brian todd, cnn, washington. as scandals swirl around the white house the president is in saudi arabia on the first leg of a world wind trip. five countries, nine days, the sights of three major religions the trump have a lot of goals. establishing an alliance to really fight terrorism and global affairs correspondent alise labott has more from washington. what does it mean when we saw today in terms of accomplishing the president s goals? well, anna, i think one of the president s major goal was was to reassert that relationship with the saudi arabia and allies, and it certainly got off to a good start today not just with the welcome but the meeting with the king, the investment that saud and the u.s. signed over the
president with pom pus circumstance. let s bring in evan police ski it s the former official for president obama. erik thanks for being with us. what do you see as president trump s pot priority for his visit? i think anna, you got it right. the top priority is to change the subject. i think the goal here is to visit some key allies of the united states and warm the relations, reset the relationships under the trump administration and to change what everybody in washington the talking about. president trump has this reputation of being unpredictable, if you were the saudis how do you handle president trump? what would you see as victory in their minds eye? well, i think their goal is almost identical. they want him to have a great visit. they are rolling out every white
impeachment just in case. jen is in riyadh. it certainly looks like he s having a good time. a much different welcome for him than his pred sessioner there in saudi arabia. that s right anna. i can remember a few years ago when i was here with president obama we had to hop on helicopters and go 30 minutes into the desert so the presidat time would meet with the king. different rolling out of welcome with president trump. mainly because the kingdom see an eye to eye fashion with this president than it did with president obama. never mind the fact that when president trump was a candidate, candidate donald trump had some extreme things to say about the muslim faith and islam.
when it comes to security issues and counter terrorism issues they do see eye to eye. today has been about pop and circumstance. you saw all day long the saudis lavishing all sort of attention on president trump. that went over very well with the president he likes that sort of thing. this evening the secretary rex tillerson, doing this sword dance that s grabbed all of our attention in the press file as we were watching it unfold on sawdy state television. the president got into it swaying a bit, didn t pick up the sword and dancing with it the way secretary tillerson did. it took a trip of thousands of miles away from washington to get the president in good spirits because of all the questions about russia going on back in the nation s capital. we should point out anna that subject did come up today in
riyadh in a press conference with secretary tillerson, they were asked about the circumstance was asked about the russian investigation. he essentially brushed off the question, said he didn t know much about it. all eyes are going to be on, today was pot of circumstance, all eyes are going to be on the president ease speech to the muslim world. his aids have been building up this speech for days. the question will ultimately be with the president utter the phrase radical islam terrorism. there are some questions as to whether it will be in the speech tomorrow. we caution up with the national security official just before the secretary got in his motor cave earlier this evening, he said the speech was still being worked on at this point so it s unclear whether we ll hear that phrase or not and how that will shake up thing in this part of the world. as you know, anna, how the president talks about this issue