have done, worked hard, pursued my dreams and when i was not much older than those of you at this graduation i came to public office for the first time. now president mcnulty left this part out of the biography. i ran for congress of the united states twice before i was elected the third time. i ran in 1988, met my second favorite presidents, ronald reagan when i was a young man and candidate.

nothing is more successful than people with talent. genius will not. under the word of genius is almost the proverb. education will not, where the world is full of educated derelicts, he wrote. persistence and determination alone are omnniponent. from this day forward, the grove city college class of 2017, you're called to lead fearlessly. be men and women of intig gret with a servant's heart. expect opposition and persevere

and lastly, have faith for as the good book says, he knows the plans he has for you. plans to pro per you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. as you go from here today live your lives according to the precepts and the principles that you've learned here at grove city college. strive to lead with courage and conviction in the places where you live and work and in all that you do, have faith. have faith that he that brought you this far will never leave you and never forsake you because he never will. hold fast to him, to the faith that deepened in this special place and to all that you learned from this extraordinary faculty. i know in my heart of hearts you will not only persevere, you will prevail and i look out

in the black robes at a sea of leaders that will lead your families, your professions and our country to unimaginable heights. grove city college class of 2017, this is your day. the future is yours. go get it. thank you, god bless you, and may god bless the united states of america. [applaus [applause] >> all right, this is a fox news alert, i'm elizabeth prann, welcome to a very special edition of news headquarters along with leland vittert. we've been listening to vice-president pence speak to grove city college.

there was an inspirational tone in the speech, trust the dreams in your heart and never let go of those dreams and trust god. he spoke personally about his life lessons and his life journey. he said hold onto your calling and never let it go. an inspirational speech, 30 minutes from a commencement speech to the class of grove city college, a christian university in western pennsylvania. david: no coincidence where the college was. western pennsylvania key to the pence-trump victory in november. it was a different tone to the class than president trump. this was deeply personal, talked about failures running for office and what is needed persistence was the words that he used, to follow the dreams in your heart. so, we've got the vice-president in pennsylvania right now. >> a lot going on. >> and we've got his boss, the

president, overseas right now. these are live pictures coming in from saudi arabia, riyadh, saudi arabia, 6:00 in the afternoon there. president trump arrived this morning and had a packed day already signed a number agreements for arms purchases and we are now awaiting, and he think this is the room. you can see the american flag and the saudi flag set up there. secretary of state rex tillerson and his saudi counterpart, the former minister, this was not scheduled. as things happen in the arab world and presidential visits, they are way behind schedule by an hour or so of now so we're waiting for a couple of meetings to happen before we'll see the secretary of state and then the foreign minister from saudi arabia. >> right, and i want to bring in our own john roberts who is also awaiting this joint press conference and john, does it

surprise you at all that we're hearing initially from the secretary of state and not the president himself, first sort of a public speech? >> no. >> it doesn't surprise you, why not? >> good morning, elizabeth, no, it doesn't surprise me at all. these things are carefully character straighted. in terms of adding these things, they're added all the time. the secretary of state and former secretary of state, al-jubeir, i knew when he was saudi ambassador to the united states late 1990's, early 2000's will brief us to the goings on. the president right now is back at his hotel not too far away from here where he's got a couple more bi-lats with the crowned prince and the deputy crowned principals. salmans is interesting because he's tried to open things up more in terms of relations between men and women and things that women can do and where men and women can be seen together in public.

so, he'll be an interesting figure to watch. he's also the defensemenster so he is -- he's the defense minister. we've seen a signing of accord between the united states and israel, a $110 billion arms deal, the biggest arms deal in u.s. history at a single time. overall, in the course of ten years, that arms deal will be worth some $350 billion and an interesting side note to it all, as well. jared kushner was heavily involved in this and part of what he did was he tried to get the saudis a deal from lockheed martin. they want to buy this sad missile system. and the price tag on that is pretty hefty. jared kushner sentenced that the saudis were a little worried about the price tag so he called up marilyn huesen, while in the room, she's the ceo of lockheed, and said hey, can you give us a better deal

on this missile defense system and marilyn huesen was the first person in the exchanging of military documents to go up there and shake the hands of one of the saudi dignataries and hand over from the missile system. and it's interesting to take note about the atmospherics here and the difference from president obama. one of the biggest differences when president obama touched down here in riyadh, at king kaled airport, the king salman did not come out to meet him at the tarmac, but when president trump arrived this morning at about 9:50 a.m., there was a red carpet out there. there was a middle eastern rug out there as well, ceremonial one, and there was king salmans out to greet the president. the two had, what looks like a very good relationship, rim reminiscent of the bush relationship in late '80s and

'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, how does this

affect the president's ability to negotiate and how is it so different? >> it greatly improves the president's ability to get concessions out of the saudis, to get their cooperation on things like the war on terror. one of the big points of commonalty between the united states, at least this president, and saudi arabia, this president, president trump agrees with saudi arabia that iran is a huge problem in this region and does represent a threat to arab allies in the region. they didn't like the idea that president obama signed this nuclear deal with iran. they're happy to see president trump in office and happy to see him here in saudi arabia. contrast that with what's going on back home for president trump. he's enjoying this trip so far, i would say, elizabeth. >> john roberts, we're going to be continuing to check with you as we await this press conference with secretary of state rex tillerson and his

counterpart in saudi arabia. we expect them anywhere between now and 11:30. >> now and whenever they want to show up. and these things-- john has got a busy week or so ahead of him between saudi arabia, israel and rome and off to the summit. let's bring in judy miller, pulitzer prize winning author and we have her join us at these times. and the great thing having you with us, we can benefit from your experience that goes back in this region so far. you've covered saudi arabia all the way back in the '70s and '80s and i'm interested from your thought about what's changed here? what should we be looking for? what has struck you as the most notable now that the president's been on the ground there for about nine hours? >> i think what's really changed is saudi arabia itself. i mean, when i went there in the beginning and you know, in

the '70s, it was -- there was one capital, riyadh, with almost nothing around it and now you have a country of 30 million people, 20 million of whom are saudis, 10 million of whom are foreigners, but you still have this heavy dependence on oil. so, what you have now and what i'm seeing now for the first time ever is a younger generation beginning to rise up and say, we want to be a more normal country. we don't want to be dependent totally on oil, and the deputy crowned prince, mohammed bin salmans, the son of the king, has said that i have a vision and it's called vision 2030. we want to be less dependent on oil, we want to manufacture half of our arms by the year 2025, we want to join the world in terms of getting rid of some of the excesses and that means that the saudi monarchy is committed to tackling the

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

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

president trump, who during the campaign talked again and again about the danger of radical isl islam. to be standard in this country and having to talk about working together about the very elements he campaigned against. i tell you, i would not want to be writing the speech for him tomorrow because he's going to have to thread so many needles and walk so delicately on this religious terrain. if he says the wrong thing, the saudis religious establishment will explode in anger no matter how friendly the king wants to be. this is an extremely delicate diplomatic task. >> we heard he was still working on the speech on air force one on the flight over. >> right. >> and the point you brought up, does he mention human rights? does he mention women's rights? much was made about the fact melania and ivanka didn't have

their heads common. it's fairly common to western delegations not to have their women cover their heads. >> right. >>, but still symbolic. >> judy, i want to ask you another question because we saw secretary mattis speak on friday and he said the president will not push out eye sis, but annihilate isis and so many things that the president needs to be threading on this trip, not only islamic extremism, but the gulf states so much want to get a handle on iran. how does a strong saudi arabia play a big part in that? >> oh, saudi arabia's crucial in the fight against isis. in fact, osama bin laden's son hamza is about to issue a statement on behalf of al-qaeda about the trump trip to saudi arabia. so, everybody is watching what's going on there right now. right now, the saudis are

fighting militarily, the iranians and isis in yemen. the saudis have never fought outside their borders in modern times. this is a huge commitment to this fight. saudi intelligence, saudi arabian cooperation with israel, very quiet, but there, saudi cooperation with us on the ground. who are the major players? what do we have to be worried about? we need each other in this fight, there is no decimating isis without the help of saudi arabia and the saudis have to do more to keep their own wealthy citizens in check when they write large checks to the very organizations that are undermining us and threatening our way of life. >> that's sort of what we were talking about, how much leverage does the administration have with the saudis. judy, quickly though, it's great for us in-- we've often heard president trump talk so much on the campaign trail about isis,

about radical islam, but to liz's point, if you spend time over there, as i did recently, much of the arab world, the sunni arab world of which saudi arabia is the home and the founder state of now, they're much more worried about iran than they are about isis as a threat. they're much more looking to the united states for strength and weapon and counter balance to iran than isis. what is the balance that president trump brings there? >> well, i think this is another one of-- a diplomatic issue that he's going to have to handle very carefully. the saudis reached out to us and to president trump because they are focused like a laser on iran. they see iran as the greatest threat to them, as the greatest threat to the region, and americans also have kind of concluded that the iranians are really the grand strategic so, you have to keep saudi

arabia focused on fighting iran and not -- and, but also while they're fighting isis. of course, isis and iran are great enemies, so this is not an easy diplomatic dance. and president trump is new to this game. rex tillerson is not. he understands the economics of oil, the economics of oil power, but i'm not sure that anyone other than an mcmaster understands the strategic and military challenge for saudi arabia on the ground. a lot of saudis don't like the fight in yemen. they don't want to be extended and helping america so visibly in syria. so, there are a lot of domestic pressures the saudi king has to cope with and the pressures that he has to fight against in order to maintain and to

rejuvenate this alliance with the united states which really kind of flagged under president obama. >> judy miller, pulitzer prize winner. and you think about this, liz, the first u.s.-saudi alliance happened in 1990, there was the invasion of iraq and all of a sudden norman schwarzkopf and the president and dick cheney putting together the alliance to take on saddam hussein. it was simpler. it was the saudis and much of the arab world and much of the world against iraq out of kuwait. judy pointed out in a way only she can, now a little less than 30 years later, it's so much more complicated. >> absolutely. i want to bring in our own ben hall. he is outside of this press conference in riyadh, saudi arabia. now, for our viewers at home,

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

arabia by the obama administration is what created the vacuum, what upset the balance in the region. and so, you know, they were saying to me just in the last half hour, that there are so many common issues that the two countries can work on together. and as we're here today, we've obviously been seeing that on the surface. we see all the pomp and circumstance is the term we hear again and again and we see effects out of this, the deals, $110 billion immediately. $350 billion over the next ten years, so, that's setting up a climate for a long-term relationship to continue building, again. and of course, secretary tillerson making a point that american firms will be involved in that investment here so it's really going to benefit the u.s. i spoke yesterday or two days ago to the foreign minister here, al-jubeir. he was telling me how important saudi arabia, indeed the middle east is to the american economy

and how much trade flows through this region and that's the principal point why it's important to have a safe saudi arabia and u.s. needs to be involved here. up to a million u.s. jobs could be at risk if this extends into chaos and for some reason the royal family and the government here fell. yes, there's a thin line and balance between the royal family and some of the wahhabis and we've heard about that time and again. and it's to the royal family's interest to keep the status quo. and so a chance to-- as they balance two things. but the people must-- the family needs to be reformed. and there are many princes that have a handsome payment and that's one of the things that the president is talking about here. saudi arabia needs to reform from the inside before affecting change in the region

as well. it's a multi-pronged effort here, again, speaking to officials here, they tell me there are so many things the countries can work on together and it's imperative for global security that this region does not descend further into chaos. and they're indicating because obama pivoted away from saudi arabia to iran, that iran filled the vacuum where saudi arabia opened the u.s. might have stepped up. and there was an opportunity after president obama drew the red line and they're making no uncertain terms, the obama years why rough and a road bump on the way. they say they have optimism now that things can change and from both sides, seems to suggest for the moment it will. what's interesting this trip continues for president trump, and the things that he says in saudi arabia have an impact in jerusalem as well and other countries.

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 departure from--

>> the king who came obviously to the edge of the red carpet, we talked so much about the optics and so different from the trip that we saw with his predecessor, so you can see the king approaching, obviously, the president and first lady melania there. so, yes, so far, the optics are quite different and that includes the deal announcement they're signing as well. >> as we've known and it's well reported that president trump likes to come away from my meeting with what is determined a win. some type of deliverable, certainly, this large arms deal, 110 billion dollars, is one such deliverable. we'll see if there's any more. we'll see if they're planned out. just got this note from the pool that's travelling with the president, said it's 6:18 local time, so, nine minutes ago, the pool was holding in the hotel for what we expect to be a bilateral meeting with the crowned prince and the defense minister, that's what john roberts was talking about, and with that, so it looks like we

have a few minutes until this press conference begins, we're going to bring in evan siegfried, a strategist and evan, good to hear from you. from a political standpoint, for a president who had, shall we say, a rough past ten days, you can't beat these pictures, you can't beat this conversation that's happening? >> this is actually very good for the president after what has happened over the past two weeks. he's able to show that he's going out and focusing on the job he was elected to do, not what people are talking about back here as to whether or not it's some giant scandal or not. what he's doing is going and doing the people's business on foreign policy, by working with the saudis. he's going to end up working with the israelis and he's going to talk with n.a.t.o., the g-7 and the pope. and what we can see already coming out of this deal with the saudis is not only a more secure world, and the potential for that, but even an economic benefit for the united states

and american workers because the saudis are coming to us with a position of need, where they're asking for things from us and if those things could be infrastructure investment, which could help us by selling materials and creating jobs for americans and benefit the saudi arabiaen people. >> the president has such a big speech tomorrow and we've heard from our own john roberts, a lot of emphasis, a lot of curiosity, exactly how he's going to be mincing words. how important is it for the president to tread lightly and to deliver, really, probably a perfect speech? i mean, the world is watching. >> let's not kid ourselves here. the president has a very feen needle to thread here. he needs to be tough, but at the same time welcoming and show that he is a friend of the saudi arab saudi arabiaen people. yes, the saudis do not treat women like they are in the united states, women are not allowed to drive. and they have to have permission from their husbands to do several things and have their heads covered. the president, it looks like,

is going to be saying he wants to find areas of mutual cooperation without trying to lecture them how to begin or live their lives. that's good, but at the same time there are going to be people in the united states on both the republican and democratic side who say, why aren't you standing up for women's rights because presidents be there democrat and republicans have traditionally done that. the president will have to find a way to keep both saudis and the muslim world happy, as well as keep american critics happy and that's a very fine needle to thread. >> evan, you used the same word that judy miller used, or phrase she used, a lot of needles to thread with this speech. and any speech begins with a simple question, who is the audience for this? is it the american people? is it his supporters who he was so tough about taking on terrorism and calling it radical islamic terrorism, something that he over and over said was so important or is his