tv Reliable Sources CNN August 27, 2017 8:00am-9:00am PDT
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that's just not -- that's not a recommended course of action. don't do that. what happened last night -- i was out there and saw quite a number of vehicles that were on the road. again, let me remind people between now until this storm has clearly passed, please, do not get on the road. do not get on the road. even if there's a lull today, don't assume the storm is over. the lesson we should have learned from yesterday, rain that morning, it stopped for several hours, it started again just before evening time. we had more rain last night from 7:30 all the way up than we had during first part of the day. it became very difficult to get out there to try to rescue people. so a lot of people were calling because they got stranded. the best way to keep from being
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stranded is to stay off the streets. stay home. i'm going to encourage people, unless water is just coming into your home and it's just totally unsafe, i'm going to encourage you to stay at home. if you are getting water but it's not life-threatening, i know no one wants water in their home. if you are getting water and it's not life-threatening, i'm going to ask you simply stay put. do not get on the roadway. do not try to go someplace if you don't know how to get there. just stay put. okay? that's what i would ask you to do. we need you to help us. because what is happening now is that there are a lot of calls coming in to 911, and many are them are not life-threatening. they are calling where -- i understand the inconvenience. but they're not life-threatening. at the same time, there are many calls that are coming in that
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are life-threatening. our first responders need to attend to them. >> you are watching special cnn live coverage of tropical storm harvey. we have been listening to a press conference from the mayor of houston. this is one of the biggest rain makers texas has seen. this is the second day essentially of a multi-day crisis. houston is the fourth biggest city in the united states. right now it's under a flash flood emergency. the national weather service in south texas is using unprecedented language saying that catastrophic flooding is expected to worsen and could become historic. millions of people throughout south texas from houston down to galveston and many points in between are being urged to shelter in place. the folks who are not doing that, you can see here, are stuck in some of the flash floodwaters. we are getting pictures in. statements from local authorities bringing all of that to you in the next few minutes here. people are trapped in some places in and around houston, rivers are still on the rise.
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we heard the mayor just now say flooding has occurred all over. he says more resources are coming in to try to deal with this. keep in mind, it's still raining in some cases raining heavily. this will continue for many hours and days to come. the mayor saying, 40 more boats are coming in to assist. we know the u.s. coast guard has at least five helicopters in the air. they are asking for more resources. media note here, one of the television stations in houston, cbs affiliate khou, has had to evacuate. you can see this video. floodwaters from the bayou have come over into the station. khou has dealt with floodwaters before but not to this extent. the station had to evacuate. we will show you live pictures from khou as we get them in. essentially what's happened is one reporter in the field has taken over while the rest of the staff actually evacuates and moved to higher ground. we are seeing other evacuations
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in houston as well. in many parts of the city, many parts of the metro area. keep in mind, many millions of people live in and around houston. we are seeing flooding to the north and to the south. neighborhoods like pasadena, deer park, out to the gulf, farther south to league city, dickinson. reports of people trapped in their homes in all of the parts of south texas. we are seeing that in southwest pars of the houston metro area. neighborhoods that are also inundated. there are reports of people moving to their attic. local officials said, don't do that unless you have an ax. better to go on the roof and wait for help there. more pictures in, more video in. let's begin with rosa flores in houston who has had to move to higher ground. where are you? what are you seeing now? >> we're in the historic part of downtown houston.
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brian, earlier today we were doing our live shots from that intersection where you see the red traffic light. right now you can see it's completely sub mermerged in wat. we were next to the railing next to this building that has the spaghetti warehouse. as you can see now it's a raging river. moving towards the gulf of mexico at a good clip. i want to pan over a little bit so you can see how this water is testing the infrastructure. take a look at the cracks that are on the side of the building. it appears to be buckling. we have been monitoring this for the past hour or so. it hasn't opened much wider than it is right now, as you see it. initially, we could definitely see those gaps widening. what you are looking at right now is actually a parking lot underneath all of this water. it's a hill that rolls down to the banks of buffalo bayou.
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right now all you see is a raging river. yesterday, brian, we were actually doing live shots at the bottom of those trees. now i can only show you the treetops. that's how much water has inundated here. normally, you would see buffalo bayou rolling through, meandering downtown houston. there's a running path. people are usually running, walking their dogs. not the case right now. there's just so much water. and it's still raining, it's still pounding. you were mentioning khou. i worked for that station before joining cnn. it's just by alen parkway. buffalo bayou, this bayou that you see behind me, except it's completely overflowed now, flows through that area, where that station is. i'm glad that our colleagues there are taking shelter, going to higher ground. you can see, brian, how this
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water has turned into raging rivers. the streets in downtown houston have turned into raging rivers there these particular areas. you can see the street signs are submerged in water. that's how much water has accumulated. of course, the concern is that there's still more rain coming. brian? >> possibly more feet of rain. what is the beeping dou ining s? are those car alarms? >> we have been -- i believe it's an alarm for a building that's over here to my right. i wish i could walk over and show you. we have been hearing these alarms as these buildings are being submerged by water. like i was mentioning, this is literally probably about i would say maybe 25, 30 feet below -- or deep, i should say. it's a parking lot that kind of rolls down and there's a hill that rolls down into the banks of buffalo bayou that right now,
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of course, you can't see because of just the monumental amount of water that has accumulated here. it's rushing towards it appears -- towards the gulf of mexico, which is what it's supposed to do, brian. of course, right now the infrastructure here being tested. there are bayous that meander through the city that serve as a drainage for the city. normally, it does work. when you have a combination of continuous rain and this water not stopping from all over the city coming through these bayous, you can see that the infrastructure is being tested. right now, tested -- it's a difficult test to pass. there's just so much water accumulated already. the ground is saturated. we're getting more water right now. >> thank you very much. we will try to stay with your pictures. we bring in the managing he hadar for the houston chronicle. are you on high enough ground there at the chronicle? how are you trying to cover the
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storm? >> caller: yeah, we're on the fourth floor. we got a ways to go before we're in jeopardy. i'm looking out of our window. i can see the highway access roads are rapidly disappearing under water. almost nobody on the highway. our parking lot is pretty much gone. it's raining really hard. >> we were showing the cover of this morning's chronicle, basically chronicling the destruction on the coast. this cover focusing on rockport and other communities that were mostly affected by the winds when hurricane harvey came ashore friday night. now the big story is flooding. this was forecast. you have had days to prepare. i wonder what you are doing. do you have staffers spending the next few days there? >> we have the entire editorial staff activated. most people cannot get into the newsroom. we have a skeleton crew in the newsroom.
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most everybody else is editing from home or from wherever they are, directing their teams. i have one editor in mexico in a starbucks dretirecting her team. i told her, do as much from there as you can from houston right now. open up your laptop and get going. >> lou dohow does this compare other recent floods in houston? >> caller: this has gone way beyond the two, one in 100 years floods in last four years. as i say, this is nowhere near completed. it's raining really hard. the skies are really dark. they're forecasting four more daze of rain. where this goes, i have no idea. >> thank you very much for calling in. let's check on the radar. let's go to the cnn weather center. are these heaviest bands of rain still sitting on houston right now?
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>> yes and no. the first round is starting to exit out. you can see that. follow the purple color. you see it around houston. it begins to push to the east. then you notice it's starting to backfill. more rain is coming back into those areas where the original cluster of rain has begun to exit. that's where the problem lies. some of these areas keep getting rain over the same spots over and over again. in addition to the flooding threat, we also still have tornado warnings active at this very moment. a tornado watch that's in effect for regions of both louisiana and texas through the afternoon hours today. that's going to be something people are still going to have to deal with. keep that in mind. if you get a break in the rain, you want to go outside or the rain starts to lighten up, be careful if you go outside. there could be other severe storms in the general vicinity. looking at some of the rainfall totals that have occurred, dayton, texas, over 27 inches of rain. we're looking at dixie farm
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area, 26 inches of rain. this is just a few of the areas that have already picked up over 20 inches of rain. the one sort of good news is that we are going to finally start to see this thing move. not so much in the short-term, but in the long-term. this is where we expect it to be by friday. that's still in texas technically. at least you are going to start to see movement. the concerning part is what it does in the short-term. as of now, it looks like it's going to go back out over open water before making another landfall back over areas of houston. the question is, when it goes back out over open water, does it have the ability to reintensify before coming back? that's the big question that we have right now. in the short-term, here is what we expect the radar to look like as we go through the day. notice, more yellows, oranges and reds indicating those torrential downpours over the same spots. namely, houston. lake charles, galveston, even
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alexandria, louisiana, looking at incredibly heavy rain to come down. some areas further west, we have been talking about victoria and corpus christi. the rain will come back in your area. overall, brian, the key thing to note is we talked about the areas that have had 20 inches of rain. we are still forecasting an additional up to 20 inches of rain that has yet to fall. that's going to be the big concern going forward for a lot of these folks. we have been talking about this, other people, you hear the wording. this is potentially a historic storm. you have to keep in mind, this is not over. we're not near over for at least the next three to five days. >> we have to be sensitive about comparison to katrina. most of the deaths in katrina were due to the manmade disaster of the levees being broken. the similarity that i see so far are the number of people that are having to leave their homes. that one tv station being evacuated.
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last time i saw that happen in an emergency was during hurricane katrina. do you think there are any other similarities, anything else we should be aware, or any big differences? >> the first thing that comes to mind that people on their roofs. people where their homes are so flooded, the only place they can go is the roof of their home. i remember seeing helicopter video of katrina, you see house after house of people sitting there waving, hoping to be rescued. you are starting to see stuff like that out of similar areas around houston. the big difference with this, surge posts a huge factor with katrina. i think the bigger concern for houston is the marathon, if you will call it that, where this storm is going to sit for seven days and dump rain. that's going to be a big concern for houston. >> we don't have the pictures right now because there's not choppers in the air, news choppers. but there are people on their roofs right now in south texas trying to be rescued. thank you very much for the update.
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we have heard from the houston mayor a few minutes ago saying there's more than 2,000 calls for rescues but there's more than that, but 911 has been overloaded. the mayor say only call 911 if your life is in immediate danger. there's also a civil emergency warning from the national weather service saying people escaping floodwaters do not go to the attic. you are supposed to go to your roof. you might not be able to escape the attic if it begins to flood. citizens being urged to call 911 and stay on the line until someone answers. this is a major emergency in south texas. there are people stranded as we speak. unfortunately, it will continue to worsen as the rain continues to pour. up next here on cnn, reliable sources and the week's biggest media stories. taking a break. whether we come back, president trump calling journalists sick people who don't like our country. some of those journalists now braving the floodwaters in texas. we will talk about his tweets and whether the press is properly balancing all of the
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he said, i will be going to texas as soon as the trip can be made without causing disruption. the focus must be on life and safety. the president's focus seems to be divided. if you look at what else he has been posting about, what else he has been sharing, promoting sheriff david clark's book. clark, perhaps a fan of the -- definitely a fan of the president. the president a fan of his. trump talked about his wednesday event to promote tax reform he is holding in missouri. i won there by a lot in 2016. dems, cm is opposed to big tax cuts. the president has tweeted about nafta and the wall. here is a tweet saying, with mexico being one of the highest crime nations in the world, we must have the wall. mexico will pay for it through reimbursement/other. we have seen the president repeatedly -- almost hijacking the news cycle in recent days, most notably friday evening. think back to the news dumps, as
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they were described friday evening. as category 4 hurricane harvey was literally making lae ining think about the announcement of sheriff joe arpaio's pardon. but also gorka's resignation/firing. the president issued a director about his transgender ban affecting the military. a lot of news friday evening as this hurricane was baring down. how should the press balance the news stories? how should it react when the president is tweeting so many things at once? let's talk through it with an expert panel of decision makers. i'm joined by lydia, joann, running all the papers and joining us remotely is jeff.
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great to have you all here. i wonder first for you, joann, you are directing the coverage in so many newsrooms, including in corpus christi dealing with the aftermath of harvey. when you have president trump tweeting about so many topics, do you think journalists are the ones setting the agenda or is the president setting the agenda maybe too much? >> the job for us as journalists, obviously, is to report on the news and to separate what is news from what is just chatter. with usa today network, we have 109 local news organizations like the detroit free press and cincinnati enquirer and the arizona republic. what we're able to do is to really focus on the news where it counts. for example, on friday night, corpus christi, which we own, was all over leading our coverage of the hurricane. we own the arizona republic which has had a long
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relationship with sheriff arpaio and was with him on friday and able to report on that. we're able to sort of choose the news that actually counts. it really is our job as journalists not to get distracted by shiny objects and really to focus on what's important. >> is that what the president's tweets are, shiny objects? >> earlier today on fox news sunday, rex tillerson said effectively the president speaks only for himself, he doesn't speak for the country. when i heard that -- when i saw that clip, a penny dropped for me. i think about the events of the past couple of weeks where you had a president essentially decline to show any kind of moral leadership in the wake of charlottesville, a president who is tweeting about this storm as if it was a reality show unfolding. wow! >> do you think that's what he is doing? >> his tweets seem totally, completely outside of what you would expect from a president dealing with a disaster.
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now, look, during katrina we had someone who ran the arabian horse association running fema, michael brown. the current director is i think a very well respected and highly qualified professional running fema. i think it seems to me the president is not really defining the news cycle, he is just outside of it. what's happening, he is not speaking to. you heard his secretary of state saying that he doesn't speak for the country. >> that was in the context of shar locharlotte charlottesville. does the president speak about race on behalf of the entire country? the quote was, the president speaks for himself. you are saying that's a big story to have tillerson commenting on the president not representing the united states? >> i think it's a huge story. i think it's a reflection of the fact that the president has in many ways abdicated leadership. moral leadership is a key part of the presidency. he has essentially said -- his quote was, i'm not going to put anybody on a moral plane. what is the presidency if not
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that? >> are some journalists guilty of the situation where they criticize the president no matter what? no matter what he does, journalists can't be satisfied. that's what the president said two weeks ago -- almost two weeks ago when he was being lambasted for his response to charlottesville. he is tweeting about the hurricane. he is posting about nafta and david clarke's book. are these situations where journalists are too critical at a moment where it's not appropriate? >> i would put it in a broader context, which in a way is almost like groundhog day. we keep saying the same thing again and again. this is simply not normal. you wouldn't be talking about any other president's tweets because no other president would have been tweeting in the middle of a natural disaster like what's going on down in texas. i do think that there are among some of trump's biggest critics an instinct to say he is wrong.
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part of that comes from the fact that every time you look up, there's a head snapping event. the idea of tweeting about how much you won a state by in the middle of this natural disaster would have been unthinkable with any other president. it's in that context that i also think the point about distraction is important. i think one of the things i would fault particularly the cable networks with is that every time trump makes news -- and it is news -- it's another way of not focusing on what is going on in the country and the kinds of changes this administration is making from the courts to consumer protection to the environment. i think those stories persist se persistently have been under covered. it's more interesting to focus on the bizarre way trump is heading the presidency. >> stick around. quick break here. i want to ask you about the president's -- one of his worst media attacks yet. we haven't heard language like this from any past president,
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calling journalists sick people who don't like our country. reactions from the panel right after this. by frequent, unpredictable abdominal pain or discomfort and diarrhea. i tried lifestyle changes and over-the-counter treatments, but my symptoms keep coming back. it turns out i have irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea, or ibs-d. a condition that's really frustrating. that's why i talked to my doctor about viberzi... ...a different way to treat ibs-d. viberzi is a prescription medication you take every day that helps proactively manage both abdominal pain and diarrhea at the same time. so i can stay ahead of my symptoms. viberzi can cause new or worsening abdominal pain. do not take viberzi if you have no gallbladder, have pancreas or severe liver problems, problems with alcohol abuse, long-lasting or severe constipation, or a bowel or gallbladder blockage. pancreatitis may occur and can lead to hospitalization and death. if you are taking viberzi, you should not take medicines that cause constipation. the most common side effects of viberzi include constipation, nausea, and abdominal pain.
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- shouldn't the way pay for them change too? introducing xfinity mobile. where you can pay for data by the gig, and share it across all of your lines. no one else lets you do that. see how much you can save when you pay by the gig. xfinity mobile. it's a new kind of network designed to save you money. call, visit, or go to xfinitymobile.com. so much has happened in the past week. president trump announcing more troops to afghanistan, holding a speech about it. the next night he went to phoenix and held that unforgettable rally with poisonous words about the news media. we have heard him attack the press at every rally. but the words at this rally were the harshest yet. take a listen. >> these are sick people. these are really, really dishonest people. and they're bad people. i really think they don't like
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our country. i really believe that. if you want to discover the source of the division in our country, look no further than the fake news and the crooked media. >> back with me now, joann litman, lydia potry and jeffrey greenfield. jeff, i think of these words as poison, they're a slow acting poison, gradually hurting the country by causing more distrust of the media. it has been very high for a long time. it's getting worse. do you agree it's a poison when the president talks this way? >> it is a quite deliberate tactic and one he has been using from the time he ran for president. that is to inoculate his supporters against believing whatever is said about donald trump in the mainstream press.
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the idea is -- he said it in so many words -- whatever you hear from those sources, whether it's cnn or "the new york times" or abc, don't believe it. i don't think it takes a conspiratorial mind to understand the strategy. the next time a news outlet comes out with a story that puts donald trump in a bad light, the idea is his supporters will have been taught to say, fake news, don't believe it. the idea that the press doesn't love our country, i mean, you know, i don't how many reporters have died covering wars, trying to bring stories to the attention of the people. you can say that the press is elitist. you can say we make a lot of mistakes. you can say that we're biased. but the idea that we're sick people who don't love our country is at a level that exceeds anything i can remember in discourse with a president of the united states or anything close to it. >> joann? >> i have to point out the deep irony here.
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right? just hours after he made those remarks, we had a hurricane category 4 making landfall in corpus christi, texas, where we own the corpus christi times. our reporters, every single person in that newsroom, while the rest of the city is being evacuated and going to higher ground, was going into danger to cover danger, to cover it, to bring this to the rest of the world. >> your team had to go into an inside room out of fears the windows would shatter. >> their homes were at risk. >> president trump is talking about me. he is talking about you. he is talking about the leaders in newsrooms or the anchors on cnn that he doesn't like. >> the point is, i think there's a deep irony to think that reporters who are the ones who put themselves in danger's way are the ones who are at fault here somehow. we also own the paper in guam which is 14 minutes away from nuclear destruction. what happened when north korea
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made that threat? this small newspaper in guam, every single person there was activated fanning out across the island. they weren't running away. >> huff post has a left leaning reputation. you are about to go on a bus tour to listen to the country. are you trying to change that? >> change our left leading reputation? >> yeah. trying to gain trust by trying to appeal to the mass of the country. >> i would say that we have a progressive reputation. i think that left and right are frankly not very useful -- >> here is why i bring it up. let me show the poll. the data is remarkable in the division in the country. if you ask people to choose between trump and the media, which is a false choice, if you ask them who do you trust, most americans say the news media. if you look at democrats versus republicans, you see this dra the dramatic split. that's why i bring up the left/right division. >> that's fair.
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i think that to joann's point, it's kind of ironic that in a moment of disaster like this, that you have reporters from -- it's not sean hannity, it's not breitbart out there covering the destruction in houston and corpus christi or in guam, for that matter. it's their colleagues at the local fox news affiliates who are in harm's way doing the work. for us at huff post, i think that we have a really, really big task ahead of us, which is to try and re-engage with the country in a fundamentally different way than the national news media has. the reason we're doing this bus tour is we feel by partnering with local news organizations that are on the ground in places around the country, that we can restart this conversation about our identity, who we are as americans, what are our values. there's a big conversation happening about that right now. that's our goal. we're not going to parachute into these locations. we're working with local journalists to get the real
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story of what's happening. >> on this theme of the president versus the media, the most interesting column i read this week was by rich lowery. for most republicans what matters most about donald trump is that he demonstrated resolve against the enemy. not the islamic state or the teleban, but the media. the media is what the soviet union was during the cold war. you covered the cold war on television. do you subscribe to that analogy? >> he may be overstating but not that much. particularly as it relates to the way that the president and his supporters are framing this argument. look, the idea that the mainstream press tilted liberal in terms of the beliefs of the people who practice it, i think that's true. i think the question is -- it's been true for a very long time. it's silly not to acknowledge that. the point is, does that mean
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that the coverage donald trump is getting is necessarily biased? when you put down the facts about his business relationships, about the lying, the delusional way that he approaches reality, the incredible nar is a s nar narsa. so the point is, yes, trump now is saying, because the press -- you know the press is liberal. don't believe anything they say no matter how factual it is because they are your enemy. if he can keep that message in the forefront of his most intense supporters, that's the base he means to hold on to as his popularity continues to decline. >> jeff, the questions we brought up here on cnn in the past few days about the president's mental fitness, about his fitness for office, have journalists gone too far? i'm one of them. have we gone too far?
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>> i would be very hesitant as a journalist to weigh in on the mental state of anybody. i'm not a psychologist. what i do think you can do is judge his record, his words, his deeds and compare that to what your sense of reality is and say this is a president whose relationship to reality is casual at best. >> jeff greenfield, lydia, joann, thank you. steve bannon, he has been ousted from the white house but he is back at breitbart. how is the site's tone changing. we will talk about it with a former spokesman for the site after this.
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we're back here on reliable sources, continuing to monitor the effects of tropical storm harvey along the coast, portions of houston now experiencing dramatic flooding. we will have continuous updates. talking about the we can's biggest media stories. steve bannon has been back at breitbart for a week.
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what is the site telling its readers? we looked at headlines. to see whether bannon is going to war against the people he thinks are standing in the way of realizing trump's campaign promises. the answer looks like yes. the site has targeted mitch mcconnell, paul ryan, jared kushner and gary kohen. he spoke up about trump's afghanistan speech, calling it a flip-flop that makes trump's america first base unhappy. bannon told the economist that the harder trump pushes, the more we will be there for him. what does that mean? how important is breitbart really? we're joined by kurt bardello who served as the former spokesman for breitbart. kurt, there's word that sebastian gorka will rejoin breitbart. that's what he said yesterday. this time last year, i think he was a writer or columnist for the site. what's the significance of him
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returning to breitbart? >> he was the national security editor is what they called him at breitbart. like bannon left to join the trump white house. welcome like bannon after being fired is going to rejoin breitbart. part of it is where else was this guy going to go. >> his credentials are questionable at best. the responsibilities he had in the white house were undetermined other than him going on tv acting as a pundit for the white house. it's not surprising. what steve is doing is getting the old gang back together hoping lightning strikes twice and they can be as impactful as they were perceived to be during the 2016 election as they are right now. in a lot of ways what you are seeing is steve trying to recalibrate the relationship with trump. when steve was with breitbart, their dynamic was more of a peer. trump saw him as a media enterprise who was successful. when steve moved into the white house, he became a subordinate.
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that in a lot of ways while steve viewed donald as the same person, trump viewed him as an employee. steve will try to realign it. >> that's interesting. i wonder, let me ask you both this, david to you, do we make too much of breitbart's power? i ask this because of the traffic stats we can put on screen. breitbart had bragged about this data from alexa. it was ranked number 45 earlier this year. breitbart is now 60 in the most recent stats. you can see on screen that cnn, "washington post," "new york times," all big news outlets they rank higher in the most recent data. do you think that we make too much out of bannon's power and breitbart's power? >> i think in some ways that we totally do that. thanks for those statistics. they're better than mine. i knew they were around 60 and "new york times" was around 30. we don't spend time obsessing
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about what marty bare ron is thinking. maybe because we assume they're doing journalism's work. they will cover the stories that matter. i think we do and part of it is this. we sometimes create these scary media and political figures on the right. we did it with karl rove to some extent. he will manipulate all these things. i really think we're overstating bannon's importance. it's not that he is not very important. he told the economist this week, i'm going to light up members of congress i think was the language he used in terms of defending donald trump. then yesterday we see a headline or today that says paul ryan throws in with leftists and criticizing president trump's pardon of sheriff joe. it's a great headline for breitbart. throwing in with leftists is trying to really throw a hard
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punch on ryan with this. that's what he is doing. he has influence. but this whole thing about somebody -- here is the other part of this that worries me. here is somebody who is saying, we're republicweaponizing our p. we call our services breitbart news, but we're a killing machine. that goes against everything i believe about journalist. he is important because of what he says, but i think he's not that important in terms of their widespread influence. we overestimate i think his influence to some extent. >> kurt, your reaction? >> there are two sides of the coin. the audience. i felt breitbart was never going to be more red and broadly appealing than on the day president trump was inaugurated. it was only downhill from there. it only appeals to a specific segment of the population, the
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alt right universe. anybody else who voted for trump, whether not liking hillary clinton, not liking congress, wanting to have that protest vote, they're not going to be aligned with supporting the kkk. their audience had nowhere to go but down. >> i don't know who is supporting the kkk. the site is more powerful for dc readers, perhaps. >> that's the thing. it's an influence play. if donald trump is reading breitbart and supporting breitbart and retweets things from breitbart, then it's incredibly impactful. it's a window into what's shaping president trump's policies or rhetoric. that's impactful. >> kurt, david, i'm out of time. thank you for being here. >> thanks. >> after this, quick update on the storm. we are continuing to monitor flooding in houston and we will take you there live in just a moment. it's ok that everybody ignores me when i drive. it's fine. because i get a safe driving bonus check every six months i'm accident free. because i don't use my cellphone when i'm driving. even though my family does, and leaves me all alone.
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. back now here on cnn with continuing coverage of the flooding in houston and throughout south texas. a quick update before we get to the top of the hour and "state of the union" with jake tapper. there are rescues throughout the area and down through gal verston we're seeing reports of people having to leave their home. some people on their roofs hoping to be rescued. we know the coast guard has helicopters in the air hoping to bring in more resources. we know the mayor has boats out right now. and we've seen residents out in their own boats trying to help
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neighbors. houston will continue to flood because the rain is continuing to pour. tropical storm harvey is going to sit in this area. the news station down there has evacuated as a result of the floodwaters that has poured in. they've seen floods but nothing like this. they're reporting their reporters have taken cover, they've been taken off the air due to the emergency there. we'll bring you the latest from texas all day long and in the coming days here on cnn. stayed tuned after the break for "state of the yuunion" with jak tapper. he's less confident. fortunately for andre, there's rocket mortgage
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and a new culture built around customer service. it all adds up to our most reliable network ever. one that keeps you connected to what matters most. catastrophic storm. hurricane harvey reaches the texas gulf coast with millions in the danger zone. >> turn around, don't drown. don't risk your life. >> the most powerful hurricane to hit the continental u.s. in a decade, and the worst could be yet to come. plus, controversial pardon. president trump exercising his executive privilege to pardon former arizona sheriff joe arpaio. >> sheriff joe can feel good. >> sparing the convicted criminal jail time. now the president is taking heat
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