threat, but we re still dealing with the fallout of the 2016 election and what they re doing in the 2018 midterm elections. from the capitol hill perspective, that s what they re more focussed on right now. glen, what do you make of the fact that the russians are not backing down from their desire to influence or interfere in our elections despite the fact that you have bob mueller coming out with his indictments against the russians? they don t think they re going to suffer any consequences from the white house because we have seen president trump sort of refuse to grab hold of this issue and do anything moving forward. i ll tell you, when i saw the reporter who asked the president after this recent criminal information t wasn information, it wasn t an indictment, but the criminal information was unsealed against the russian operative who is now trying to interfere with our 2018 elections and i heard the president say you know what? that had nothing to do with my campaign. i have
when you re hiding, we know where you are now. in montana on horse back. thanks for that. joining me is the director for university of virginia center for points of impact and editor and chief of sabato s crystal ball. great to have you with us. let me start with that montana race. where do you see that race right now? both parties think that tester does have a small lead pretty much comparable to the polling average, about three points. the parties differ a bit about how close it is. the republicans think it s closer, but, look, this is a state that donald trump carried by about 20 percentage points. as your correspondent was suggesting, that s going to be one of the keys. there s no question that president trump really, really dislikes senator john tester. so trump s already been out
direct quote from president trump. what we ve seen is more and more there are in the latest reporting assertions that u.s. intelligence has already heard the tapes and thus reality is beginning to seep in. i think many of us expect at some level president erdogan in turkey is going to make those tapes available in such a way that it yet again forces the saudis into a corner and i think the president is fearful of being stuck with them in a set of fabricated lies. as somebody who served in government, is there an advantage for the u.s. to try to have leverage over saudi arabia by saying if you want us to come to bat for you on this particular issue, we need to see you guys do something for us? we know this president loves to have leverage over other countries. so could he be now trying to do what turkey is doing which is to have saudi arabia over the barrel, so to speak, on this particular issue? you would want to think so, but the president and his trump administration has been so
this is one more division in a number of divisions in this country, state versus federal control and people pride themselves on lig far from d.c. and trump plays off that. you talked about land being one of the issues there, access to public land, what have you. but this president has made this campaign a referendum about him. how does that play with the folks there in montana? that s rosendale s best chance, he says vote for me. this election comes down to donald trump saying you re voting to save me and the democrats saying you re voting to save america. it has traction in a place like montana because that we heard in the piece, people view somebody like tester as somebody who s just going to vote with chuck schumer on everything. when it comes to impeachment, people in montana see donald trump whipping votes. how s your fly fishing game out there? not good. i didn t have cell service for an entire day, it was fantastic. good to know. cal perry.
arabia from a capital hill perspective, do you think? well, the trump administration has about 120 days right now to make a determination based on this investigation under the magnitsky act whether human rights sanctions should be imposed against the saudi regime. this is something that was triggered by congress a couple of weeks ago. this was something they didn t even have to vote on, that they force the administration to do. the question becomes whether the administration will have the will to actually impose those sanctions once that conclusion is made. there s a worry that once january 3rd comes around and the new congress comes n dependiin,g on who s in control, they might have to come up with a piece of legislation to force the president s hand and to back him into a corner even further on this issue. at this point, we certainly saw it this morning on sunday shows, a lot of lawmaker, both republicans and democrats, are not comfortable with the way that the president has been r