"They have nothing but cash, right? They buy a lot from us," Donald Trump said about Saudi Arabia. (File)
US President Donald Trump reinforced his support for Saudi Arabia on Saturday during a rally at Green Bay in Wisconsin, saying that he wouldn't want to "lose" the ally that has purchased goods worth $450 billion from the country.
"They have nothing but cash, right? They buy a lot from us, $450 billion they bought," Al Jazeera quoted the US President as saying
"You had people wanting to cut off Saudi Arabia...I don't want to lose them," he added.
The US-Saudi Arabia relations had came under the scanner following the murder of The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Many criticised Donald Trump for siding with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,who may have had a role in the killing.
Saudi Arabia has strongly refuted such reports, reiterating that the Crown prince was not involved in Khashoggi's killing in any way.
At the rally, the US President also described a recent phone call he had with the Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.
"We lose $4.5 billion on a country to defend them, and they're rich. So I called them. I said listen, no good. They were in a state of shock because they've never got a call like this in 25 years, right," Trump said to a cheering crowd.
"I said we're losing $4.5 billion every year, we can't do this anymore. This is crazy. He (King Salman) got very upset, angry, said this is not fair. I said, of course, this is fair. He said we''ll give you $500 million more...I said I want more. We argued. So they paid us more than $500 million for one phone call, it took me one call," he stated.
Trump then recollected how the Saudi King asked why the US President made the call as "nobody had made such a call".
"That''s because they were stupid!" Trump exclaimed during his address.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)