through security, going through immigration in a brazen attempt to smuggle out a 6-day-old child. >> a 6-day-old child is not a quiet child. how they didn't recognize this much sooner than the boarding gate. thank you so much, we'll continue to follow this. thank you all for joining me today. "inside politics" with john king starts right now. thank you, kate. welcome to "inside politics." i'm john king. thank you for sharing your day with us. dorian makes landfall in north carolina. flooding and power outages are the biggest toll there. this as the bahamas scrambles to deal with much more significant damage. plus the economy added 130,000 new jobs. that's a report that shows economic strength but also tells us some important sectors are stalling. and what's for lunch? 2020 contender pete buttigieg not quite up to speed on one

option that is out of stock no matter how much you love that chicken. >> did you have the popeye chicken sandwich? >> no, not in a while. >> no, the new one. >> no, what is it? >> you haven't seen it. >> i'm sure your team. >> why wasn't i briefed on this? >> we begin the hour with damage assessments and desperation in the bahamas. right now dorian is blanketing north carolina with tropical storm-force winds and heavy rain. the national hurricane center says the category 1 storm made landfall over cape hatteras this morning. at last count the storm leaving 400,000 across the carolinas and virginia without power. officials call catastrophic flooding, homes and campers floating away. in the bahamas, rescue missions getting more dire by the minute and hope for the missing quickly fading. the death toll has eclipsed 30 with hundreds more unaccounted for. on abaco islands, residents

wonder how or if they can rebuild. others like this man wrestle with what they lost. farington watched the hurricane drag his son into the surge. he did not come back up. stories like this all too common an why medical officials are placing for more bodies. >> they were in water for hours, just exhausted because they were swimming, trying to save themselves. of course emotionally traumatized. some have seen family members die and friends washed away. >> allison chinchar in the cnn severe weather center. update us on where dorian is and how long she'll be with us. >> the majority of the storm is finally starting to exit off into the sea taking with it the very heavy rain and strong winds, but it's not over just yet. forward movement is northeast at 17 miles per hour so it has started to pick up speed, which is good. the faster we can get this thing out, the better.

we do still have pretty strong wind gusts along the coastline, 40, 50, even 60-mile-per-hour wind gusts still being felt at this hour. the rain bands are still there. there is still the potential for some of these bands as they move onshore to perhaps have some rotation with them, so it's not out of the question to still perhaps have the tornado threat for the next few hours as well. we had over 20 tornado reports in just the last 48 hours. another big threat is still the ongoing flooding. you've got flash flood warnings and watches for numerous states because of those heavy rain bands. the good news is the majority, the bulk of the rain is finally starting to come to an end. but look at some of the total numbers. portions of north and south carolina picking up over 10 inches of rain. wilmington, north carolina, picking up over 9 inches of rain. yesterday they actually broke a daily rainfall record. there is still more on the way, but most areas are likely to pick up an additional 1 to 2 inches. you just have to tell yourself it's on top of what they have

already had. 1 to 2 inches alone does not sound that bad. here's a look at the forecast track. it does take it out over open water but we do expect heavy rain bands across portions of the northeast. cities like new york, even boston will look for the potential for outer bands. the good news is it's not expected to be as bad there as it was in the carolinas or even georgia and florida. >> allison chinchar, appreciate that. much better news for those along the east coast of the united states. the devastation of course most severe in the bahamas. patrick oppmann is live for us. patrick, you've been surveying the damage for days now. tell us what you're seeing as you get out into the remote areas. >> reporter: absolutely. we are getting closer to where the storm made landfall as a category 5 hurricane and stalled. we've moved up the road. we're going town to town. i'm joined by the local pastor, joey saunders. the houses are destroyed here,

the town is destroyed. what happened to your house? tell me what happened to you and your son as you rode out the storm. >> early about 12:30, the water was in the bottom floor and then started to rise to the second floor. then it started coming to the third floor. >> the third floor of your home? >> third floor of the home. in minutes this took place. i was confused what to do. >> it was nighttime. >> nighttime. 2:00 a.m. in the morning. >> what did you do? >> i remember just praying. the next thing my son had a light holding his hand and he was saying daddy, daddy, daddy. >> the current was carrying your son away? >> yes. >> how old is your son? >> he's 25. >> i had a light. in the truss, i was trapped in the truss. i remember taking off a huge jacket quickly and suddenly just rose me up and caught under the truss. in minutes i was gone. >> you were in the water? >> yes. and it carried me about 600 feet

into a 32-feet pine tree because our ceiling was 32 feet. >> your ceiling was 32 feet and the water was up there? >> and we were separated for about two days. we actually slept in the pine trees for two days. >> you slept on top of a tree. >> for two days. >> for two days. >> yes. a quarter of a mile away, each one of us apart. >> and how did you find your son? >> two days later in the evening i hear this person calling me. >> and it was your son? >> yes, it was him. >> what was he saying? >> he was saying daddy, daddy, because he was shocked himself. it was such a -- i don't know how to describe it. it was just horrific. >> and you're lucky. >> yes. it's a miracle that we survived. it's a miracle. because it happened so fast, you know. i was way under the water. something just rise me up and i hook on to the truss and the

water just carried me away. we didn't know where we were going. it only could have been super natural. >> we are so glad you are here. >> it's a pleasure. thank god. >> not everybody was so lucky in this community. they have lost a lot of people, there are many more missing and people are still reeling from what they say was a once-in-a-lifetime storm. >> that was a remarkable story. what the gentleman describes as a miracle and the devastation we can see over your shoulder. keep your the fine work there, it is helping the world understand the scope of this. patrick, thank you very much. as we come back to washington, the president today again tweeting his stubborn and false claim that he got the forecast right on alabama. check out the maps, the president says, before criticizing the media's coverage of his dead wrong claim that forecasts on sunday showed alabama would take a hard hit from dorian. part of his defense, including a map, a chart the president held

up in the oval office using a sharpie to draw some lines. one senior white house official saying, yes, it was the president that drew that line, altering an official government map. here with me to share their reporting and insights, dana bash, alex thompson, manu raju and jackie kucinich. it is the president continuing this story to the point now his campaign is selling markers trying to make money off this story. the president of the united states repeating false information as a hurricane approaches the united states and now it's an opportunity for a campaign to raise money. help me. >> raise money and i am told an attempt to have a little bit of a circuit breaker, a little bit of maybe a chuckle on this as there might have been on the straws that they were selling, which was obviously based and is based on a very real environmental debate about what to do. that's the goal.

but it doesn't change the fact that this president has been mired in this controversy that he keeps perpetuating and how similar it is and how much this has all of the components of sort of everything that we've seen go wrong with this presidency from the beginning. first of all, his instinct was to highlight a red state. that's where this started, no question, alabama. and then continue to not back down in the face of facts that changed things. and instead not only say that he is right, but force people who have very important jobs, i don't know, like his homeland security advisor who should be monitoring the very real storm that was coming as he put out the statement, to put out a statement backing up the president. so this is what we have seen time and time again. the only upside, according to people i'm talking to in trump world, is that it took away from a really big problem, which is the vice president's trip to

trump resort in ireland, which looks like he's getting money off of the taxpayer dollar. >> we'll come back to that story, the vice president's story and what democrats want to learn about it a bit later in the program. my question when these things happen is why. he's stubborn. i believe he believes that if he keeps repeating them long enough not only will he believe them but others will as well. some people said he was golfing on saturday and he wants to prove that he was being kept up to date information and not winging it if you will on the golf course. the other issue is he called john roberts into the oval office because he's mad that fox is covering this story. sometimes critically, sometimes not. >> some things in trump landia are inexplicable. this week's edition, the president's claim that alabama was at risk from hurricane dorian. it wasn't. maybe he got some bad info from somebody, maybe he was confused, we don't know, but he was wrong.

>> pretty much every newsroom in america screwed this up and lied to you by accusing the president of lying. what he said about hurricane dorian that it might hit alabama is true. >> shep is right. chief meteorologist hannity is wrong. but it just shows you even fox was saying, look, mr. president, you got it wrong gets under his skin. >> and he has hannity speaking to his base of supporters who are listening to him and blaming the media. this follows a similar pattern the president has done throughout his presidency. he'll say something that is flatly wrong, contradicted. he'll get pushback and then he'll dig in and he'll continue to dig in and dig in and dig in until the narrative shifts. the president is not going to say he's sorry, he's going to continue to blame the media for stories that are correct but he'll call it fake news because it works he believes to his political advantage. this is not a pattern that's going to change. this is a president that believes this works for him. >> in that "washington post"

story today about this, it said as long as this is in the news the president will keep talking about it because he can't let it go. and to dana's point, the lengths to which he's gone to try to make this reality -- this into some sort of reality using these levers of government, these public servants to try to prop up what is clearly not true is really remarkable. >> including getting his homeland security advisor, rear admiral peter brown, to write a memo saying he showed the president maps, yes, at some point that had it reaching alabama. this is a public servant being told to do this. this is your taxpayer money at work. the issue is when the president did this, that threat was over. he should have known that alabama was no longer in any of the paths. >> now you're seeing the national weather service, their employee union says they have been getting calls from even private sector businesses in the area asking them is there

anything you guys can do in order to stop the president from creating at the very least misinformation and confusion on the ground. and because he's dug in, this happens over and over, where now his campaign eventually because of the president's focus on this is now kicking into gear trying to make the best of a politically fraught situation pie making this, as you said, into something of a choke, into a chuckle, into this culture war with the media. >> there is danger here if you're not to believe the actual weather forecasts and bloefg what the president is saying. up next the white house says the jobs report is a blowout. read the numbers closely. some warning signs do persist. ve e new range of emotions like... the relaxing feeling of knowing you're getting the best price. and the magic power of unlocking your room with your phone. i can read minds too. really? book at hilton.com and get the hilton price match guarantee.

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fresh economic numbers today showing some signs of cracking in the strength of the u.s. economy. the august jobs report a bit of a mixed bag. first christine romans is here to break down the numbers. >> john, 130 net new jobs is less than the last couple of months. it shows that companies are still hiring but not as aggressively as they have in the past. in fact 25,000 jobs there are federal hires. they are census jobs, so the private sector would be a little bit less robust in hiring than we've seen at some time. the unemployment rate 3.7%. that matches the generational low we've seen the last few

months. 575,000 people came into the labor market. that was good news. where was the hiring? business information services. a lot of computer systems design type of jobs that are well paid and well sought after. health care, all kinds of jobs in health care. but it's the tale of two economies here. manufacturing stuttering. only 3,000 jobs added there. and look at the trend, really important here. over the past 12 months or so of the president's trade war, you have seen hiring in manufacturing start to slow as costs are going up because of tariffs. john. >> christine romans, appreciate that. president trump weighed in just moments before the report came out. the president tweeted i agree with jim cramer, the fed should lower rates. they were way too early to raise and way too late to cut and big dose quantitative tightening didn't exactly help either. where did i find this guy jerome? ole well, you can't win them all. that is his hand picked chairman.

then the president adding the economy is great. the only thing adding to the uncertainty is the fake news. damian poletta joins our conversation. the only thing adding to the uncertainty, is the uncertainty. if you look at this report, there are great signs of strength. people coming off the sidelines to get jobs. job growth continuing for 100 what now consecutive months. christine made a point about the averages. in 2018 the average monthly gain over 220,000. 2019, that dropped down to 158. august, 130,000. as she smartly notes, a big chunk of that census jobs, government jobs, if you're looking at that, you're thinking, okay, we're hanging on, but that suggests we could be slowing down significantly. >> exactly. what we saw in the gdp data that business investment is actually contracting, if you look at all these data points together, the momentum is the wrong direction for the president. heading into the election in a year, he wants the momentum -- people to feel like they're getting better. clearly people feel like things

are not getting better. 3.7% unemployment rate is still very low. if people get anxious and tighten up on consumer spending, then this snowballs into something ugly and the timing couldn't be worse for the white house. >> you mentioned the timing. and just that number, 3.7%, if you're a politician, that's your number, you're happy. but she noted manufacturing, the president promised he'd bring back manufacturing. it has gone up some but it has plateaued. mining and logging jobs, the president said he would bring back coal. he has a pretty good story to tell. more than 100,000 jobs. however, look at the last couple of months and this last month it went down a little bit. the other thing is consumer confidence. the consumer sentiment index, up, up, up, and then look at that drop. you just need to see the far right of that screen. that tells you american consumers are getting worried. if they pull back their money, there's a domino effect. >> and what you just showed, all of those charts and all of those numbers based on today's job

report is actually very much related to the last segment that we did, which is about the president's erratic behavior. he has been lashing out even more. susan glasser wrote a great piece in "the new yorker" using the numbers than he has before in the month of august. i'm told, one, probably not all of the reasons but one of the big reasons is the economy. because he knows full well how much re-election is riding on the economy and how much he has been, from the perspective of his campaign, not talking enough but as much as he has talked about it as the reason to re-elect him. the numbers are showing very big warning signs. having said that, the irony is that the more he talks about sharpies and alabama, the less he talks about all the positives on the economy and allows his economies to talk about it. >> and the democrats jumped on the jobs numbers to attack the president. you have not seen nancy pelosi, steny hoyer, the democratic leaders in the house go after the president the way they did

today. they are clearly seeing the signs of weakness that they believe could help them in the coming election, something that you'll see in the coming weeks. >> a lower number gave them that political opening. it's dangerous to go month to month. i think your point about collecting several warning signs and the trajectory is this way. the one thing in the president's control that could change this, he bought himself a month in the markets saying we're going to negotiate with china next month. this is his chief economic advisor larry kudlow saying, yes, we want to make a deal, but -- >> all the topics will be on the table. i mean we would prefer that we go back to may where we were maybe 90% home on a deal. we think they need a deal. president trump thinks they need a deal. president trump has said recently, every day recently, he would make a deal as long as it's a good deal for the united states. >> the president's definition of good deal, we know what it has been. the question is what will it be

next month if he continues to worry about the track heading into the election year. >> and there are -- christine romans said this at the end of her piece there that tariffs are hurting the economy. for people hanging on, hoping that this president can make a deal, a month is a long time. so what this deal, what it ends up being we don't know yet, but there are people that can't wait. >> is that the only lever, the president's lever. the fed debate, obviously they could cut rates again. >> a lot of americans don't believe that the fed is the boogie man like the president has been saying. cutting a deal is not like buying a car, it's incredibly complicated. if the president wants to do that, he'll have to back down from a lot of his demands and we'll see if the economy keeps getting weaker, then maybe he'll have to do that. next, the democrats add vice president pence's foreign trip to the list of things they want to investigate. the fut so, every day, we put our latest technology and unrivaled network to work.

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house democrats today serving notice they will investigate an issue we already know has caused some tension in the west wing, that being the vice president's decision to stay at a trump-owned golf resort while in ireland. the vice president's chief of staff told reporters earlier it was president trump who suggested the vp should stay at what he called my place. later the vice president's office backtracked and said the president had nothing to do with the choice. today the house judiciary and

oversight committees say they will broaden their already sweeping investigations to include the vice president's trip and other episodes where they say trump potentially profited from government business. manu, you've been doing some of the reporting on this. this is a quote that you have from jamie raskin of maryland saying the investigation will be broadening out. the central sin, the original sin of the trump administration is the decision to convert the presidency into a money-making operation for the president and his business and his family. it's a great line. do they really think they can prove it? >> that's a question. i do believe they think this is an argument they can make more effective ly to the public as they try to make the point impeachment is the way to go. jamie raskin has been pushing for formal impeachment proceedings which jerry nadler says they are currently in. we've not heard the speaker confirm that. democrats want to go into the fall session talking not just about obstruction of justice,

which they believe are impeachable offenses as laid out in the mueller report but potentially the president violating the emoluments clause of the constitution in addition to dangling pardons to officials who may have tried to break immigration law. those types of matters they want to draw in this broader investigation. the question is do they ultimately decide to go forward, decide to move forward on formal articles of impeachment. that's something they have not decided yet. >> it's a gift, the vice president staying in the president's resort on the other side of the country where he has meetings with the prime minister. it's a gift for aggressive congressional oversight, take the political parties out of it. as they go forward, though, why does the impeachment word come into every time the democrats say we're going to do our jobs. this is their job. it would be the republicans' job if obama owned resorts and joe biden stayed in them. why does impeachment come up every time? >> because it involves an abuse

of power. >> can you investigate first? everybody calm down. here's what we foundi. it's always in the beginning as opposed to the end. >> i think it's opposed to who you're talking about. there are a lot of democrats who say what you're saying, we haven't gone through the investigation then. the other part of the argument is this is part of impeachment proceedings, which you hear from other democrats. i think we're at the point there are enough democrats that are publicly on the record supporting impeachment that you can't take that. when we're talking about these investigations, it's hard to seep ra separate them. >> what you're getting at is some of the main reasons why some democrats, starting with nancy pelosi, are reluctant. by adding all of these things, it can be explained to people who are on the fence, if there are any such humans out there about the president and whether to go out and support him or not, that impeachment is a goal in search of a reason. and so that is really the key, particularly since the whole "i"

word had been talked about until now almost entirely in the context of russia. >> clearly the vice president didn't expect by staying at the trump resort in ireland that it would lead to the "i" word but this is part of a pattern of him trying to prove his loyalty to the president. even the vice president's brother, who is running for congress, has spent over $45,000 at trump international. you have the attorney general throwing a holiday party at the washington, d.c., hotel. the subtext of all of this is that 2020 is coming up. even though the president has said the vice president is on the ticket, he has some soft poll numbers with working class women and there's going to be some temptations to maybe swap him out. so the vice president, even with the potential for blowback, is trying to show his loyalty to the president. >> it was a choice. he had to know it was a choice and he made it. that's an excellent point. up next, back to the bahamas. dramatic video from one family trying to keep track of where their relatives are. with amazing amenities like movie theaters, exercise rooms

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the death toll from hurricane dorian is 30 now at the moment, but officials in the bahamas warn that number could rise dramatically, with hundreds still missing days after the hurricane hit. officials are bringing in more

body bags as the desperate search for survivors continues, but there are many incredible survival stories, including like this one. you can see water rushing into a house as a man shelters on the kitchen counter. that man, alexton russell. for hours, his sister feared the worst. she joins me now from ft. lauderdale. alexis, for hours, your biggest challenge is trying to figure out is my family okay. now you are helping from ft. lauderdale to organize rescues. take us through some of these moments. >> yes. so on sunday morning i received a call from my mother. she said that my little brother, alex, had just called her and told her that the water is rushing into the house, this would be the video. i immediately called him in a panic, because his car was already underwater there. there was literally no place for him to go.

so i started to just call everyone i could think of. just everybody. i called friends, i called officers i was familiar with, i posted on facebook. people started sharing. and then the next thing i knew, like maybe an hour later he said they had to go into the ceiling and stay there. then i lost communication with him for a while. >> we're all thankful with good news. you're in ft. lauderdale, florida. but you're acting as a dispatcher of sorts. you have friends and family back home who have jet skis and you are deploying them for rescues. tell me about that. >> well, not me personally, but i will say that facebook, bahamians many use facebook more than instagram or anything else. i'll be honest, the amount of -- the support team was very strong on facebook with persons that need rescuing.

however, the wind, the storm surge, you know, people were putting out information even like the street addresses, but they could not be rescued while this was happening. it was just too strong. and there were a team of guys, a few, that had to make rescues on jet skis. i'm not kidding, like the fact that they went out there. someone did try to rescue my brother on a jet ski and he was blown off of it. they had to wait a few hours before they could attempt to go back. >> thank you for your insights. just appreciate your bravery in the middle of all this. we want to keep in touch. alexis, appreciate you joining us today. back to domestic politics. the president of the united states and west virginia democrat joe manchin meet at the white house last night. gun control their conversation. >> joe, thank you very much. thank you both for being here.

they're busy, they're very busy people. i think we're going to meet on a certain subject later on, joe, and that's good. toms and flu on sunday night and every night. nyquil severe. the nightime, sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, best sleep with a cold, medicine.

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more mixed signals from the white house today as congress prepares to get back to work and debate debating new gun laws. president trump met with senator joe manchin last night and told the west virginia democrat he is still interested in getting

something done. manchin is a proponent of expanded background checks, but the president, sources familiar with that meeting say, did not make any specific commitment. specifics matter, because the senate majority leader will not schedule difficult votes unless he has a clear white house wish list. >> the administration is in the process of studying what they're prepared to support, if anything. and i expect to get an answer to that next week. if the president is in favor of a number of things that he has discussed openly and publicly, and i know that if we pass it, it will become law, i'll put it on the floor. >> as we wait to see what that answer is and if the leader receives a clear answer from the president, keep this line from today's "new york times" in mind. but white house aide its said they had polling data showing that gun control was politically problematic for the president. according to two people briefed on the meeting. we also have live pictures for you right now. this is house judiciary committee democrats holding a

hearing in el paso. obviously that's where the walmart shooting occurred last month. many of those democrats want to come back and talk about gun control. the key to this, the democrats will have their proposals and want to do many things republicans won't even consider, but there is a small list of proposals that could at least get votes if the president said i want them. will he give us an answer? a final answer? >> that's the whole crux of what you just played from mitch mcconnell. they don't know. they're not guessing. and they're not taking the first step again. manu knows this far better than i because he's been chasing all of these players on issue after issue. the president says one thing, they move and the president pulls the rug out from under them. there is nothing more politically dicey for republicans than the issue of guns. the president has political capital. he could use it with his base on issues of gun control. maybe he's not going to go as far as a mandatory background

check, but he could. could he do, i think you were suggesting, the red-flag laws, other things that are less intense? possibly. but they're not going anywhere near it until and unless the president really starts to take leadership. >> forgive me, but there are democrats say ban assault weapons or ban high-capacity magazines. i don't see any prospect for these things happening heading into an election year. the issue here is the president. he has a pattern. immediately after the shootings, he says let's do something and endorses something that's more on the democratic list if you will than from the republican list and then he tends to back off. this is the president sunday. remember, right after some of the -- right after el paso he said let's have more background checks. boy th by this past sunday, not so sure. >> i've been speaking to a lot of house members, a lot of

republicans, a lot of democrats, and they want to do something. this really hasn't changed anything. i will say for the most part, sadly, if you look at the last four or five, going back even five or six or seven years, for the most part as strong as you make your background checks, they would not have stopped any of it. >> again, there are some people who would dispute the president's facts there and he's right, in some of these cases i back ground check wouldn't have done anything. in others maybe it would have. the question is do you want to try to do something right now. if you're a senate republican leader, that's not telling you what to do. >> exactly. the reason why is because most of the senate republicans voted against manchin-toomey the last time it came up in the aftermath of the sandy hook massacre. most of them were serving at that time. if they were to simply flip their vote and support this going forward, the only way they could do that is if the president said get behind this and took some heat from the nra

and other critics of that. he is not showing any willingness to do that. privately perhaps he's open to something but what is that? they're not going to do anything until he clarifies. >> manchin has actually said because president obama was in the white house is one of the reasons that manchin-toomey couldn't get over the line. now that there is president trump in the white house, it is possible because of the cover. because he will lessen the concerns from republicans who think that democrats will take that bill and run with it, because they know that president trump is with them on these issues. but, you know, for a president that likes to compare himself and his powerfulness to president obama, this is one issue he does. he is more powerful than president obama could have been. he can move votes on this issue. but to your point, we just don't know if he'll do it. >> if he so chooses to and if he chooses to look at those political advisers who brought him that polling and says too bad, i'm going to take the risk. >> and the path of least resistance at this moment is just to do nothing.

you add the democrats on the 2020 trail that are becoming more and more further to the left. you have representative beto o'rourke talking about mandatory buy-backs of all assault rifles. it's easier to sit back and say i'm the guy that's not going to let the democrats take your guns away. in politics, the path of least resistance is what happens. >> that's right. take a quick break, we'll be right back. (gasp) (singsong) budget meeting! sweet. if you compare last quarter to this quarter... various: mmm. it's no wonder everything seems a little better with the creamy taste of philly, made with fresh milk and real cream.

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secretary of state mike pompeo back home in kansas again

today. again saying he loves his job. again, though not ruling out maybe he'll change his mind and run for senate in 2020. to secretary pompeo's credit, he's taking some questions at kansas state university and he says, guess what, i get it. no, i don't live in a bubble. >> i have not been sheltered from protests. i'm pretty sure i know exactly what people think about our policies. by the way, my team told me if i took questions from the audience, i was a fool today. they may have been right about the fool part. i'll leave that to you all. but this -- from my perspective, secretary of states don't often do this. i want to hear it. if you don't like what we're doing, i want to know. >> good for him. good for any politician who takes the questions and takes the heat. but i see that as a guy who's not sure he's thinking about running for senate. let's test and get the rust off the wheels, yes? >> i think hillary clinton would call that a listening tour.

>> there's a reason he was selected to congress in the first place, right? he's not just looking at 2020 either. i think he's looking to four years later in 2024 when there's not going to be a trump in the white house. >> and that's why there's a lot of expectation that he is ultimately going to jump into this race, because the platform of being a senator, presumably he gets out at the right time as secretary of state, he could use that to catapult himself to run for president. we'll see what happens with the president in 2020 but mitch mcconnell wants him to run and there's expectation he will. >> mitch mcconnell is looking at that video. >> he'll send him a note, looking great, mike, keep it up. howard schultz, the former starbucks ceo, announced today never mindi. he doesn't want to be on the ballot as a spoiler, to help president trump. there is still a question, who will be the third-party candidates. in 2016 the president won the presidency by flipping

wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania. he was just over 50 in ohio, north carolina and several other battlegrounds. the big unanswered question, number one, who will the democrats nominate. but number two, three and four who will be the third-party candidates. it changed the math in 2016 and it could well, it won't be howard schultz, change it in 2020. >> that's based on the premise there will be. you think there will be? >> the green party has a convention next year. if justin amash were the libertarian candidate just in michigan, that would factor into trump trump's math. >> he's definite low gettily ge pressure. you're hearing from the libertarian side of things that he's someone that could do well there. >> that could help trump because republicans who don't like trump, the democrats need particularly in those suburban areas. if someone like justin amash were to run that, could ultimately help trump get the white house again. >> this does look like the end of a billionaire coming in and

buying ballot access. you'd have to have someone like justin amash who would get a lot of national attention. >> and need the infrastructure of an existing lower party. that's an excellent point. thanks for joining us on "inside politics." have a great weekend. brianna keilar starts right now. i'm brianna keilar live from cnn's washington headquarters. under way right now, a chilling new warning from the bahamian health minister who says the number of people killed by hurricane dorian may be, quote, unimaginable. and a mechanic for american airlines accused of trying to sabotage a plane with 150 people onboard. hear his alleged motive. plus, as a diving boat went up in flames, the surviving crew members are telling investigators what they did to try to save the people onboard before jumping off to save themselves. and mexico is not paying for the wall. instead it's coming at th