Bill Press: You will know him by his friends

Bill Press, Tribune Content Agency on Nov 20, 2025

Nothing was more important than family in the small town of Delaware City, Delaware, where I grew up. Our extended family, the Cook Cousins, numbered in the dozens. And whenever the whole clan – grandparents, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, grandchildren, cousins – got together, especially after maybe the second round of drinks, we always broke out in song.

Most of the adults had a favorite song which, with little coaxing, they would perform every time. Uncle Blondie’s was “Autumn Leaves.” Aunt Kass was famous for her “Ave Maria.” My father had his own favorite, an old English pub tune called “The Pig.” I’ve no idea where he first heard or learned it, but he belted it out with glee. I can still hear him singing it:

It was an evening in November,

As I very well remember,

I was strolling down the street in drunken pride,

But my knees were all a-flutter,

And I landed in the gutter

And a pig came up and lay down by my side.

Yes, I lay there in the gutter

Thinking thoughts I could not utter,

When a colleen passing by did softly say:

'You can tell a man who boozes

By the company he chooses'—

And the pig got up and slowly walked away.

After which, we would all laugh and applaud and my father would take his bow. He never explained the meaning of his ditty. He didn’t have to. It was clear to all: You can tell who a man is by his friends.

I couldn’t help but think of that man lying in the gutter with a pig when I saw President Trump roll out the red carpet and a military jet flyover to welcome Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia to the White House this week. Remember: this is the man who came to power in 2017 by locking up hundreds of wealthy Saudis in a Riyadh hotel until they agreed to let him become the country’s de-facto leader. And while he’s applauded for letting women drive and go to the cinema, this is also the leader of a country where independent journalists are arrested or “disappeared,” where political opposition is forbidden, where beheading is the preferred form of execution, and which still does not recognize Israel.

Remember also this is the leader who, according to our own CIA, personally approved the gruesome murder and dismemberment of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Yet when an ABC reporter raised that issue to Trump and MBS in the Oval Office, Trump berated her for “embarrassing our guest,” threatened to cancel ABC’s license, and waved it all off – the murder of an American journalist! – with the disgusting comment “Things happen.”

Of course, MBS is only one of Trump’s best buds. Don’t forget Vladimir Putin, whom Trump calls “highly respected” and under whose rule, as described by Senator Bernie Sanders: “There is no freedom of speech. Protests are violently suppressed. Tens of thousands of people are imprisoned for speaking out against his rule. And the bravest and most prominent dissidents – people like Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov and Sergei Magnitsky – are murdered outright.” And whose forces have killed some 14,000 civilians in Ukraine.

Earlier, in July 2018, Putin also got the special MBS treatment when Trump said he didn’t believe the CIA when it concluded that Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election. "President Putin says it's not Russia. I don't see any reason why it would be," he sniffed.

Then, of course, there’s convicted sex pervert Jeffrey Epstein, whom Trump hung out with, chased women with and welcomed at Mar-a-Lago – for 15 years! Epstein’s gone, but Trump’s already rewarded Ghislaine Maxwell, his partner in crime, by transferring her from a federal prison in Florida to a new country club facility in Texas and has said he’s open to issuing her a presidential pardon.

With friends like these! It’s so true. You can tell who a man is by his friends. A ruthless dictator, a convicted pedophile and a man accused by the CIA of approving the murder of an American journalist. I’ll leave it up to you. You tell me what those three friends tell you about Donald Trump.

(Bill Press is host of The BillPressPod, and author of 10 books, including: “From the Left: My Life in the Crossfire.” His email address is: bill@billpress.com. Readers may also follow him on Twitter @billpresspod and on BlueSky @BillPress.bsky.social.)