Screenshot / HBO

The CEO of Uber, Dara Khosrowshahi, recently did an interview with Axios on HBO where he shrugged off the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi as a “mistake.”

When asked if he thought Yasir al-Rumayyan, the head of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, should remain on the Uber board of directors, Khosrowshahi responded:

“I think that government said they made a mistake… It’s a serious mistake. We’ve made mistakes too with self-driving and we stopped driving and we’re recovering from that mistake. So I think that people make mistakes. It doesn’t mean they can never be forgiven. I think they’ve taken it seriously.”

For context, Khosrowshahi is comparing the brutal murder and alleged dismemberment of former Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi with the accidental death of a pedestrian struck by a self-driving Uber vehicle.

Uber CEO on Saudi Arabia's killing of Jamal Khashoggi: "It's a serious mistake. We've made mistakes too, right, with self-driving … So I think that people make mistakes. It doesn't mean that they can never be forgiven" pic.twitter.com/EvinRrh3SE

— BNO News (@BNONews) November 11, 2019

It should also be noted that the Saudi Arabian government invested $3.5 billion in Uber back in 2016. It marked the single largest investment in an American venture-backed startup company by a foreign government.