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90s and george w had with king abdella. things are off to a good start, i would think, in saudi arabia. tomorrow is the big day, when the president speaks before the arab islamic summit to some 50 american and arab leaders and a speech about islam and terrorism and urging them to forge a different path for their children in the future. one night to take note of, the president talked about fighting radical islamic terrorism, those words are not in an early draft of the speech so i m told they may make it into the final draft, but that seems unlikely as he appears to be dialing back the rhetoric with his first foreign visit and the first country on the first foreign visit being a muslim country, saudi arabia. all right, jonathan, if i can ask you one more question. you touched on the optics we ve seen so far with this trip. the u.s. is obviously in arguably a very different spot than the last administration. so i want to ask you personally because you ve covered many administrations, ....
The 9/11 hijackers came from saudi arabia. how much pressure does the president and for that matter, sort his staff and sometimes it s the staff level rather than leader to leader. how much pressure on saudi arabia, thanks for the welcome, for the $110 billion arms deal, but you have to get your house in order. can the saudis get their house in order? i m you know, i m not sure. this is such a heavy bar. this is so tough because the wahhabi establishment still dominates so much of what goes on in the kingdom. we re really talking about a country, let s remember this, where there s going to be a toby keith saudi concert. women can t attend that, women can t leave the country without their husbands or guardian s permission. they can t vote. there s no legislature. we are talking about a very different kind of country and it s very, very hard for ....
And fascinating to see what comes out of this press briefing, we re waiting to start at the moment. back to you. ben hall is reporting live outside the press conference. as you can see we re waiting on a press conference between secretary of state rex tillerson and his counterpart in saudi arabia. we expected to hopefully to begin at any moment now, but a little more on the timing, just in terms of what you re seeing on your screen. riyadh, saudi arabia, that s the hotel that the press pool is staying in. 6:26 p.m. in riyadh. the president has been on the ground now for about nine hours, a number of meetings, some business being done, a lot of ceremonial receptions, greetings, in the royal halls. the big meat of this trip happens tomorrow and that s what we re expected to hear about at this press briefing. the video on the right-hand side of the screen from earlier today when the president and first lady walked off air force one there, to be greeted by the king. which was a depar ....
Religious establishment that has dominated this country since its very inception in the 1930 s. and this is going to be one heck of a fight. and they are going to depend on their relationship with the united states to make change happen. that s what s so extraordinary about this and that s why the doubling down on president trump after eight years of indifference from barack obama is a huge change, a huge shift, very important signal to us and to the arab world, that the saudis are back. they want the americans to be back. they want to stabilize the price of oil. we want to fight terror together. you do get a sense that there is, as john roberts talked about, this personal relationship between the king and the president, that they are trying to develop, but to your point earlier, judy, saudi arabia s the original exporter of terrorism, which doesn t surprise anybody that most of ....
He s streaming live and it s in and out. it s a long way. it s a long way. and ben you were incredible when you set the scene for us as the president was arriving. i want a sense from you now that his day is obviously continuing on, just what is going on in the streets there and what the latest from there on the ground? well, yeah, you know, we continue to talk to people and we re waiting for this press briefing to begin. every briefing that we get it s fascinating to hear what they might say. going on to judy s point recently, she was just saying that iran was the threat to saudi arabia, i was speaking to someone from the foreign minister, he pointed out a number of issues that u.s. and saudi arabia align on. and he indicated that saudi arabia has been the target of al-qaeda and isis as well and the saudi monarchy, the government here, they are considered a huge threat. the pivot away from saudi ....