Christine Brennan:
The LIV Golf tour has been very, very controversial. And it is backed by Mohammed bin Salman and his private investment fund.
And, of course, he is the man who has, by all accounts, the CIA and others, is responsible for the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, and, of course, the Saudis and their connection to 9/11, and the Saudi human rights record, which is abysmal, especially regarding women and LGBTQ rights.
So that's what has happened here. Now, I know people have said to me many times — I have been — I have been critical, of course, of the golfers who have left for the LIV tour, Amna. They have said, well, you pump gas, you put gas in your car. There are other sports events in Saudi Arabia.
The difference for me is very simple. These men, Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed, Sergio Garcia, quite a few others, Dustin Johnson, they're the big names, they had jobs. They had jobs on the PGA Tour, and they left their jobs, and, by the way, very, very good-paying jobs, left their jobs to go into business with bin Salman and with the Saudis and all of the terrible things that, of course, are alleged or are known about them.
And this is a classic case, in my humble opinion, of sports-washing, i.e., they are using — the Saudis are using these golfers — and the golfers know they're being used — to sports-wash, to whitewash that record and try to make the Saudis look good.
Even Phil Mickelson said that in comments. He knows they killed Khashoggi. They — he knows about the terrible record with LGBTQ people, and yet Mickelson signed up because the money, Amna, is so massive. They're making hundreds of millions of dollars. And I think it's obviously something very worthy of conversation, because it is such a remarkable difference from, say, a tennis player playing in Saudi Arabia for one week, or an Olympics being in Beijing.
Very problematic, but not going into business with those people, as these golfers have.
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