all year round. so call today. because now's the perfect time to learn more. go long. i'm jim accoosta for wolf blitzer. maria on the move. churning north and gaining steam. what the storm is leaving behind and who is next. the hunt for survivors after a deadly earthquake grows more frantic and we will take you there live. turning to trump. the special counsel seeks new documents about the president's actions in office including a meeting with the russians. we begin with hurricane maria's rampage with $3.3 million u.s. citizens. it has been devastated and president trump approved a

disaster declaration and spoke a short time ago. >> puerto rico was absolutely obliterated. puerto rico got hit with winds that they evaporate seen anywhere. it got hit as a five, a category 5 storm that literally never happens. if you turn on the television, you will see a place that is practically levelled. >> the island is under a flash flood warning and in some areas buildings appeared to have crumbled or been ripped apart. the damage is of historic proportions. and all of this is just what you can see at this point. what you can't see is that the entire island, every square inch is without power and the governor said it could take not days or weeks, but nosto fix the

system. in san juan, what is the situation there right now? >> it's strange because people are beginning to move around again. you see people stopping to pause and look around and take stock of the scope of what's changed in a little over 24 hours. we were here before the rains moved in to see a perfectly functional city, but there is a puerto rican flag trying to go in the breeze. part of today has been about taking the shots down and trying to get a glimpse of what the new normality looks like. it can be cleaned up and shops can be repainted, but with the power going down. what could be four to six months

and doe you go to work and the hospital for medical treatment. the much more immediate term, there is no cell phone service. people can't check on their loved ones without physically going to see them and going back a century in terms of interhuman relations and saying how bad was that storm? you can see it's not available. and when is the airport going to open? it's like lly that that's a hug task too. two weeks before hurricane irma hit, near bankruptcy and cost a billion dollars worth of damage. the hurricane slammed into the east coast yesterday morning and

plow through to san juan. and it's unbelievable. that was likely about 30 hours ago. >> you can hear the generator. tracking the deadly storm for us, the picture that nick was painting is just devastating. is it as bad as it was as iter to through puerto rico? >> the short answer is no. for folks in the dominican repuck lick and even still even if it's not as bad, we are talking a category three storm.

and the next stop is into the turks and caicos. storm surge will be a huge factor. while it may only be a 5 to 10 degree spread, that's enough to weaken the storms quickly. we talked about comparisons to irma. especially where it's right here. this is the point in which irma and maria are on the same track. maria started off further south. the yellow line is irma.

from there they will go to the north. jim? >> thank you very much. we appreciate it. researchers are clawing through the rubble of an elementary school. it's heart breaking to watch to reach a 12 yearly old girl and two other survivors trapped two days after a magnitude 7.1. 26 bodies including 21 children have been found at the school. 11 others have been rescued. one girl described what happened as the building collapsed. [speaking foreign language] >> translator: just when we were going to run down, part of the building collapsed and you couldn't see anything. the english teacher helped us come down because we couldn't use the stairs. >> the rescue everydafforts rep and rescue teams are hoping for more victories like this one.

>> the moment of this woman's rescue was posted on twitter this morning and they rescued a man here now. he was buried for 26 hours. cnn joins us now live from mexico city. this has been incredible to watch. the search at the school intensified amid concerns that the structure could collapse even more. i know you have been speaking in tush tones. what more could you tell us? >> i have to talk in a whit perbecause we are in a period of silence. you can see the work they are trying to do here. they brought in large generators and lots of plastic buckets to

get debris out by hand. they believe they know the location of the little girl and they are going in through two different locations and directions to try to get to her. they don't know if she is with her colleagues or classmates and if they may be alive as well. they did pull one person out today. it was a teacher in her 50s and unfortunately she did not survive the collapse of the three-story building. they are concerned about aftershocks from the quake. it is very, very slow and meticulous and thorough going. i can tell you today it is a much more organized, much more focused situation here on the ground. jim? >> miguel marquez, we appreciate that very much and speaking in tones and whispering because of the delicate and fragile nature

of the task there in mexico city. let's go to search and rescue expert who joins us via skype from santa paula, california. you heard miguel there. you probably didn't find it surprising he was speaking in a whisper as he was reporting from the scene and shows you how we are taking great pains to be delicate in the reporting on the scene. you have trained and you work with trained search and rescue teams. there are fears that this building in mexico is unstable. what do they have to do to keep a structure like this from collapsing more? >> honestly if the structure is going to collapse, that's what's going to happen, but they will consecentrate onshoring up the areas where these children are. especially this little girl. they will try to go in and from two different directions, it's

right on track. we are all holding our breath on this one. i hope it works. that's why they can't have heavy equipment. the silence is for their listening devices because they pick up any noise very loudly. it's really great that you are all doing this. >> we are two days out from the quake. what are the biggest challenges from the rescuers? i heard miguel say they have been out there for 24 hours or more doing this. i assume fatigue sets in. you have to rotate crews in. i suppose a wave at a time. can you talk about that? >> we do know reinforcements are coming. l.a. county is headed down there to mexico. they left last night. they will. they will be fatigued and it will be very hard to pull these people off of something they

have been involved in from the get go. that's when mistakes happen as well. hopefully they will go into a little bit of a rotation so that they can be a little more focused and on task. things are far more organized today and that's great. it's really got to be systematic on this. there is a lot at stake. >> i'm always curious and how do you get food and water and medicine to the people that are trapped? when you see them through perhaps a roll in the rubble and you can reach something down to them even though you can't pull them out, i can't imagine how frustrating it might be while that is a lifeline for the person who is trapped. liquid new trigz and trisdragz

huge. they have been there long enough now that they need to get that food and water. they are coming up with all kinds of ways to do that. and not sure how she is pinned. that will make it a little bit more challenging. as far as the medicine goes, if they can open it enough to get somebody down there it's the small guys that kind of dig down into there. it's the nature of the game and a slow process and also very

focused. hopefully all the rest of the folks as well as those who are strapped all over the region. >> it's heroic work and thank you very much. we will come back to the scene in a moment, but major new developmentsed which aring a report that the campaign chairman, paul manafort offered private briefings to a billionaire close to vladimir putin. >> jimmy kimmel doubling down on his criticism of the health care plan. he is becoming a thorn in president trump's side. more on the breaking news. the president announcing an executive order targeting companies to do business with north korea saying china is on board. this is special live coverage. we'll be right back. rcycle insurance with geico. goin' up the country.

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>> today i'm announcing a new executive order that expands our authorities to target individuals, companies, financial institutions that finance and facilitate trade with north korea. >> the president made the announcement before his working lunch with shanzo abe and south korean president moon. what can you tell us about the economic sanctions? >> this is an important development and the sanctions coming on the heels of that fiery speech that both you and i were at the un the other day when the president threatened to totally destroy north korea. taking a different approach going after the economy. the finances of north korea and

delivering blunt damage offering a warning to foreign bankers and leaders that you can do business with the u.s. or trade with north korea, but threatened to cut them off. this is a sign that on north korea, this administration is searching for one strategy and trying several things. threatening military options and trying to squeeze them economically as well. a bigger headline than we were expecting getting south korea on board as well trying to present a unified front in the region. >> less fuel for the rocket man. the president was asked about possible dialogue with north korea. what did he say? >> that was interesting at the end of that announcement this morning, he was asked if dialogue will continue. he said why not. he left it hanging there. this is something the president

has been a bit all over the map on if he would have dialogue or talks with north korea. he did not rule out that possibility. taken together, the fiery rhetoric we heard earlier in the week, this is more of a normal action of a previous u.s. president here for an economic sanction, a clear sign that military options is not the prefer route of anyone despite that rhetoric. >> less brinkmanship today outside trump tower. trump's former campaign manager under scrutiny in the russia probe and the offer he made to a billionaire close to vladimir putin. how robert mueller is turning to the president's actions while in the oval office.

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paul manafort offered a russian billionaire private briefings on the election while he was campaign chairman. the paper said the billionaire has close ties to the kremlin. part of the team that broke that story is cnn legal analyst and follow prosecutor. the post said that your story said there is no evidence these briefings took place, but what are the concerns raised here in you don't want the campaign chairman making these offers to russian billionaires. >> at minimum you have a conflict of interest, but if you are part of the counter intelligence team that is reading those e-mails, it sounded like he was offering to be to their ears an informant. telling someone that they knew

was in regular contact with putin and had a very fraught relationship with putin. somebody was who probably trying to impress putin by showing he had access within the trump campaign. we don't know everything because what's in e-mails is obviously just a piece of this. the e-mails are cryptic in the words that are chosen and initials are used and sometimes code names are being used. we don't know what mueller had access to beyond what we are seeing. probably there is a lot more we don't know. >> we were just talking about this out of the break, but you never cease to be amazed by the shoes that are dropping and it's hard to get your mind and arms around the idea that a campaign chairman would be having these kinds of thoughts. that he would somehow be able to provide briefings to somebody with another country. an adversary of the united states. >> it's so absurd at this point

in time, the almost mountain of careless mistakes or things being made, but what you have here is somebody who is trying to profit or capitalize and monitize on his relationship with the president of the united states or who would become the president of the united states. for the prosecutor, you are saying what would be the motive behind trying to do that and is there incentive for someone to receive or act as a liaison between a foreign entity and the campaign position? when you have that, you have got the absence of that smoking gun, that one piece of evidence that ties the whole case together, but the key to a successful prosecution when you don't have that are being able to establish the motive and leverage. all this heaping up about paul manafort is that you have leverage in the eyes of robert mueller's team. you can have this person cooperate in the investigation to get to that smoking gun.

>> cnn has reported that the special prosecutor requested documents covering a wide range of actions by the trump white house that includes firings of michael flynn and president trump's meetings with them in the oval office. how significant is this? >> what we are seeing here is obviously some of it goes to what the president chose to do. was there an attempt to obstruct justice in these cases? what's clear is how much he is front loading with the investigation. we know they interviewed the dni and the director of of national intelligence and one of the first interviews was with mike rogers and the director of the national security agency. both of them were asked by the president if they could tell the world that there was no evidence of collusion. this is all part of a chain.

piecing together this picture. was the president trying to either change the narrative or actually intimidate people, trying to get people to drop the investigation. >> i want to get to something the vice president was asked about earlier today. whether the mueller investigation veered outside of the jurisdiction. he said that's for others to decide. take a listen. >> what i can assure you is that we are fully cooperating with the special counsel and we will continue to do that. i made clear that during my time on the campaign i was not aware of any contacts or collusion with russian officials and i stand by that. we will provide any information they require, but honestly, this is not what the american people are focused on. >> notice he said there was no collusion during my time on the

campaign. a little bit of 46ing and trying to preserve his own purity. >> for reminds me of when donald trump said not to my knowledge and never that i knew. you want to protect the flip against you. that's a certainly that he is in fact an enemy of the white house and turns out the investigation points directly at them. whenever you tell somebody don't look over here, your tendancy is to look at what you were told not to look at. the irony on the criminal probe is that we are not digging up evidence we wouldn't otherwise have. we are not probing into things we couldn't see. we are using the president's words and mike pence's words and what manafort said and it's coming back to haunt people in a real way in realtime. you will see the distance

happen. i'm not surprised by it, but not sure at this point that manafort is truly cooperating with mueller's team enough to have that be justified. >> the president left plenty of bread crumbs. thanks to both of you. republican senators comment about the health care bill raising eyebrows about the motivation of his party's rush to obamacare. the bill covers preexisting conditions. we will fact check that as jimmy kimmel launches another attack on republicans. coming up. tech: when you schedule with safelite autoglass,

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but he hasoke up wwork to do.in. >> it's wonderful to have prime minister shanzo abe doing a great job for the people of japan. we had discussions already today and this is a formalization of the discussions. we made a lot of progress both on trade and obviously very importantly we have discussed in great detail north korea with also south korea as you just saw. so we will continue that relationship that has never been closer with japan and the united states. it will continue on with that way. i look forward to discussing some things that the group is

here specifically to discuss and we will be reporting back to you later. thank you all very much. you heard what china was doing today in terms of the banking system. that was a tremendous move and we have great respect and also would like to thank president xi of china. it was a great thing he did today. thank you very much. thank you very much for being here. [speaking foreign language]

[speaking foreign language] >> let's break out of this for a moment and we will go back to this if there is more news that develops, but i will go to gloria borger to talk about this. we heard the president referencing the new actions and new sanctions aimed at north korea and he is hitting there with the japanese prime minister. one of the things he said is china is starting to exert influence on this through the banking system. >> and enforce sanctions that had not been enforced. that is key to this. that's what we hear the president referring to and he is thanking the chinese here for

cooperating. >> contrast that with what we heard a couple of days ago. the president threatening to totally wipe out north korea referring to kim jong un as rocket man. he is falling back on what presidents have done with rogue regimes and go after sanctions and try to use the levers that are normally accompanying the powers of the presidency to try to keep people in line. not so much of the brinkmanship today. >> there isn't. speak softly and carry a big stick goes to speak loudly and carry a big stick. >> smaller stick today. >> that's still the nature of this president. he will level every threat he can and we will destroy you and fire and fury. what he wants to do is unnerve the north koreans and i'm not sure it has the intended effect. >> joining us as we are watching

this unfold. we will go back to the president as he makes news here. what do you make of this move that the white house is taking against north korea. a lot less fire and fury. >> it doesn't work if you are only threatening fire and fury alone. if there is a moment to come together, the powers that exert influence, it was going to be this week at the un general assembly. this is a positive step if he is stepping up enforcement. that's the key thing that is missing and to solve in this crisis. nobody wants to have a military approach happen. even if there is an option there. it would be very, very messy. if china loses the leverage, they can bring this to closer to a resolution than it has been. if they are ready to take a softer tone, that potentially means things are moving in the right direction. that's why you say fire and fury

in the first place. that's supposed to lead to the diplomacy and not necessarily using the stick. >> it may have scared the chinese more than the north korea koreans. >> they are being hustled out of the room so we won't see more questions to the president. i know about that in those situations. let's talk more about this after a quick break. we will talk about that and the health care news. jimmy kimmel dominating the health care debate when we come back. every morning, i thought i had to make a choice. do i use a toothpaste that whitens my teeth or one...

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>> keeping up the party pressure, senate republicans are

trying to get over the goal line and repeal obamacare. he said i would not sign graham cassidy if it did not include coverage for preexisting conditions. it does. great bill. in new york for us, the president and the bill's cosponsors, they promise that preexisting conditions will be covered under this new bill, but that's not exactly right, is it? >> the short answer is that's not true. people with preexisting conditions would not get the same levels they have under obamacare. this is a complicated issue that people are confused about. what would happen under graham cassidy for people who have these medical conditions. it's true that insurers couldn't out reject someone for having a preexisting condition that got enshrined through obamacare, but what they would be able to do is ask for more flex toibl loosen

regulations so experience companies could raise premiums for people who have medical conditions. republican who is support the graham cassidy plan defended this by saying states would have to basically offer assurances that everyone gets adequate and affordable coverage, but the big red flag here or the problem here is that there is no real way to define what adequate or affordable means. as you know very well, what is adequate for one person is not adequate for somebody else who might have a lot of health issues. what is affordable for one person is not affordable for someone else who may not have the means to pay for what they need to pay for in terms of treatment or going to the doctor or the hospital. politically speaking, this is going to be a huge sticking point next week if there is going to be a vote. someone like susan collins, for example, who raised a lot of concerns about graham cassidy and when i was talking to her, she said look, the way i see it

is that this bill is just as fraught as the last bill that i voted against and had the preexisting conditions as a problem. this is a major issue and we will follow that closely if this bill does come up. >> thank you very much for that reality check. let's go to perry bacon. you don't have coverage if you can't afford the coverage. >> right. that seems to be the distinction here with the new bill. >> they require to be covered, but they can charge whatever they want. so if you can't pay a huge amount, you are not covered. talking about jimmy kimmel, in general celebrities i'm not sure matter that much in terms of politic, but we are talking about john mccain who follows the news carefully. i think the way he pushed back against the bill is the millions of views in his comments. he is playing a powerful and surprising role here. >> let's talk about that.

one of the loudest voices ask oppositions to this bill is jimmy kimmel and he called out bill cassidy the senator who he said broke a promise by supporting this bill. let's listen. >> when senator cassidy was on my show in may he told me he believed that every american family regardless of income should be able to get quality health care. i believed he was sincere, but sadly the bill indicates that he was not sincere. it is by many beings the worst health care bill yet. there is no way president trump read this bill. he just wants to get rid of it because obama's name on it. they should rename it ivanka care and guaranteed he gets on board. i urge you to call your senators to let them know you care. the video of the monologue has millions of views and a lot of people have seen it and shared it, but the "new york times"

contacted the office of susan colins and claimed at her office the call volume she got is the same as usual. if that is true, this is why things like this keep happening. because we don't do anything about them. stop texting for five seconds and make a phone call. >> gloria borger, a little jab at all of us. our hyper screened up world. what do you think the impact will be? it's remarkable. >> i do. i think it's remarkable. one key impact is that he took the time to explain what's in the bill. he took the time to explain the issue with preexisting conditions which is what people care about. people want to know about their health care and why this is a divicive issue. they want predictability and stability when you are talking about your own health or your children's health or spouse's health, you want to know your health care will be there. what if you happened to live in a state, for example, that

decides that okay, you are going to have to pay more if you have cancer. what does that do to you? do you move if you can't afford your coverage? >> the individual states where the governors and the state legislators, if we put it all out to the states, the state lawmakers and the governors potentially impacted by the lobbying forces necessary that particular state. if you have a strong and thriving health insurance industry in indian a those lawmakers can be heavily influenced and the protections in that state can be drastically different than in others. >> all the insurance companies are opposed to this. they don't want to be the bad guys in this. and they will be. >> i was going to say dependent on a system that can function in those states because the federal dollars that are going to

supplement the health dollars in general speaking are going down over time and may fall off the books entirely by the middle of next decade. so the question is basically what kind of system can these states put together to catch the people who get thrown off, will it be effective, if it's not effective do they end up saying, okay, we can't subsidize that so you have fewer limitations on what the insurance companies can do because it's so much in their lap. there's a lot of unanswerable questions right now because it has to go into effect for the states to kind of see what happens. but that's a very dangerous process. >> perry, let me ask you this, there's this conventional wisdom that if they don't keep the promise to repeal and replace obamacare somehow their voters are going to punish them. but yet they can't get over the finish line here in terms of actually repealing and replacing obamacare. is it really that toxic for them if they don't take this leap? >> i think there's two things we're talking about here. my understanding is a lot of the donors have said i'm not giving

you money anymore if you're not getting this done. that is a problem because you need money to run election. but the voters do not feel this way. there's a lot of polling showing republican voters do not support rolling back restrictions. republican voters support medicaid. so it's not just so this bill is probably we get a poll soon 20%, these bills have been opposed majority of the public in every instance. so i think it's always hard to explain to me why you should support a bill opposed by 80% of the public doesn't make a lot of political sense to me. >> iowa republican senator chuck grassley had an important point on this, said the sub tastance the bill is less important. here's what he said. quote, you know, i could make give you ten reasons why this build shouldn't be considered, but republicans campaigned on this so often that you have a responsibility to carry out what you said in the campaign. you know, it is kind of remarkable to see it just sort

of boiled down in this political essence that chuck grassley is boiling it down to. >> and for a guy who's been in d.c. for as long as he has, it's very interesting that chuck grassley has a lot of these moments where he's brutally honest about what's going on there. he's just putting it out there. i mean, that's basically what he said. but this is true. look, there's been -- you had almost eight years of, you know, buildup to we're going to repeal obamacare with no planning of what you're going to do and you have this scramble to actually get this done before they lose their parliamentary authority to do it with just 50 votes and have to actually court democrats and what would be a very, very different bill which then probably couldn't get past the house. so this is really what's going on in the heads of lawmakers. but to perry's point before, i mean, yeah, this has never been a very popular sort of an issue repealing obamacare with the voters. but the question goes back to the jimmy kimmel question. how much are people actually paying attention this time? how much effect do these celebrities that are trying to rally the public having when the

focus has not exclusively been on health care the last few weeks and there is a fatigue about talking about this. so you're not seeing the same volume of calls and demonstrations and everything as you were the last time around. >> that's why they want to shut the window on it. they have a deadline coming up on september 30th. but only in washington, only in washington would someone say it doesn't really matter what we're voting on, we just have to get it done because we promised we would. so when they voted on it for all those seven years, they knew there wasn't going to be any result because they knew it wasn't going to go anywhere. so how do you have the united states senator, i want to know, go out there and say it doesn't matter what's in the bill, which is effectively what he was saying. we just have to do it because we promised we would. >> yeah. >> that's not legislating. that's not what john mccain is talking about, by the way. he's calling for regular order. doing this in the regular way. it may be too late for that, but isn't it better than just closing your eyes and voting? >> right. and whatever happened to

quote/unquote, chuck and nancy, speaking of comments that is difficult to get your mind around, after a few weeks away from the camera we're now seeing more on former white house press secretary sean spicer including this from abc's "good morning america." take a listen to this. >> people have hard feelings towards you because they feel you lied to the american people. have you ever lied to the american people? >> i don't think so. >> you don't think so? >> no, i don't cheat on my taxes. >> unequivocally you can say no? >> look, again, you want to find some thing -- i have not knowingly done anything to do that, no. >> i've not knowingly done that. >> apparently he thinks more people came to trump's inauguration than obama's. i guess that's what we conclude he knows, right? >> he was just at the emmys giving a major wink-wink, nudge-nudge, i know i'm in on this with you. to then turn around and be like i didn't get the joke is a little bit strange. >> i have not knowingly is such, again, washington. >> you're right. >> yes. >> to the best of my

recollection, i have not knowingly -- >> yeah. not exactly a tell-all interview there. >> no. >> he wasn't telling all there. but, gloria, how difficult is it going to be for sean spicer and other figures from this administration to do this? because we saw this so much during the first several months of this administration where, you know, they were telling us that the sky wasn't blue and that two plus two didn't equal four. >> hard. i think it's hard. i think sean, whom we've all known for years and years and years in many incarnations, i think he's trying to get this monkey off his back to a certain degree. and i think he's having a difficult time. and i think others might as well. >> all right. much to discuss on this. we can't do it all in this hour, but thank you all very much for that. we appreciate it. guys, thank you. coming up, hurricane maria gaining strength again. again ravaging the caribbean. what could it mean for the u.s.? we'll get the latest on the storm's track. that's coming up. plus, when every minute matters, the desperate race to reach survivors trapped under the rubble of a major earthquake. we've been watching this all morning. stay with cnn as we continue to

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good afternoon. i'm pamela brown in for brooke baldwin. and we are following breaking news involving two major natural disasters, the scope of devastation becoming more apparent by the hour. right now in mexico city a race against time after tuesday's massive earthquake. rescue crews searching for signs of life at a collapsed school where dozens remain mising at this hour. of course we will take you live to the scene, but first, puerto rico is in desperate recovery mode after hurricane maria left a trail of destruction across the u.s. territory. blocks of collapsed homes and a power system that officials say is, quote, bas