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tv   Meet the Press  NBC  September 17, 2018 2:00am-3:01am PDT

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this sunday, historic flooding from hurricane florence. >> i've been here 20 years and this is the worst i have ever seen. >> hundreds without power. so many being rescued. >> i think people thought they could ride it out. they didn't realize how high the river would come. >> the worst the yet the come. plus, manafort flips. president trump's one-time campaign chief pleads guilty and agrees to cooperation with robert mueller.
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>> mr. manafort has accepted responsibility. >> candidate trump brought m manafort in to rescue his nomination. and praised him for not making a plea deal. >> this whole thing about flipping, they call it. it almost ought to be outlawed. >> what can manafort tell prosecutors about the trump tower meeting? what does he know about trump it's campaign connection. and could trump still pardon him. adam and schiff and allen dershowitz. wall street columnist and the host of the pbs news hour. welcome to sunday, it's "meet the press."
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good sunday morning, we have two huge stories this morning, the flooding from hurricane florence, what fema calls a mike tyson punch to the carolina coast. and paul manafort's decision to plead guilty and cooperate with the special counsel. but first, hurricane florence has weakened to a prom depressioprom -- tropical depression, rain continues to fall, up to 30 inches in north carolina, and the threat now is catastrophic flooding which may last more than a week more. $700,000 are without power, and tens of thousands are staying in shelters. 13,000 defense department personnel are supporting fema and 1,200 search and rescue
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personnel have been deployed. multisections of i-95 will closed. and rescues are still under way by air and aboat. and more than 450 residents have been rescued after more than 10 feet of storm surge. >> i'm going back for her. i need help with this guy. hey, guys, can i have a little help? >> it was horrifying, just wondering what's going on and where the water's going to go. >> i have lived here 20 years and it's the worst i have ever seen. >> joining me now is the mayor of new bern, north carolina good morning, sir. >> good morning. >> yesterday you announced on the city website that all water rescues has been completed. how out of the woods is new bern? how concerned are you about return flooding, if you will? >> we're very concerned. a lot of the creeks around new bern are increasing by the hour,
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we have some folks that their yards are starting to get water because of the tremendous amount of rainfall from the other eastern parts of north carolina that is coming in to new bern now by trent river, bryson's creek, noose river. >> what is it that residents need to prepare for? on one hand they think oh, all the ware reter rescues are dones is going to rerecede. are you worried about the water coming back? >> we're worried about the trees that are going to fall because of the saturated ground conditions. we are urging people to stay at home and not travel. we are a curfew in new bern, we have 30 roads in but new bern that are still not passable. we have 40,000 homes in new bern that have been damaged. we have over 300 buildings in
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new better than that are dama b. now we have had to go to the downtown area and close it down because of the number of folks that are just wanting to get out and ride around. we're trying to get these power lines up. please, don't get in the way of the electrical linemen as they do their job. >> we have an opportunity to speak to the people in washington, so i'm going to give you an opportunity what, do you need in terms of the federal response in new bern. >> president trump and i spoke yesterday and he immediately declared a declaration emergency, and governor cooper has given us those resources to get the recovery processes under
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way. we have 1,200 residents in shelters right now. and so at this time, again, the major concern is the power line restor restoration, getting the power back to our customers and keeping folks off of the streets so that we can restore the power. when you're riding around, you're keeping somebody from getting their power back on. please don't do that. and anybody that wants to help, a lot of groups are coming in, the firemen's association, and different groups are coming into new bern so we're staging that as we speak. we have a big stage area for 18 wheelers, we're working on a center in new bern, the omega center to drop off need and water and other things. >> sounds like you've got a pretty well coordinated response on the ground there mr. mayor. mr. mayor, thank you for talking with us for a few minutes.
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i know you have to go and run your response. joining me now is fema administrator, brock long, mr. long, welcome back to "meet the press." >> how are you doing, chuck? >> we know this is a water event, there's a lot of flooding issues that you're dealing with. i know you anticipated catastrophic flooding, is it as anticipated? are there areas that are worse than expected? are there areas that are better than expected? >> the national hurricane center did a phenomenal job of letting people know nearly a week in advance of what was coming. and everything they have predicting, the storm surge, the ocean rising, the coastal flood inundation was rising, you saw the ocean rise anywhere from 9 to 11 feet, causing a lot of damage along the coast, and in the back areas of the pamlico
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sound. we're seeing damage as predicted, unfortunately. >> what is your biggest need right now? what is the biggest needs down there right now? >> right now we're focused on life safety search and rescue. our urban search and rescue teams, we prepositioned 1,300 people from the national guard, to local swift water rescues, they have performed several hundred evacuations and rescues in outlying areas. in light of what we're seeing, we're going do have to service people in outlying areas that are surrounded by floodwaters and it's always a difficult life sustainment mission. people are in shelters, we need to make sure that we're meeting the demands and taking care of
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those people in the shelters. but right now, you've got a strong governor in governor cooper, and we're meeting their demands. it will be ugly, but we'll get through it. recovery is always a very frustrating proposition when they have lost their livelihood, but we're going to be okay. >> obviously it takes a little bit longer to start recovery efforts when you start with a flooding situation, that was what happened in houston with harvey. how long do you expect this flooding event to hamper the biggest part of this disaster recovery? >> we have to wait for the hazardous elements of the storm to exit the area before we can send our people in. we never want to put our own people in harm's way. the frustrating thing about flooding in north carolina, you have to wait for the flood to
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recede in order to go in and start rescue. you know, we have to do things like figure out other logistical routes to get supplies in to impact others on the coast. now that the threat is diminishing and moving inland. >> a reporter asked a simple question about what lessons were learned from puerto rico. >> sure. >> and the president went off and didn't accept the premise that there were lessons to be learned from puerto rico? were there lessons to be learned from puerto rico? >> i think the president is being taken out of context there. i have talked to the president every day this week and the department of homeland security. we a the thing about puerto rico, disaster response and recovery is a whole community team effort. you have to have anybody from neighbor helping neighbor, like the cajun navy all the way up to
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the federal government response. and i always say that emergency management is like a chair with four legs. one leg represents the federal government, the other leg represents state and local government. another leg represents the private infrastructure. and the fourth leg is you the citizen. so any time there is one leg missin missing-- >> which leg was missing in puerto rico? >> let's face it, i'll be honest, fema was the only responder for many weeks going into puerto rico. here's what we're doing to change that. we're working with the governor and he like me just came into his job and gets hit with one of the most complex disasters. i work with the governor every day to say how do we build a stronger emergency management capability in the commonwealth and the local and state level.
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i have got the best of what puerto rico's got to offer, i've got teachers, doctors, engineers, helping to provide a more viable economic future going forward. >> the president has sent multiple tweets. the white house put out a five page backgrounder citing other death toll numbers other than the one that puerto rico has accepted. 2,970 people died from the impact of hurricane florence, according to to the puerto rican government. does fema accept that number? >> the numbers are all over the place. fema doesn't count this, and if you take what's going on with florence, the deaths that are verified by the local county corners, are the ones that we take. what we do our are funeral benefits for those who are
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eligible. those are some of the numbers you can put forward that can be cross referenced with any other numbers that are out there. these guys work around the clock, one death is a death too many. >> why does it matter? why is the white house so concerned about 3,000 deaths and another report that might have had it at 1,800 deaths. you have said it doesn't matter, but the white house believes it matt matters. why? >> the one thing about president trump is the one president who has had more support for what goes on back here. he knows how hard these guys behind me workday in and day out in a very complex situation. the harvard study was done differently than the george washington study or this study and that study. and the numbers are all over the place. >> he said democrats did it to make him look bad. do you believe any of these studies were done to make the
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president look bad? >> i don't think the studies -- i don't why the studies were done. i think what we're trying to do. in my opinion we have got to figure out why people died from direct deaths, which is the wind, the water, the waves and buildings collapsing. and then there's indirect deaths. so the george washington study looks at what happened six months after the fact. what happens, even in this event, you might see more deaths indirectly occur as time goes on because people have heart attacks due to stress, they fall off their house trying to fix their roof. they die in car crashes because they went through an intersection because the stoplight are out. spousal abuse increases after a disaster. the president has been incredibly supportive of me and the staff. i think he's the only president who's held two cabinet level
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meetings to provide support. they come through this agency every day, he's very supportive. which is exactly what fema needs, there's too much blame going around and we need to be focused, chuck, on what is puerto rico going to look like tomorrow. >> final question, "wall street journal" headline, a bit disconcerning for you, saying that the white house considered replacing you as before hurricane florence hit having to do with your use of travel back home to north carolina. were you aware of this investigation? are you correspondeoperating? >> oh, yeah, absolutely. let me go ahead and clear all off of those. secretary neilson has never asked me to resign, we have a very functional relationship, we talk every day, we are both focused on florence. so let's put some context on this, the fema position is incredibly complex, you do not
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want to change jobs with me. these vehicles were prepared to reflect -- i have an important role to make sure that this government works on the nation's worst day. these vehicles are p s ars are provide security communications. the program was designed back in 2008. and it's my understanding that maybe some policies were not surrounded by these vehicles that question will get cleaned up and pushed forward. >> you have no plans to resign? >> no, i'm here to serve my country every day, that's all i do. when it's over, i'm ready to go back home and love my family. >> i know you have to get back to work, director long, thanks for coming on and answering my questions. if you want to help the people who were hit by hurricane florence, here are four
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fuels that go further so drivers pump less. improving efficiency is what we do best. energy lives here. will b >> welcome back. paul manafort has countless connections that mueller can probe. for instance he can ask about the infamous trump tower meeting with a russian lawyer who said she had dirt on hillary clinton, why? because manafort was in the room when it happened. and then there's derapaska.
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there's constantine klimnik who's a long time russian agent. and then there's the mysterious gutting of a platform. and of course there's manafort's first partner in politics, roger stones, who appears to have talked to wikileaks about leaked ema emails. congressman schiff, welcome back to "meet the press." manafort is cooperating, if you have a chance to ask him questions, what are the first series of questions you want to assume and what mr. mueller wants. >> you've got your president's son trying to get dirt in donald trump tower. you've got manafort trying to
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get money from this russian oligarch, trying to get made whole. you have the russians who want to have a relationship with the trump campaign, they want to help trump get elected. all those interests converge with paul manafort. so basically we want to know what can manafort tell us about whether any of that was consummated. he's trying to get money, they're trying to get dirt, the russians are trying to help donald trump, was there a meeting of the minds? so that goes to the heart of the collusion or conspiracy issue. >> is it possible that with all this circumstantial evidence, it really is just a bunch of coincidences, that paul manafort, in a desperate move, donald trump was afraid of the ted cruz at the convention, stealing the nomination, he's told to hire the manafort guy and doesn't do a background check. what's the likelihood of that based och d on your investigati? >> manafort is the one to help
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us whether this is the most unprobable string of coincidences or whether this was an active conspiracy. what does manafort know, whill e tell mueller anything that he doesn't already know? >> do you think mknow anything the deal that manafort cut? >> this sends a message to anybody that's -- the longer you wait to come clean, the deal, you ore going to face. this obviated the need for a
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trial, which gives mueller more time to focus on other things. it gives a key corroborating witness who has already seen what happens when you mess with bob mueller. he tried to tamper with witnesses, he got caught, he went to jail, he better come clean. >> he's been convicted in one court of law, he has witness tampered as you just brought up. why should mueller believe paul manafort. paul manafort seems like he will say anything he can to get out of a jam. how do we know that manafort is not somebody who will tell whoever is listening at that moment to get him out of a jam? >> manafort is corrupt. manafort is basically the swamp. but also flynn and also gates, and all of these people. and cohen, if cohen cooperates, all of these folks have pled guilty to lying and fraud,
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they're all tainted witnesses, and so as a prosecutor, you only rely on them to the extent you can corroborate them. but often you can, if paul manafort says i spoke to donald trump about the donald trump tower meeting, i did it at this particular time in this particular phone call and you go to the phone records and you find those phone records that corroborates those statements, so you're not going to rely on the word alone, but you're going to rely on it when you can corroborate it. >> rudy giuliani, the president's lawyer has said that manafort is not disqualified from a pardon. rudy giuliani also confirmed that manafort's legal team and the president's legal team had a sharing agreement of sorts. what do you make of the pardon of rudy giuliani still dangling the idea of a pardon out there? >> clearly the trump team is terrified about what manafort has to say.
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>> so you think this is fear of manafort? >> absolutely. they have to know that he may not have told them the full truth. and so they're terrified of what he has to say. i thought he would hold out for a pardon, but i think two things, one of the brilliant parts of the mueller team is, is getting all these people to admit to state and federal crimes. even if you get pardoned by donald trump. he gets prosecuted by numerous states, he goes away for a long time anyway. but paul manafort had to see watching the whole cohen saga, that loyalty to trump runs in only one direction. you're loyal to him, he's not loyal to you.
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>> one thing mueller has done is surfaced a lot of, i think, dirty and weird stuff that happens on k-street with the lobbying community. what is congress actually going to do to try to actually clean up the swamp? because they haven't done anything. you guys have threatened this for decades. >> i think this is going to be a core part of the democratic agenda if we're able to take over the house, which seems increasingly likely. >> you didn't get anything last time. what did we get? >> if we don't, we won't stay in the majority, and we need to stay in the majority. >> because you failed the last time. >> we need to do the oversight, we need to do the oversight that this congress has completely abdictated responsibility, we took the opportunity for to clean up, to crack youp.
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it's not john accomplish unacco. donald trump said he was going to drain the swamp and the only person who's draining the swamp is mueller. and we have to make sure there's no obstruction of justice. >> money and alligators always find a way in a swamp. >> downing me now is professor emeritus, he's author of a new book, "the case against impeaching trump." mr. dyou think that the deal tht paul manafort got is a good thing. >> i think both mana fort and president trump acted too late, manafort, if he was going to make a deal, should have made it
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before he was convicted, he would have gotten a better deal. and president trump, if he was going to pardon, he should have pardoned before manafort agreed to cooperate. so there's not going to be any pardon now, manafort has a deal. his sentence will reflect how much cooperation he gives. there is always the risk, you know, a man like manafort has to walk a tight rope. if he's caught lying, the deal is offer. on the other hand he knows he gets a better deal if he can help support the narrative of the prosecutor. so we may see, and there's always the risk of that, and judge ellis said that in the first manafort case, some people like this they not only sing, they compose, that is they elaborate a little bit, they remember things a little better than they occurred. and that's the risk to justice that could occur here. >> rudy giuliani seems to think a couple things, number one, he says let me play a bite for you from him on friday night, because he seems to think that this deal isn't as bad for them
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as others believe. here it is. >> i mean the reality is, there was a quote put out by a source close to manafort that the plea agreement has and the cooperation agreement has nothing to do with the trump campaign, quote, there is no evidence of collusion. now i know that, because i have been privy to a lot of facts i can't repeat. but the reality is, no evidence of collusion. >> even yesterday, rudy giuliani continued to say, according to sources close to manafort's defense, that this cooperation agreement does not involve the trump campaign. first of all, what is rudy giuliani referring to? is this something he may have learned during the joint -- because they have a joint defense agreement of some sort? >> the joint defense agreement has to be over at this point if he's cooperating. and congressman schiff correctly pointed out, you can't control
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what you have. manafort is on one side, he says one thing, on the other side he says something else. i didn't know how you can say the deal is limited. the deal as i understand it is that manafort will cooperate with anything that the special counsel asks about. there are no limits. this wasn't a deal that we're only going to talk about so-and-so, but we're not going to talk about trump or the trump tower meeting, obviously one of the first questions they're going to ask him, is did donald trump's son know about the subject of the meeting before it occurred in order to put pressure on donald trump jr. in order to put pressure on president trump. so, look, i understand why rudy giuliani, who's a good lawyer wants to put this in the most positive light. but this was a very bad day for the trump administration. it's bad because he doesn't know what manafort is saying and he can't count on manafort saying only things that the special coun
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counsel already knows, and when you don't know what a corroborating witness will say it's a bad day for you because you're vulnerable and exposed. >> so you wouldn't put any credence in the deal that rudy giuliani or manafort's defense team, you wouldn't put any stock into any of the assurances they might have felt from the manafort team before he cut that deal? >> well, i would use that information, if he ever testified to cross-examinatite y testified in cross-examination. he would have told the trump team to under cut his credibility, if he says something different, if he's lying now, was he lying then, that kind of argument. >> are you concerned now that paul manafort could say that a promised pardon was hinted at. or the pardon was dangled during
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the joint defense agreement? >> i doubt that. i think the president was pretty care in what he said and how he said and what was said in public. so i don't think that's a real concern. i think the concern is putting together information that the prosecutor knows about but can't connect. we have to remember again, that collusion is not a crime, conspiracy is a crime, but conspiracy requires knowledge. and it's also possible that manafort was always acting on his own, to make more money. he was using the trump campaign, saying i'll make introductions, i'll help you, but that the trump campaign didn't really know about this. that's a likely explanation, beyond the series of coincidences. >> do you think the president has the legal team me needs to take on mueller it seems like mueller has yet to lose. >> mueller has a tremendous advantage, as adam schiff
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alluded to that a special counsel will come after you prosecutors have concerned about flipped witnesses for many, many years, prosecutors have too much power to flip witnesses and use their testimony. prosecutors have all that much power, all defense attorneys realize that. >> but do you believe the president has the best defense team he needs right now? >> you know, i never want to comment on other people's defense teams, everybody would do it differently, rudy giuliani, i have known him for 30 years, i've been against him, i've been on the same side. he's an exthe recoraordinarily d guy, jay sekulow is a brilliant lawyer. there are several on the team, i will not be among them, but there will be other lawyers and teams tend to grow and shrink when you have a complicated case like this. but they're up against a very
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"leadership in turbulent times" and editor of national review. all right, we're going to focus on manafort and that development. rudy giuliani put out a statement from the president. he actually put out two statements. here's the first one i want to show. once again an investigation has concluded with a plea having nothing to do with president trump or the trump campaign, the reason the president did nothing wrong and paul manafort will tell the truth. and the paul manafort will tell the truth was not included. you don't think that was an accident? >> i don't think this was an accident. remember, rudy giuliani is someone who was hired really to work with the press and be this person who's is spokesperson for the legal team. so you have the idea they're very worried about what paul manafort might say, and paul manafort has this deal that he will talk about anything that the government said, so if he
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tells the truth, that cannot just go to obstruction of justice or the russia collusion, but it goes to the financials. the fact that the president and paul manafort had some sort of financial dealings that get them in trouble is almost a bigger story sometimes than the russian collusion. because i get a sense in talking to rudy giuliani they're a lot worried about. how about you? >> i think it's makes sense on both sides, obviously paul manafort is not going to improve his situation any in a second trial. and mueller is not going to gain anything by making it bounce while manafort is in prison. the question is what does ma manafort know? what he can certainly help mueller with is how these very nef farrov
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nefarious russian operates operation. >> paul manafort was replaced along before the election took place. he was with the campaign for a very short period of time. literally, for, like, what a couple of months? a little period of time. manafort has nothing to do with our campaign. >> but a month ago, this is what he was saying about manafort. >> i think the whole manafort thing is very, very sad, he's a very good person. i have immense respect for him for what he's gone through. >> you would have expected the worst. >> yeah, i suppose there is a greater fear now of what paul manafo manafort, who was there, who was present at the creation of the trump phenomenon, you know, he ran the campaign, he was a significant player for a while. what he knows is perhaps not fully known by the white house.
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the president would be nervous, i have wondered as i think we have all suggested, if collusion is not the most interesting question here, if maybe the nexxus of k street lobbying, law firms, pr strategy firms, what they will do with the money of foreign nationals and foreign governments, manafort has talked about that since he helped invent that rule. he was present at the creation there. that could of not only be interesting but be maybe a public service and maybe give something of a platform on which congress can finally move, as he mentioned. >> what do you see in it? the president seems to be -- they seem to be nervous enough about man afort that they don't want to throw him under the bus.
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>> loyalty is a one-way street for him. so none of these people who are in trouble now can depend on him. and when you think about what matters when you're a leader of a team. you have to create a team that's loyal to the job and not to themselves. and when teddy roosevelt came in, he said you can't keep those people are, they won't be loyal to you, lehe said they don't ha to be loyal to me, they need to be loyal to the job. the greatest leaders build a team. it seems that this team, everybody's out for themselves. s and nobody's out for the country. >> the president is starting to think about his own survival. it seems like that's always how he's thinking. >> it's hard to know because you look at those statements and i think essentially for a lot of people that trump is acting out
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of cognizant of guilty. he's going to say things about the guy who's being nailed to the wall in this investigation whether he's guilty as sin or not. >> trump has a history of being -- >> he has a sense of being isolated and feeling very wronged about this. he feels like his credibility has -- then you think about the people that have flipped. there's pan manafort, there's rick gaetzted gates flynn. >> those are also people that he thought had his back. there's reporting that david pecker had his secrets in a safe -- at "the national
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enquirer." the president has to be thinking that if all of these people are talking and paul manafort is just another name on the long list of people, what a story they can tell. >> the nature of our politics today, we're constantly talking about people flipping and going to jail, we should be talking about the country. >> i think perhaps with the president and all of these people who have been indicted or have come under questioning. is that he may not have any deep insight into their nature because he didn't really know them. so he almost can't judge where they're going next, the people around trump during the campaign were an island of broken toys. they were individual operatives, their driven by their own drama. donald trump couldn't get anybody else, he couldn't get the grown ups to join and he got
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what he got. >> for what it's worth, trump's always built his worlds that way, it's not just in politics, he sort of ends up with everybody with their own agendas everybody with their own agendas and he ends up at&t provides edge-to-edge intelligence, covering virtually every part of your manufacturing business. & so this won't happen. because you've made sure this sensor and this machine are integrated. & she can talk to him, & yes... atta, boy.
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comfort. what we deliver by delivering. welcome back. data download time. so why is all the talk about the midterms suddenly turned to the senate actually being in play? you know, there was an assumption that the biggest challenge for democrats in 2018 would be the ten states president trump won where democrats are up for re-election, including some states that went from blue to red, including ohio, michigan and wisconsin. in fact we were talking about how many seats republicans were going to pick up in the senate. but right now republicans have failed to put all of those red state democratic incumbents in the danger that republicans
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wanted them to be in. some races don't even appear to be that close right now. for instance, look at the real clear politics polling average, democrats have strong leads in all four of these red and blue states. they're neck and neck in others, which you would have thought republicans without have put away right now, indiana and north dakota. on the other side, republicans are confident, they didn't have to defend as many states in the senate and assumed the states they did have to defend were going to be pretty safe. but look at how things have changed, the race ask in the margin of error in arizona, tennessee and texas. none of this means that the wave is going to somehow wash over both the house and the senate in the same way and the same strength. but one thing is clear, something has shifted in these last 60 days, so momentum is not just on the house side of things, but also on the senate. all right, when we come
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back, leadership in a moment of crisis. ♪ can i get some help. watch his head. ♪ i'm so happy. ♪ whatever they went through, they went through together. welcome guys. life well planned. see what a raymond james financial advisor can do for you. brushing only reaches 25% of your mouth. listerine® cleans virtually 100%. helping to prevent gum disease and bad breath. never settle for 25%.
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back now with "end game." all right, we have doris kearns goodwin, we have a new book by you and we have a sitting president. and want to relive puerto rico, and this seemed as a good way to kick off this conversation. two things i want to pull out and see if you'll apply them to today. one is stories versus facts. you write lyndon johnson and abraham lincoln and franklin roosevelt know that people were more easily influenced by
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stories than in other way. >> i think what happened here in the whole hurricane situation, is that what you want as a president is to gain control of the narrative. and by losing his temper, because he got angry at new signs of maria that were on the television again, and the criticisms of how well he did, he lashes out at the figures of how many people have died, so that becomes the story instead of florence, in preparing for florence. suppose he had gone on the air and said i made mistakes during maria. like when president kennedy acknowledged the bay of pigs and said we made a mistake. and as a result he lost the most important thing for a leader in a time of crisis is to exhibit empathy toward the people who are being hurt and to talk to
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those people at this time who are still being hurt in puerto rico about how many people died versus how many people lost people, their families, they have lost their wherewithal. it doesn't make any sense, that ambition was to relitigate the story, he thinks if you tweet about it many times, it will become true. >> you quote lincoln in the book. and i know people are saying, doris quotes lincoln? you quote lincoln and he says with public sentiment nothing can fail, without it nothing can succeed. >> that's what we have to think about today to be honest. when we just argue about president trump and what's going on, we have to look at ourselves and say what was our voting system like. we as citizens have responsibility for what happens trump. if we can change public
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sentiment, we can change anything we want. >> there's a problem president trump created for republicans running in the state of florida, rick scott said i disagree with poe tus and with the way he said thousands of lives were lost, this is the political problem he's now created. >> and rick scott has been to puerto rico multiple timings he's outperforming what democrats are done in florida. the president would benefit from the insight that not everything is about him. a category 4 storm devastate an island, it wiped out the grids, it wiped out the roads, it wiped out any telecommunications, and i think the fema response has been massive and enduring and ongoing, it's just hard to have everything snap back
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immediately. in fact it's impossible to do that. >> it i think both of you have said something, it's the word empathy. it's this idea that the president is expected to feel bad for people and expected to exhibit that and expected to be this consoler in chief. and it's something that president trump has not been able to carry forward. he's saying dead people aren't dead and he's trafficking in this conspiracy theory that he's done throughout his life and it's starting to spread throughout the government because you have brock long saying the numbers are all over the place, the numbers aren't all over the place, more than 3,000 people died. and it's hard to say that people who died in katrina in the superdome after katrina, that they didn't die during the hurricane if they were waiting for medical help. if you died because you didn't have power and your grandmother didn't have power to breathe, she died because of the hurricane. it's heart breaking when you hear the personal stories that you' heard from katrina and maria. >> unseemly,oñ when we are
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debating body counts. don't be politicizing the number who died. don't be doing that, don't be arguing and tweeting about it. it's unseemly for a president. just go try to help puerto rico a little bit more, just go try to help north carolina a little bit more. i have rarely seen the president try to be above it. >> but how could a person who's president not have that as a natural reaction, if you were either born with empathy, or you develop it through experience and you learn about other people's lives and you care about him. >> he has many reactions that are not the normal presidential reaction. >> i think will be the tifinal word and a riddle we have yet to solve. tickets are now available for our second annual "meet the press" film festival. it takes place on october 8 right here in washington. tickets available right now, nbc
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news.com/mtpfilm. we'll be back next week because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press."
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florence continues to inundate the carolinas with more rain and flood waters as dams are pushed to the max and residents are left reeling. new details overnight after the woman accusing supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh of sexual assault reveals her sxient specifics of her allegations. a deadly shark attack over the weekend takes the life of a 26-year-old off cape cod and closes multiple beaches. and the disappearance of china's most famous actress. new clues revealed. and a different kind of camp for girls helping them get the skills they need to build a successful future. "early today" starts right now.

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