President Donald Trump claimed Saudi Arabia would not last two weeks without U.S. support and therefore should be paying more for defense, but Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman rejected that, saying it would take "2,000 years" for his kingdom to struggle.
"Saudi Arabia was there before the United States of America," bin Salman told Bloomberg on Wednesday. "It's there since 1744, I believe more than 30 years before the United States of America.
"And I believe, and I'm sorry if anyone misunderstands that, but I believe President [Barack] Obama, in his eight years, he worked against many of our agenda – not in Saudi Arabia, but also in the Middle East. And even though the U.S. worked against our agenda we were able to protect our interests. And the end result is that we succeeded, and the United States of America under the leadership of President Obama failed, for example in Egypt.
"So Saudi Arabia needs something like around 2,000 years to maybe face some dangers. So I believe this is not accurate."
Despite the disagreement there with President Trump, bin Salman said he "loves" working with him.
"If you look at the picture overall, you have 99 percent of good things and one bad issue," bin Salman said.
"I love working with him. I really like working with him and we have achieved a lot in the Middle East, especially against extremism, extremist ideologies, terrorism and Da'esh [Arabic acronym for ISIS] disappeared in a very short time in Iraq and Syria, and a lot of extremist narratives have been demolished in the past two years, so this is a strong initiative."
The Crown Prince added there is a "price" for avoiding "civil war," something even the United States has succumbed to, he told Bloomberg.
"I believe that a lot of movements that happen around the world, they happen with a price," he said. "So, for example if you look at the United States of America, when for example they wanted to free the slaves. What was the price? Civil war.
"It divided America for a few years. Thousands, tens of thousands of people died to win the freedom for the slaves. Here we are trying to get rid of extremism and terrorism without civil war, without stopping the country from growing, with continuous progress in all elements.
"So, if there is a small price in that area, it's better than paying a big debt to do that move. More than that, all these issues we look at them seriously and we're trying to be sure that no one is harmed as much as we can."