President Trump acknowledged for the first time on Thursday that journalist Jamal Khashoggi is dead.

“It certainly looks that way to me. It’s very sad,” the president told reporters as he left the White House on his way to a campaign rally in Montana.

He was asked what consequences Saudi Arabia would suffer if an investigation determined the kingdom was behind the death of Khashoggi, who vanished after entering the Saudi consulate on Oct. 2.

“It will have to be very severe, it’s bad, bad stuff,” he said. “We’ll see what happens.”

Turkish officials believe Khashoggi, who lived in the US and wrote for the Washington Post, was killed by a Saudi hit team that arrived in Turkey the same day he went missing from the consulate in Istanbul.

They say he was tortured, killed and dismembered.