Here’s what Idaho Sen. Jim Risch, asked today about the prospect of chairing Foreign Relations, had to say: “I have 15 months left as the chair of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, and I intend to be as robust and focused on that as I have always been. We have a really good chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee who has 15 months left, and we’ll get to this when we get to this. We don’t want to put the elephant before the cart, if you would.”

Risch said as a member of the committee, he’s especially concerned about the situation in North Korea. “That’s the biggest challenge we have,” Risch said. “It’s disappointing to see the coverage that Trump’s dustup with the NFL got this weekend, compared to what’s going on with North Korea – I mean, that is a dangerous situation. … It needs more ink than what it’s getting.”

Asked about his strong defense of Trump during earlier hearings on Russia, Risch said, “There have been some things that I thought he was getting short shrift on, and I certainly talked about that.” He added, “I do want the facts out on that. We’re in the middle of an investigation on that, and wherever the facts take us on that, I’m all in, whether there’s something there or not. I can’t tell you where we are on that. I would just quote Dianne Feinstein, who said she hasn’t seen anything that shows any collusion with the Russians.” Feinstein made the comment to CNN in May.