underestimate that go seat could go to a democrat. i ve never seen anything like it. in the focus groups we did for the ashton group in tennessee, we heard from republicans who said, phil bredison, i could vote for him. i ve never seen a crossover like that in the 16 months we ve been doing this. let s turn to north korea. resolving the crisis there was key in his meeting with shinzo abe yesterday in mar-a-lago. in a joint news conference, the president discussed the possible upcoming summit with kim jong-un. and i hope to have a very successful meeting. if we don t think it s going to be successful, mark, we won t have it. we won t have it. if i think that it s a meeting that is not going to be fruitful, we re not going to go. if the meeting when i m there is not fruitful, i will respectfully leave the meeting
of enraging president trump and unleashing his anger, and you look at what happened with bob corker. is that a cautionary tale? maybe he wouldn t have made it through the primary in tennessee. politically what he said yesterday was pretty interesting. he essentially gave governor phil bredison, the very popular former governor who is running against congresswoman marcia blackburg. he basically endorsed phil bredison over marcia blackburg. he said, that phil bredison, he s a good guy. they worked together, and phil bredison, popular governor of tennessee, who had this relationship with corker, is leading tennessee. and marcia blackburg could be so potentially unpopular there. i think republicans are
such advantage of this moment in a good way and i think we ll continue to see that going forward into 2018. another big story right now, of course, happening until congress, it seems as if every couple of days there s a lawmaker forced to resign. al franken, i know that the minnesota senator of course today, the governor announcing his replacement is going to be the lieutenant governor from that state, a woman. this is something that you really struggle with. you went back and forth. another article of yours here. this is from november 20th. it doesn t matter that franken s transgression wasn t on the same level of the abuses as the alabama senate candidate roy moore and donald trump have been accused of. it s easy to condemn morally worthless men like trump. it s much harder to figure out what should happen to men who make valuable and political can cultural contributions and whose alleged misdeeds fall far short of criminal. where should that line be? oh, i don t feel like i m qu
running for the senate. the last time a statewide democrat won statewide was 12 years ago and his name was phil bredison. when the margin is this close, you know, everything counts. i think one thing to keep in mind is in a 51-49 senate, if you need one more example of how fundamentally divided the country is, just look at that number. we ll leave it there. appreciate it. moments ago the testimony of deputy attorney general rod rosenstein on capitol hill took a break so committee members could go vote along with congresswoman terri sewell. rosenstein in front of that committee, judiciary committee, answering questions about special counsel robert mueller s russia investigation. republicans on the judiciary committee really pressed rosenstein on the impartiality of mueller s probe.
was steve bannon s influence diminished at all last night or does he still have enough pull among trump s base to still cause trouble for mitch mcconnell and other members of the so-called establishment? that s the key question before the 2020 presidential election, is did bannon did the breitbartism of the america first wave that elected trump, did that carry such a flawed candidate to within 20,000 votes? senator-elect jones won. it s probably good news for the country, probably inarguably. but it was close. this was not a blowout. i do think that that s going to be a salient factor going forward. we re about to have a big race in tennessee, which is about as red as alabama almost. where a former democratic governor, phil bredison, is