The seasons come and go, but former Obama officials will likely never stop whitewashing the former president’s record.

This time, the subject is the Obama administration’s eight-year-long support for Saudi Arabia, coming under renewed scrutiny since the country’s crown prince carried out the brazen murder of dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi embassy in Istanbul. Although Saudi Arabia has been engaged in what amounts to genocide in Yemen for the last three years, Khashoggi’s reportedly brutal murder has so shocked the world’s sensibilities that, somewhat bafflingly, it might end up being the thing that finally sparks a re-evaluation of the US-Saudi relationship in Washington, DC.

Over the last few days, however, former Obama officials have strenuously denied that Obama ever supported the country during its brutal endeavors. “Lets [sic] have no illusions,” said former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. “Obama did not appease the Saudi royal family.” McFaul went on to claim that Obama “did not play business as usual with the Saudis,” and that “bilateral tensions became very tense” as a result. Pressed on this by journalists Adam Johnson and Aaron Maté, McFaul challenged Johnson over which of them had been banned from travel by more dictators, and pointed to Obama’s supposed support for the Arab Spring and his stewardship of the Iran deal to as evidence of this adversarial approach.