

• 46:28Robert Evans?

  His focus at this point is just on getting rich. Real estate speculation is finally how he succeeds financially in a big way. Per that article in the Africa Report, quote, "MBS teamed up with landowners who agreed to give him a cut of the revenue generated by property sales to build developments on greenfield estates. The business model turned out to be lucrative and the prince began to amass a small fortune. Then a rumor made the rounds that MBS had sent an envelope containing a bullet to an owner who dined to refuse to sell a plot of land to him. Whether true or false, the anecdote earned him the name Abu Rasala, the father of the bullet within the royal family."

• 47:06Robert Evans?

  That's a cool nickname.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  That is cool. I think that's just a complicated way of saying a gun, right?

• 47:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Is a gun the father of the bullet? Is it more of a mother? Because gun bullets are more like eggs in a gun. But also bullets also make more guns. So maybe they're not good at, yeah, that's what H.R. Geiger would have argued per the painting on my wall.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. H.R. Geiger would have done all sorts of things.

• 47:31Robert Evans?

  He would have said a lot of shit.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  It would have been both and none at the same time.

• 47:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Ah, Geiger. Ah, Geiger.

• 47:41Robert Evans?

  And again, that's also such like a, that is kind of like a weak sauce version of threatening someone with murder is like just sending them an envelope with a bullet in.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  That is really funny. Cause then there's something like, I guess the thing about mailing someone a bullet is that then you get to imagine that they had to like, go out, get some stamps, put the bullet in the envelope, mail the envelope. Like there's just something like kind of silly about that threat where it's almost like too much work. I don't know.

• 48:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's just like kind of sweaty, right? Like,

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like when you watch seven and you're like, he had to mail that head, which means that he had to like, go to UPS and like wait in line and like get it all, get it all wrapped up. And I don't know. It just kind of takes the edge off. When you think about that a little too much.

• 48:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Father's bullet's cool though.

• 48:38Robert Evans?

  When you get mailed a bullet, do you call me like, do you mean like shoot myself? What am I to do with the bullet here?

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Did you mean to mail me a bullet?

• 48:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Was this purposefully? Were you sending this to an assassin? Like, what are we doing here?

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's sweaty. It's very sweaty.

• 48:54Robert Evans?

  His master stroke, like in terms of financial deals is that this, this deal he inks in 2008 with Verizon. Weirdly enough, that's how MBS gets his like, is his major financial success. He takes a minority stake in a joint venture involved with one of his many companies to bring the fiber optic infrastructure to Saudi Arabia. Right? This partnership helps boost MBS's growing stature, although it doesn't actually get off the ground. Right? This is like his, one of his big deals and it never happens. Um, but he doesn't get paid for it. And Prince Solomon is said to have bragged, my son made millions for the family, uh, as a result of this, even though again, it doesn't work out. Right? Like all that matters is we got paid, you know?

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Well, fiber.

• 49:37Robert Evans?

  Did we get fiber optic? No.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Fiber is like LaserDisc. You know what I mean? Where I feel like I was talking to someone like, oh, I can't wait to get fiber optic. And it's like, they don't, we have wireless internet now. Like we're completely skipping over fiber optic.

• 49:51Robert Evans?

  He's like that deadbeat dad who like promises his family, we're getting fiber. And then he just gets like faster dial up.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:58Robert Evans?

  For Saudi Arabia. Yeah.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Hey, that works too.

• 50:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah. In late January of 2015, King Abdullah died. MBS's father, Governor Salman, had been the crown prince for some period of time. And so he becomes the king after the old king's death. This was noted as being an unusually smooth transition, given the messy circumstances of the Saudi family in general. And the fact that this is smooth is seen as a, there's a kind of an agreement that now King Salman and the old king had. And basically, the, the former king is like, I will make you the king, but you have to appoint these people to positions in the government, right? Who would otherwise be your rivals and, and, and not, and agree not to fight them or have like bloodshed with them, right? So they kind of make an agreement before the old king dies to try to spare the kingdom any sort of power struggles.

• 50:47Robert Evans?

  Saudi kings, as you might gather, don't have to follow a strict family line to decide who gets power when they're gone. They get to pick a successor. Salman gets the job because he convinces the old king, he was the most capable option and he promises to do a bunch of stuff that the old king says. Now, he doesn't follow all of these to the letter. Before King Abdullah died, he had picked a crown prince that he wanted to be the crown prince for King Salman, the guy who would succeed if Salman died. And this was Prince Merkeen bin Abdullah Ziz, who at age 72 was just seven years younger than Prince, now King Salman. I found a write-up by Stephen Matthews, who noted, what was interesting about Prince Merkeen becoming crowned prince is that he was officially designated in a royal decree by former King Abdullah as next in succession after King Salman.

• 51:31Robert Evans?

  After a further royal decree by King Abdullah stated that Prince Merkeen would become crowned prince after Crown Prince Salman became king and cannot be changed by anyone. Now, this doesn't last, right? And there's some speculation that because Merkeen's mom was Yemini, he was seen as an unacceptable heir. I think that King Salman just kind of knew the guy wasn't going to be a good successor. He was too old. And so after a few months, he picks a more capable successor and this guy kind of steps aside. And the man he picks for the job is not his son, but his nephew Mohammed bin Nayef, otherwise known as MBN, a very capable man who would have the misfortune of being the first person targeted for destruction by Mohammed bin Salman, who's going to succeed him as the

• 52:16Robert Evans?

  crown prince. And we will tell that story in part three. How are you feeling so far about this kid, Dave?

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, no warning signs, no red flags, seems fine to me.

• 52:27Robert Evans?

  None at all.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  I'm sure it'll go fine.

• 52:30Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  You know, nobody sawed, sawed up.

• 52:33Robert Evans?

  Nah, nobody sawed up. He's mailed a bullet to some guy. I'm sure that's the worst thing he'll do.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, listen, that's like real teenage ed- edgelord stuff where it's like, I can see someone doing that here. I could see.

• 52:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  Like if you, you know, I don't know.

• 52:50Robert Evans?

  At least you get a free bullet, you know?

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:52Robert Evans?

  I wonder what kind it was, I guess.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can sell that to like a child. Child doesn't know how much a bullet costs. They'll give you anything.

• 52:59Robert Evans?

  They don't know that that's not worth that much money.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:03Robert Evans?

  Um, well, David, can any pluggles to plug before we roll out here?

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Ah, same as before, gainfully unemployed. Some more news. Google those things if you feel like it.

• 53:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Google those things if you feel like it.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 53:19Robert Evans?

  You don't, still do it.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Blue sky, I guess.

• 53:24Robert Evans?

  Okay, okay.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  Movie hooligan. Why not? I'm not really on it, but you know, I'm on it.

• 53:31Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Anyway, find Dave on the internet, harass him on the internet, find him on the street.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, mail me a bullet.

• 53:38Robert Evans?

  Mail Dave a bullet.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  If enough people mail me a bullet, I'll have a shitload of bullets.

• 53:43Robert Evans?

  That's right.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  I have no guns, but.

• 53:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah, those are as good as money. You could pay your rent in bullets in some places. You actually probably can't. Uh, that might be illegal, but.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:54Robert Evans?

  Try paying your rent and no, they, they probably would take that as a threat.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Well, Dave, I think that's gonna be all for those of us here at Behind the Bastards and those of us here at David Bell. Um, until next week, continue not living in Saudi Arabia, unless you live in Saudi Arabia, at which point, good luck. In which case, good luck, I guess. Either way, whatever.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and have fun.

• 54:18Robert Evans?

  Have fun.

• 54:22Speaker 06

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedi.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com/behindthebastards.

• 54:46Speaker 07

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• 55:16Speaker 08

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• 56:52Speaker 10

  How do you know that Claude won't become manipulative?

• 56:56Speaker 11

  This is a constant worry. And you can actually catch the model thinking, I think X is actually true, but I'm going to tell the user Y.

• 57:05Speaker 10

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• 57:22Speaker 02

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.