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welcome back, everyone, i'm am exwi alex witt. here's what we're monitoring for you. it's all about hurricane harvey, which is wreaking havoc in texas, though it has now weakened to a category 1 storm. however, it is still threatening to bring catastrophic flooding. rainfall in some areas already totals more than 20 inches and that could double by wednesday.

among the cities hardest hit, rockport, texas. this video here showing some of the trail of wreckage that storm is leaving behind. this as the city of victoria is added to the list of cities in the region that are now under a water boil notice. while the number of people facing power outages is now topping 300,000. nbc's katie beck is in victoria. katie is joining me by phone right now. katie, talk about the damage you're seeing from the hurricane where you are. >> reporter: hey, alex. damage here structurally is pretty minimal. but the flooding is going to be extensive here. it's creeping closer and closer to the edge of the road. if this continues roads will be submerged. seeing a lot of downed power lines which is probably why we're having some difficulty getting cell reception out of

where here right now and rain is still coming down very heavily in sheets. so it's really interesting the weather pattern at this point. it starts and stops. you get strong bursts of wind and rain and then it lets up and then it comes back. so the outer bands are making their way as they stall over this area, but lots of street signs turned over. every stoplight anywhere is out. and obviously all businesses are closed. no one -- most people are staying off the roads, it's pretty quiet, but it is going to be interesting as this rain continues to collect exactly how any of this is going to be passable because right now it's getting to a point where that's going to be a really dangerous situation soon. >> yeah. okay, catie, simply because of what you were describing, the difficulty with your cell reception due to many of those power lines being down, we're going to let you go right now and hopefully talk to you a little later. for those of you who weren't

able to hear her at the top, she did say at least it looks like buildings are structurally intact at this point but there is the evidence of some flooding and it could be extensive. this according to catie beck who's on the scene there in victoria, texas. let's bring in jeff who has been chasing storms more than 35 years. today he is one of the only outsiders who managed to get into rockport, texas. that was literally the ground zero of hurricane harvey as it made landfall last night. jeff, with a welcome to you, you were there in the eye of the storm. talk about what you saw, what you heard and how eerie it is when the eye of the storm passes over you. >> last night we had winds gusting over 140 in rockport. we took shelter in a car wash and had a building disintegrate right next to the car wash,

around the car wash roofs were coming off. as the car wash just in the nick of time, the eye came in and the winds went from 140 miles an hour down to calm. we had to clear a wall of debris in front of the car wash for three vehicles to escape and i went back down to a place near walmart, took shelter there and helped the truck driver escape. i stayed there and then the back side hit us and it was super bad. but the bigger story right now, there's a state of emergency now exists in fulton and rockport where that area took a direct blow from a cat 4 hurricane. we have anywhere from moderate damage to some areas catastrophic damage. i have complete building failures at apartment complexes, buildings, hotels, roofs have been ripped off. many, many houses have windows blown out, the roofs off of

houses. mobile homes, mobile home trailer parks that have been turned upside down. about 25 minutes ago i'm on top of a bridge now, this is the only communication out of this area and i'm 200 feet above the water at the inlet here. as we were turned back into town we found an elderly man that had been crawling out to the fire hydrant. he was blown out of his house as the house collapsed on him during the night. we stopped and picked him up and took him to emergency services literally 20 minutes ago. you have people coming out of the rubble here in different parts of fulton and rockport took a direct hit and the damage here is pretty heavy. emergency services are pouring into the area. i just saw the coast guard fly over with their aerial and the texas fire department task force, one has arrived and they are deploying assets as we speak. but there's massive damage here over a wide area. all the roads in this area are blocked due to trees, power lines, high water.

but it's a big mess down here right now. >> oh, to say the least. it is absolute absolutely hear to listen to you. we're looking at your pictures that you have been providing in the evenings. i see there are homes along the water and they have literally fallen into the water. is that what's happened with those -- >> it's all -- it's all of it. i mean there's homes that have been -- the storm surge took some homes out. you've got the wind accelerated across the open water areas and took out structures. i do have on the bay area on the southwest side, i did see two apartment -- or one full apartment complex building that was probably a full two-story brick building that probably has about 45 to 50 apartments in it, that unit is on the ground so we're not talking about just mobile homes and trailers that normally flip or get damaged in a hush, winds of 140 or 150, but we have well-built buildings. for example, the hampton has got the roof ripped off. the fairfield inn which i just

left there, walked in the lobby and all four floors of it, i guess the whole south end of that four-story hotel is ripped off. we are talking heavy damage here to heavy structures, big buildings. my estimate, this is not an absolute, but i would say 90% of the structures in this area have some form of damage and probably 40% to 50% have major to catastrophic damage. it's that bad. >> okay. jeff, before i let you go because we have a former fema regional director who's on the line waiting for us and i know he's listening to your reports right now. you described that elderly man who was literally crawling out of a home that had collapsed on top of him. do you have any sense of how empty rockport was before the hurricane hit? did most people -- >> a lot of people have left but a lot of people stayed. i do not have any kind of numbers for what i'm telling you, but i will say i had a couple come up to me at 1:00 this morning after i escaped the

car wash and they told me they were hit by a tornado in the eye of the husrricanes, which is no uncommon. when it hit their house, it blew her and her husband out of the house and into the water. so there are people that are injured and have been buried around the city. i don't have what that number is, if it's one, two, or a hundred, i just don't have that number but i do know people have been buried in the rubble overnight waiting for help. i do know that because i literally just picked up somebody 25 minutes ago. like i say, everybody is trying to get a grasp on this. i do know emergency services are pouring in. but this is a major, major disaster down in this area right now. it's going to take many days to get a handle on how bad it is here. >> jeff, 35 years you've been doing this. how does this storm rank? >> it's probably one of the top ten. >> pretty extraordinary. all right, jeff, thank you so much. do stay safe. you provided us excellent

pictures and we appreciate that. joining me now, a former fema regional director. john, you were just listening to jeff and his description. i said it was heart stopping because the devastation by his pictures and video. it looks enormous. he said 90% of this town of rockport seems to be wiped out. i know the historic district is completely gone. when you hear that, what is the first thing that comes to mind as a former regional fema director? >> alex, the first thing that comes to my mind is the fact that this is going to be a disaster for some time to come. people want disasters to be very finite events. they want them to have a clear start, a clear stop, when everybody can go back to starting to get things back to normal. but this disaster is going to be there for a while. the water is not going to go down for a while. the damage is going to be hard to get at for a while. so this disaster is going to be -- change circumstances and dangerous for some time to come. >> and what kind of problems or

challenges does that pose for fema? when you're looking at something and you're not talking about days or even likely weeks, months ahead of you, how do you focus where you need to go first? >> the first thing that you focus on has to be the needs of the people, making sure that the people that are at risk, the people that perhaps are buried, the people that are trapped or in need of immediate medical attention are identified and get the attention that they need. after the immediate needs of the people, you start looking at housing needs. people that have had their homes destroyed, people that are going to need somewhere to go. and in some instances, somewhere to go for more than just a day or two, up to weeks, perhaps even months in this disaster. >> yeah. >> so the medical needs of the people, the housing needs of the people and then you start to -- you start to look at some of the other considerations. one of the things that hasn't

really been covered to a great extent, what about the animals? what about the pets of the people? they need to be considered as well, because a lot of times people will put themselves at risk or in harm's way to go back for a beloved pet. so factor those into the equation as well. >> yeah, i did actually bring that up earlier with someone. we were looking at the numbers from kaetrina and it was about quarter million dogs and cats were either killed or displaced because of hurricane katrina. i don't want to think about what's going on with harvey. john, thank you for weighing in in these very somber times. i do appreciate your insights, sir. for all of you, we're keeping an eye on what's happening in austin, texas. that is where governor greg abbott will hold a news conference in just a couple of minutes. it's scheduled for three or four minutes from now so we'll take a short break here and hopefully on the other side of this break we'll have the texas governor with an update for us. stay with us.

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we are keeping our eye on austin, texas. that is where texas governor greg abbott is scheduled to make a statement and have a news conference. we will bring that to you live once that gets under way, certainly giving us an update on things statewide but particularly along the coast there of texas, which has been slammed by a cat 4 hurricane, hurricane harvey, about seven or eight hours ago when that hit the coastline of texas. people still trying to recover, but that storm is far from over. let's turn now to politics as the president faces his first big test growidealing with a gr weather disaster. late on friday the president announced a presidential pardon for sheriff joe arpaio. he's also made the ban on transgender troops official, signing an order to now move forward on that ban. also on friday the ousting of sebastian gorka, a deputy advisor to the president. the white house said gorka is no longer with the administration. joining me now, heidi przybyla, a senior political reporter for "usa today."

also molly hooper, congressional reporter at "the hill." if the texas governor gets under way, we'll have to shift our focus but heidi, let's talk about the pardon of sheriff joe arpaio first. is this more than just the president rewarding one of his diehard supporters? >> i think this and the transgender ban announcement are a message, a political message that he is still in charge. look, this is happening after steve bannon is gone and it's happening as advisers are trying to surround the president and kind of moderate his positions on some of these issues. it's something that he went to a rally in arizona to preview in a campaign-style rally. so the implications of this, you cannot understate in terms of the rule of law. this is something that was done without a justice department review. this is someone who was convicted of violating constitutional rights of other people, of latinos in particular.

and just on a human dimension, someone who if you look at some of the phoenix news reports coming out here, people who have covered him for years, likened his own tent city camps where he kept people to, quote, concentration camps. so there is also people who are saying is this a message possibly to individuals in the mueller probe that the president is willing to use his presidential powers to this extreme and to this extent? but also i think more immediately, alex, a message to some of those agents who are out there rounding up immigrants right now that, hey, if you support my ideology and my agenda, i'm willing to, you know, use my presidential pardons in this way to overlook that if you violate people's rights. >> you know, you bring up that tent city that joe arpaio was known to conduct there, and it was conducted in triple-digit temperatures in the heat. people would be asked to sleep outside with no relief at all and there are reports of some of those prisoners having to wear pink underwear as a shameful and humiliating thing for them. >> and their shoes melting it

was so hot. >> their shoes melting it was so hot. pretty extraordinary. molly, when you think about white house press secretary sarah huckabee sanders, she was asked if the white house had a pardoning policy after the president hinted this was on the horizon. so when you take overall into account the president's tweet, the white house statement as well, what kind of signals is the president giving on how he's going to give his pardoning powers? >> well, that's the thing. if you look at the way democrats have been reacting on capitol hill and even some republicans, there is a question. you know, who is going to be pardoned? especially as heidi was saying going forward, is this a sign to mueller that even if some of these individuals are convicted for whatever they have done with relation to russia, can the president just pardon those individuals? but i also found it interesting that this came out at, quote, the appropriate time as sarah huckabee sanders said, and that just happened to be when there is this hurricane coming out down in texas. i mean it seems like there's a

political hurricane up here in washington, d.c., because not only did that happen, as you said, sebastian gorka left. and so it seems that these sort of stories are at odds. on the one hand it looked like the arpaio pardon was, you know, was to his base, to trump's base. people who -- the bannonites who support that ideology. but on the other hand, here's sebastian gorka, who was hailed by these folks who's now not at the white house. so it's sort of a question of where are they going -- what's going to happen in september. >> yeah. what's interesting, sebastian gorka said that he resigned his position. those within the white house do not concur with that, they just say that he is no longer part of the administration. so you've got to wonder what kind of machinations were going on behind the scenes, perhaps that general kelly was the one who was calling the shots on that. heidi, with regard to the pardoning power here, how is this perhaps a trial balloon of sorts to test the limit of the

president's pardoning power relative to russia? >> well, that is the big question. any pardons that would come in the russia investigation would be way down the line, but a lot of the smart conservatives, and i will say this is not a liberal democratic position, these are conservatives who are now coming out and making statements on twitter and elsewhere, that this could be some kind of a precedent setting, also a message to those in the russia investigation that, hey, if you want to not cooperate with mueller, this is the extent to which i'm willing to go to make sure that you are taken care of, that i'm willing to pardon you. this is all speculation, though, alex. i think we have to be very clear about that because we are so far out in the russia investigation. but certainly there are many who believe that this is so troubling that it could possibly even be challenged in court. however, you know, the president has this latitude. i mean he has ultimate -- he has total power to make these types of pardons. but it is so unusual on so many

levels, including that this person was convicted of violating people's constitutional rights, including that it's so early in his term. i might say that this is the first time in 30 years that we've had a president issue a pardon like this so early in his presidential term and in a way that it was very politicized that he tweaked it or previewed it in a campaign-style rally. >> yeah, that was pretty extraordinary. so, molly, the timing overall, how do you interpret arpaio pardon within minutes of sebastian gorka being out of the white house. is there a big picture interpretation of this? >> sorry, i just have to kind of laugh because it sort of feels like what is the big picture here. you have these opposing forces, you know, clashing with each other because in addition to which you had president trump also issue that transgender ban. and this all happened after like 8:00 on a friday night, again, when this hurricane is going on

and that's leaving some democrats, namely chuck schumer, to question whether he's doing this in the dark of night to try to slip this under the radar, but obviously that didn't happen. you know, it's a good question. mike cernavich, one of these steve bannon followers, he was in d.c. and met -- had drinks i guess last night with some folks. i had a source who was there. he said, you know, with sebastian gorka out of the white house, this is the end of the administration, according to the steve bannon folks. that's something steve bannon said earlier this week, that this fight that conservatives and these anti-globalists had during the election, you know, it's over. sebastian gorka in his resignation letter basically cited the afghanistan policy as one of the reasons why the administration is going off course and one of the reasons why he, quote, wanted to leave his position at the white house. so that is a question. and the timing is unique,

especially because congress does return in september. that's only a week and a half away. but they have a lot of work to do. foreign policy issues, the afghanistan policy, and of course they have to keep the government up and running. maybe, hey, let's do tax reform. so these are all hot button topics appealing to different -- appealing and turning off different segments of the republican party. we'll see how that comes together when congress gets back into town. >> and real quick, heidi, with regard to the president making this major military move here, and putting new policy out there, wouldn't that typically have been preceded by either a statement at the white house about it or an address to the pentagon? i mean the word typical you don't apply to this administration, but -- >> again, we have to view this through a purely political lens, alex, because there was no major study showing that having transgenders serve in the military is affecting readiness. it was not a huge cost concern, as many have pointed out this morning.

the military spends five times more on viagra. trump himself has already spent three times more on going to mar-a-lago so there was not a cost issue or documented proof of kind of a readiness, proven readiness effect. >> all right, ladies. heidi, molly, thank you so much for giving us politics on this day. we've got a lot of hurricane harvey under way. for all of you, we'll have more on that. we're keeping our eye on austin, texas, where governor greg abbott will take to the podium and give us an update on the rescue efforts and stats from hurricane harvey, again, a category 4 hurricane slamming into that state last night. stay with us here on msnbc. ♪ hey, is this our turn? honey...our turn? yeah, we go left right here. (woman vo) great adventures are still out there. we'll find them in our subaru outback. (avo) love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru.

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coast, this in the wake of hurricane harvey's devastating landfall. >> the winds at times have been gusting to 110 miles an hour. >> all eyes are on the skies to see just how much water falls here. >> oh, my goodness. oh, my goodness. we just got word it's a category 4 hurricane. i hope and pray that people evacuated because if they did not, they are going to go through the worst night of their life. >> a hurricane here is imminent. >> hurricane-force winds are going to penetrate well inland. >> this storm could cut a new path along the texas coast. >> right now we're getting hammered with a thunderstorm. >> we are really getting battered with this wind right now. >> and while this storm becomes the president's first challenge from a natural disaster, he faces backlash from a series of actions he took late friday. meanwhile, we are awaiting a news conference from the texas governor. we will bring that to you live. a good day to all of you, i'm alex witt here in new york. it is 1:00 here in the east,