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in certain places. now, the national hurricane center is warning that catastrophic flooding could sweep many areas by wednesday. listen to texas governor greg abbott. he just spoke to us all in the last hour. >> in various key regions ranging from corpus christi to the houston area, perhaps as much as between 20 and 30 more inches of rain could be coming down. that is coming down on already-saturated ground, and already filled-up waterways, whether they be creeks, bayous or rivers and so there is the potential for very dramatic flooding. >> so i want to check in now with one of our nbc correspondents, stephanie gosk joins us from katy, texas. and katy is close to houston. so explain what they've done and what they've seen there, especially for over the next 48 hours. >> reporter: yeah, thomas, we're just west of houston, and you know, we've certainly seen the

rain. you can tell i'm soaking wet. it's coming in bands as it has been and when it comes, it's a torrential downpour but we're at this location that shows you that the rain is not the only danger in this area. what you're looking at right now is actually a billboard and it came crashing down overnight and although they haven't confirmed it yet, the weather service, this looks like tornado damage. and this area was under a tornado warning until about 20 minutes ago, and they keep on coming, these warnings about tornados as the bands cycle through. this was actually a boat and rv storage facility, and the owner of that facility spoke with our affiliate station, kprc, this morning and said that he had actually just stopped by to grab some papers from his office and suddenly he was greeted with this. and one of the reasons they think that it's a tornado is that the buildings across the street, the buildings down the road, all seem to be relatively

okay, but you have catastrophic damage, really, to this business. thomas. >> stephanie gosk, just outside of houston in katy, texas, for us. stephanie, stay safe with the crew. i want to go to nbc meteorologist shanna mendiola. as we look at where stephanie was just outside of houston and as we look at the bands of harvey behind you, talk about the tornado activity that stephanie was referencing and the risk of that, plus the heavy rain that they expect for the next 48 hours. >> we've got a lot going on. our severe storm radar, stephanie's located right here, just west of houston and you can notice that here on the radar we've got bands going just east of there and west but what's happening is the storm is pulling a lot of the moisture from the warm air off the gulf and sending it through texas. we haven't seen this move for at least 12 hours and it's moving at a snail's pace as well.

so a lot of the rain is inundating texas, we've got those tornado warnings in the outer edge of that storm and the rain totals, again, this is something that we are following because even though the storm has been downgraded, that's only because the winds have died down a bit. the secondary threat of the storm will be the flooding rain. this looks impressive for this time of year. 10 inches plus for part aransas to houston. but this is so far, again, several days of rain will accumulate. looking at 5 to 10 inches today and another 5 to 10 tomorrow so a lot of these locations will be getting just as much rain as they get within a year with just one storm. about 40 inches of rain possible in the heaviest spots of victoria. that's a bull's eye for that heavy rain and we'll be watching that and as we talk about the wind again, we'll take a look at those strong wind gusts because there's still an issue as we speak. these are the current wind speeds we're talking about right now. for gonzalez, 46 miles per hour, occasionally, these are the

occasional gusts that pick up every now and then but they've been strong as 132 miles per hour at port arkansas where they got that heavy rain and that's enough to knock over trees, it's a very damaging wind so we're going to focus on the flooding possibility with the rain that's coming in every single day from now into next week >> thank you very much. we want to talk more about what's happening in texas, specifically in houston with the mayor of houston. sylvester turner. his city feeling really the biggest effects of harvey right now. the national weather service has issued a flood warning for much of the houston metro area. sir, explain how you are helping millions of people deal with this with houston being one of the largest cities in the country and knowing that you're in the danger zone over the next 48 hours. >> well, quite frankly, we'll be in the danger zone over the next four days. this is the first day, but we've

asked all of our people, unless you have to be on the roads, to stay in your homes, to shelter where you are, and in large part, people are complying with that. they're cooperating. but we need people to stay off the streets in order for the first responders to do their jobs. at this point, it will be a major rain issue for the city of houston. in some areas, we've already gotten, you know, six inches of rain in areas right outside of city of houston, harris county, over the 12 hours they received over 9 inches so we're expecting a lot of rain today, tomorrow, and possibly through wednesday as well. the water is still within the bayous, within the banks in most instances. in one, the water did come out of the banks, but it is receding and first of all rigortunately are between rain bands so that's

giving the bayous some time to recede. >> mayor turner, i know you tweeted on friday to think twice before leaving the houston area en masse. i know you wanted to avoid potential gridlock from that. but when we were talking with our joe fryer earlier, because of the fact that this goes all the way over from corpus christi over to the houston area, and the issue of potentially three feet of rain coming in, a lot of people didn't know exactly where to go for what would be a safe area. >> well, that's the reality is that no one really knew where the storm was going, with where the hurricane was going. there are roughly 2.3 million in the city of houston. there are about 6.5 million within harris county where city of houston is within harris county. so the best place was not for people in houston and harris county to evacuate but for us to stay in place to, stay in your homes. that's the safest place. our high water rescue teams are strategically placed and positioned just in case there's any sort of flooding that forces people out of their homes so

we're proud of that. we're telling people to make sure that they see about our seniors and for people with disabilities, we've taken steps to move homeless people off the street and into shelters. we're doing that. and in areas that we know are prone to flood, especially in low-income communities, we're watching those areas very, very carefully. but now in the city of houston, we've been fortunate. it's been about 90 trees down, about 38 streets flooding, but at this point, there's only one case where there's been structural flooding in the city of houston. hopefully it won't be more but i anticipate that we are going to have major flooding, that there are going to be some rescue events that will take place over the next four days. this is just day one. we're expecting a substantial amount of rain day two, three, and four. >> sir, in the last hour with the governor talked about the active process of search and rescue for anybody that's in harm's way right now, the governor had been asked about any confirmed fatalities.

have you heard about any loss of life or potential loss of life that's being investigated right now that's associated with harvey? >> in the city of houston, i have heard of no reports, no one being injured at all. and again, only one case where there may have been some water getting into someone's home. other than that, the water pretty much has stayed within the banks of the bayous or there has been street flooding and that's why we're encouraging people to stay off the roads, stay home, be safe. most fatalities and most injuries occur when people are on the streets, not when they are in their homes. so, if you stay in your homes, stay sheltered in your home, the odds are you're going to be safe. if you run the risk and leave your home, get out in the streets with this rain coming and you never know where the hazards will be, that's when you are more likely to be injured or lose your life and that's what we encourage people to do, stay home, allow us to do our job.

the city is prepared to do its job. the county is prepared. and if people will cooperate with us, we'll get through this one day at a time. >> sir, thank you very much. i appreciate your time. mayor turner of houston. i know you're going to get back to work to keep you and yours, all the people of houston safe. i appreciate your time. >> thank you for the coverage. thank you. i want to bring in now retired lieutenant general russell, he was the commander of the joint task force katrina responsible for military relief efforts that were made after hurricane katrina in new orleans. sir, it's great to have you with me. i was back covering katrina in 2005, i remember when you rolled in with the tanks. harvey is a cat 4 now down to a tropical storm. but what do you expect from what you've witnessed by coverage and what you're hearing about this storm that folks in texas could be dealing with in the weeks to come. >> well, this is what we call d1, day one of harvey, and the

major event today was landfall, so now that we're through that and the structural damage from the heavy winds are known, now how do we deal with the extensive flooding that is ongoing and that flooding is going to continue into day two or d2 as well as the day three. i think i just heard the mayor of houston eloquently said what his plan is. what they have to work now is the people out in the rural communities between houston and down to corpus christi that don't have that level of communications out in the countryside because that entire area between corpus christi and houston, to include houston, is a part of a giant floodplain and that water wants to make its way toward the gulf and a lot of rivers and tributaries and bayous now are going to continue to flood over and it's going to restrict travel. the roads will close and when

the roads close and the flooding happens, it's going to turn the lights out so you have a cascading effect of the storm and it's going to get worse by tomorrow than it is today, so everybody in low-lying areas needs to be evacuated. they need to be doing a major evacuation of areas that the models show will be flooding tomorrow and get the people out before the roads close. >> we heard from the governor in the last hour about the disaster declaration and for the counties affected in this, also that there are 338,000 outages and it's going to take several days for that to be addressed properly by the electric company. getting people back on track. the update that the fort bend area, the brazos area, that area was a voluntary evacuation. the san bernard area is a mandatory evacuation right now. the governor said they enacted 1300 troops initially and have raised that to 1800. do you think that's enough to suffice what you predict or worry about over the next couple of days as you call this day

one. >> yeah, i think by d2, he needs -- he has over 10,000 troops in the texas national guard. they're one of the best national guards we have in the country. and they even have a division headquarters and moany of those troops are well trained and well equipped. i would be thinking mobilization of 10,000 troops and get them into those small communities so each county has a unit that they can start working with that can start doing the recon and the high clearance vehicles, be prepared to evacuate people. but again, i'm not there on the ground. i'm doing some second guessing, which is not revered by people in charge. but my experience says, you need more troops and you need to start deploying them and deploying them now or you can't wait until day three because by day three, the roads are going to be closed. they need to get into those areas now. >> and right now with the governor giving the briefing in the last hour, there are no confirmed fatalities associated

with harvey at this point. back in 2005, i think everybody will recall the fact that new orleans in that coastal area with the one-two punch of ka tree -- katrina and reita. is it encouraging so far that the governor is not talking about any loss of life with the event of harvey as hitting at a cat 4 and now currently at a tropical storm. >> i think we've gotten a lot better. you have nothing but praise for fema and the state organizations in louisiana and texas and their preparedness. my -- again, my recommendation would be to mobilize more and get the troops deployed before the heavy floods come to known high ground where they can be in those counties and be prepared to respond, because what they don't know, like we didn't know in katrina until about 14 days afterwards, when we went to knock on every door of every

home that was evacuated, that's when we found the bodies. we found them in people, isolated in their home, mostly elderly, most of them had mobility issues, and most of them were alone. and that's where the deaths we found them the week after when we went in for the secondary search. every home that is vacant, someone needs to go knock on the door, then once you knock, you got to go back and enter those homes to make sure if there's in there you can get them out and that's going to be a massive search and rescue mission and with the water coming, the more it rains, the more the rivers are going to restrict travel. so i would err on the side of predeploying the guard into those counties so they can start responding. i would also look for a brigade of people with small boats, primarily those bateau boats and organize them like we did under the cajun navy because the good

samaritans are will help you save a lot of lives. >> you make a good point about the good samaritan effort of checking on loved ones or neighbors, those that you expect might be alone during this time, make sure they're okay. sir, thank you so much. i appreciate your time. lieutenant general russell honore. thank you, sir. so, coming up next for you, the mother of all news dump fridays, yeah, it was a deluge of information yesterday, not just about harvey. we'll explain. e. championship on the line. erin "the sharpshooter" shanahan fakes left. she's outside of the key, she shoots... ...she scores! uh... yes, erin, it is great time to score a deal. we need to make room for the 2018 models. relive the thrill of beating the clock. the volkswagen model year end event. hurry in for a $1,500 in available bonuses and 0% apr for 60 months on a new 2017 jetta or passat. can make anyone slow downt and pull up a seat to the table.

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all right, so it really has become a thing, a certainty during this presidency that on a friday night, there will be a news dump. when we get this sudden deluge of breaking news from the white house, nbc's kelly o'donnell has more for us. >> reporter: when the first family left for a weekend at

camp david, hurricane harvey was not the only storm brewing. a legal lightning bolt from president trump late friday. a presidential pardon for arizona's controversial anti-illegal immigration hardliner, sheriff joe arpaio. a move the president teased at his tuesday rally in phoenix. >> by the way, i'm just curious. do the people in this room like sheriff joe? >> reporter: long accused of using racial profiling and tough tactics against undocumented immigrants. >> but i'm not going to stop. >> reporter: 85-year-old former sheriff was convicted of criminal contempt for failing to follow a court order to stop the patrols. >> was sheriff joe convicted for doing his job? >> reporter: cheered by some conservatives, but critics in both parties say the pardon only inflames divisions, and

discrimination against latinos and undermines the rule of law. arpaio spoke to nbc news by phone. >> i have to thank the president for standing by me and standing by law enforcement. >> reporter: still more news as the hurricane soaked up coverage. national security aide sebastian gorka says he resigned, but a white house official disputes that. gorka's nationalist views made him an ally of ousted strategist steve bannon. and perhaps the biggest test for president trump, managing his first natural disaster. >> this is right up president trump's alley. >> reporter: homeland security adviser tom bossart says the president is ready, tweets show maps on his desk in the oval office and calls made to the aekt affected governors. >> talking directly with the governors. if they have any unmet needs, that's our problem, the president won't tolerate that. >> reporter: last year, candidate trump toured louisiana flood damage and blasted president obama for remaining on

vacation. for presidents, disasters can do political damage. in 2005, george w. bush's misplaced praise of his fema administrator exacerbated criticism of bush's handling of the katrina crisis. president trump made his first visit to fema headquarters just three weeks ago. >> so there kelly giving us a nice summary of events, kind of categorizing what happened yesterday but also expanding on the bigger picture with the trump administration. so fridays do make news. back with me now, attorney raul reyes, maria teresa, and malcolm. yesterday was a really wild day of headlines that came out of the white house but probably the biggest one for a lot of people that might not have been the biggest surprise was about arpaio because of the president having tipped his hand a little bit of saying i think he's going to be okay at the arizona rally. as we look at what the court

order said from 2013 and arpaio was convicted of defying the maricopa county sheriff's office is enjoined from using hispanic ancestry or race as any factor in making law enforcement decisions pertaining to whether a person is authorized to be in the country. so, maria teresa, this is the big point from the president that joe arpaio was guilty of doing his job. explain the not-so-nuance of the fact that he was doing his job improperly. >> this is where a lot of constitutional lawyers are concerned. constituti constitutionally, the president can absolutely pardon anyone he wishes but he cites that the traditional pieces of protocol by ensuring that the department of justice is also involved in those recommendations. president bush and president obama waited two to three years before they pardoned anybody on their way out the door and that's historically how it's done. what's interesting about this

case with joe arpaio is that -- what trump basically did was that he handcuffed a judge who was trying to enforce the fourth amendment of the constitution and basically said, look, if you stand next to me, all of a sudden the constitution matters less. and that is where people are very concerned about. it's the details or the precedent that perhaps he has put together. it also sends the signal that most people wait anywhere from 10 to 15 years to hear a pardon. so you have hundreds of people asking for presidential pardons that are waiting in line for 10 to 15 years. this president decided within seven months to basically throw an ally, someone that was one of the first people to politically endorse him, to say, okay, i'm going to do you a favor and that sends, again, the wrong message that the system is basically favored to the people that are highly connected, that are highly popular, and who are political allies. >> well, we know, to your point, obama didn't pardon anyone in his first two years. president bush, about the same thing. and these were for minor offenses. and david frum made this point

about the fact that it did not involve law enforcement agents who had been convicted of crimes against anybody over whom they had a jurisdiction. raul, how concerning is that, the fact that somebody that is in a position of power, a position of authority and kind of a moral authority to uphold the law in a way that would be buttoned up i's dotted, t's crossed in the court of law is now pardoned in this capacity. >> that's one aspect of this case -- of this that is so troubling, because we are talking about a crime that, aside from the profiling, which goes back a few years, the civil conviction and then the criminal conviction originated in the courts. so, the fact that he would -- that the president would be willing to cast that aside, i mean, that should be very troubling to people because remember, both donald trump and joe arpaio took an oath of office. joe arpaio, during the many years that he was sheriff of

marica maricopa county, he promised to uphold the judicial system. donald trump took an oath to protect all americans and uphold the constitution. it's really hard to square those oaths with what trump is doing today. because when we look at it, they are, in a sense, casting aside the department of justice guidelines, which generally say you have to wait five years after a criminal conviction, file the paperwork, and then basically just wait. in fact, it's common to wait through several administrations before your pardon even comes up for any type of serious review. so, any way you look at it, it's extremely hard, also, to square this with both donald trump and sheriff joe arpaio's very frequent calls and purported defenses of, quote, unquote, law and order. >> meanwhile, malcolm, we get the information of what the president has defined for the trans ban in the military. for not accepting transgendered americans voluntarily, joining our american military services, and also having to do with those that have been afforded the privilege and the right to come

out while they're in military service and do so with honor. how do you think that this is going to play out in the months to come for our military? >> well, you know, the military has a completely different attitude about this than the president does. and take it from me, my family has served in every war since the civil war. and for 100 years, we weren't allowed to serve next to white troops, but now we're fully integrated. we fully integrated gays and women. this is just a logical step, and senator tammy duckworth put it best when she said, when i was bleeding in my black hawk, i didn't care who came for me. >> that was an incredible point that she made and we have certainly members of military distinction that are serving right now that are very worried about what this means for the future of themselves and their families. malcolm, thank you. maria teresa, thank you. raul, i appreciate it. have you all sticking around. coming up, my next guest is going to tell us if there are more harveys to come. this storm, category 4, hitting land and now a tropical storm

with much more expected rain over the next several days. stick around. so that's the idea. what do you think? hate to play devil's advocate but... i kind of feel like it's a game changer. i wouldn't go that far. are you there? he's probably on mute. yeah... gary won't like it. why? because he's gary. (phone ringing) what? keep going! yeah... (laughs) (voice on phone) it's not millennial enough. there are a lot of ways to say no. thank you so much. thank you! so we're doing it. yes! start saying yes to your company's best ideas.

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. so it's just been over the last 90 minutes that we've been covering the breaking news of harvey. that hurricane downgraded to a tropical storm, but it is still ripping through southeast texas. and we really shouldn't let people be fooled by the determination of what it means for harvey to be considered a tropical storm. joining me is the founder and senior meteorologist paul douglas and paul, it's a big deal to still have a cat 4 storm in its consistency under a new title of a tropical storm because of the fact that this is kind of a camper system, that this is going to bring heavy rain and the ground is already saturated so that's going to bring flooding to certain areas, houston being one of the larger cities in the country. do you think that this area is really prepared? they're used to hurricanes

before. what makes harvey so special? >> we don't have anything remotely similar to this in recent history to compare this with, thomas. what we really need is a new scale. the safr simpson scale, is it a category 1, a category 4, is it a tropical storm, that only measures wind speed and the potential for wind damage. it has nothing to say about flooding. nine out of ten deaths in the past 50 years have been storm surge flooding and inland river flooding and this is the real concern. as a meteorologist, i'm gob smacked by the size of the area that's expecting 20 to even 30 inches of rain. we're talking tens of thousands of square miles. it looks like the flooding is going to be severe in san antonio and austin, but it could be old testament-style flooding for houston, possibly the worst since allison back in 2001. i hope the models are wrong, but again, when weather stalls, thomas, bad things happen, and

this storm is just going to sit there for the better part of a week, close enough to the water, close enough to the gulf of mexico, it's still going to be fueled by moisture from the gulf and that moisture is going to unleash itself in the form of torrential rain, wave after wave. we're going to be talking about this for the next one to two weeks and everything john honore said a couple of segments ago, couldn't agree more. houston needs to be pre-deploying national guards folks now, because just getting into houston a few days from now is going to be problematic, but the flooding that is anticipated. >> it was last hour that the governor talked about using -- enacting 1,800 of the texas military right now. the land mass that we're talking about that you're referencing, corpus christi to houston, it is, it's huge. this is a major mass of land that has been blanketed by harvey. but when the system tracked in,

the fact that it was clocked first on the 17th of august, it then dissbegintegrated, right, . it was lowered before ramping back up to get where it is now. why do you think -- what are the natural effects of the weather system or the water temperatures that allowed for this to happen? >> well, again, hurricanes get their fuel, thomas, from warm water. the warmer the water, the greater the potential for strengthening, and it's not just at the surface. you're talking going down 600, 700 meters deep. you need a deep layer of warm water, and water temperatures in the gulf before harvey strengthened were 85, 86 degrees, bath water. that's jet fuel for a hurricane. and so the fact that water temperatures were two, maybe three degrees warmer than average, did that make harvey more intense? probably. the storm would have formed anyway, but the fact that air temperatures and water

temperatures are warmer juiced the storm. it spiked the storm. it made what would have been a severe storm even more severe, and those same impacts will now affect rainfall. 20, 30, 40 inches of rain. the weather service released a statistic that made me do a triple take, thomas. 20 inches of rain over that big an area, corpus christi to houston, that's the equivalent of 15 million olympic-size swimming pools. that's 20 inches of rain over tens of thousands of square miles. and again, houston floods from typical garden variety thunderstorms. so i worry about what's going to happen in america's fourth biggest city. people need to be prepared and prepared for the worst, hope for the best. >> okay. all right, paul, thank you very much. and there are certain news outlets right now that are reporting that they have their first report of a fatality involved with harvey. we do not have this independently verified through nbc news. we're working on that.

but again, in the last hour, the governor said that they did not have information on fatalities and none that they had deemed associated with harvey. so, we'll work on that, get you more information and coming up, the very latest as we turn back to washington, d.c., and the investigation of robert mueller ramping up against the trump campaign. stay tuned. switch to flonase allergy relief. flonase outperforms the #1 non-drowsy allergy pill. when we breathe in allergens, our bodies react by overproducing 6 key inflammatory substances that cause our symptoms. flonase helps block 6. most allergy pills only block one and 6 is greater than 1. with more complete relief you can enjoy every beautiful moment to the fullest. flonase. 6 is greater than 1 changes everything. (vo) living with ammonia odor? not a pretty picture. (vo) luckily, tidy cats lightweight with new ammonia blocker tackles tough odor, even ammonia. so long stankface! (vo) ammonia like that?

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welcome back, everybody. major developments to talk about this weekend. in the investigation into russia's alleged interference in the presidential election. nbc news has learned that special counsel robert mueller has issued grand jury subpoenas to pr executives who worked with former trump campaign manager paul manafort on an international lobbying campaign. now, before running trump's presidential campaign last year, manafort worked for a pro-russian ukrainian political party and the "wall street journal" reports that mueller is also looking into whether former national security adviser michael flynn played a role in republican operatives and their

efforts to get hillary clinton's e-mails from russian hackers. back with me, maria teresa, malcolm, and joining us is msnbc intelligence analyst nave naveed jamali. the mueller investigation and the fact that he's seeking the first grand jury testimony, issuing subpoenas in recent days, seeking testimony from public relations execs who worked on the campaign that was organized by paul manafort, again, this goes back years, but why would these people that had associations with manafort in the past be so relevant in the present? >> well, what mueller is doing is he is drawing a circle around manafort's past career when he did lobbying and pr work for what people called, you know, the dictators lobby in washington, d.c., and they support add lot of nefarious activities, particularly in the ukraine, when he worked for a pro-russian politician. and one of the activities that

he did was to actually help organize protests against a nato exercise there on crimea, which years later was seized by russia. what they're going to determine is, does he have links to the kremlin or russian intelligence and by going to these other people, he's going to put the squeeze on them. mueller's going to know everything about what went on in manafort's postlobbying life. >> maria teresa, the manafort potential witness testimony, the mike flynn potential witness testimony, his attorney having said he has quite a story to tell, how important is getting the right story in term of the truth from these men so important to what mueller does, the integrity of his investigation so the country can move on one way or another. >> i think that is going to be crucial and i think mueller is definitely a professional and is highly respected by both republican and democrats and that was why he was put in this position. and he's meticulous and the team that he's put around him is

incredibly meticulous so he understands what the stakes are and they are high, because this could potentially go straight to the white house where there could be a potential impeachment. so this is something that is critically important, not only for the mueller investigation but also for the institution of the presidency. >> we know, based on our own reporting from yesterday, about mueller and manafort, the fact that, you know, we have the raid by fbi that happened in the early morning hours in alexandria, virginia, by the fbi, but it talks about the fact that not only are they interested in the meeting that happened in june of last year with paul manafort and jared kushner and don junior in the room but the past activities of manafort and saying that these pr executives from six different firms worked on this effort that manafort -- that manafort was working on in ukraine that malcolm had referenced and one of the firms was the podesta

group, which is run by the brother of john podesta. podesta is not affiliated with that group anymore but has been affiliated with that group in the past. i mean, when you start to read into this, and think about that connection, it just makes you think that washington is just so incestuous, it can't be true. >> that's a great point and it's also, i think, ken also mentioned in his reporting, about $17 million, that is what manafort's group actually received. there's a larger question here, thomas, and that is the question of, look, we've got the criminal charges but at the core is what you said, which is this was a russian operation to interfere with our election. so we have the criminal part of this, but the other core part of this is the counterintelligence. when you start talking about whether the podesta group, whether manafort, whether flynn, whomever had contact with the russians, it's clear that the russians initiated something. what concerns me and frankly what keeps me up at night these days and the 235fact that we'ret

talking about the counterintelligence part. that door was open, the russians were able to do something and as of today, i'm not aware of one dollar, one increase in manpower not counterintelligence community. we have not gone in there and said, we have to fix this, stop the russians, make sure whatever assets they use in place are dried up so that's different from the criminal angle of this and i'll close by saying this. even if a conviction is secured against flynn, against manafort, even against donald trump, that does not fix the counterintelligence deficiency. there has got to be a look at that part of the equation, the fact that the russians were able to successfully do something here should trouble both republicans and democrats. that's a question of national security. >> but it's right there in the open. the only thing that was changed in the republican platform during their convention was the fact that america would not arm ukraine against russia and this was something that was kind of standard in the entire outline of the russian platform and that's the only thing that got changed. and then manafort went away, you

know, at the end of the summer but he got that done, maria teresa, and that is something they wanted to see done. >> that's exactly right. but i also think that what he is alluding to is how deeply did they penetrate and cause havoc on our actual electoral systems and if they did, how are we going root them out and that is two different pieces w. un. one is how did we choose not to support ukraine when they needed us but what kind of tampering would they be done that is correct be permanent damage. >> kind of reveals all the layers of this onion about commitment to country or the constitution or religion or anything like that, it's really commitment to the almighty dollar. maria teresa, thanks so much. malcolm, thank you. much more on tropical storm harvey. that's next.

an update now, breaking news with nbc news, confirming at

least one death attributed to harvey. this happening in rockport, texas, local officials say that one man died overnight in a house fire that authorities could not reach in time. officials say there have been about a dozen reported injuries there. we're going to have more on the areas affected after this.

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it was so heartening to shake the hands of these evacuees as they got off of these buses, and i walked around the school that they were being housed in and got to visit with them. and they are what i call typical texans. they were resilient, they were strong, they were strong spirited, but obviously they were in need. there was a part of them that were facing a sense of the shock

comes with displacement. >> so there we have the texas governor greg abbott on the evacuees that he visited in san antonio in the wake of harvey. this storm system now downgraded to a tropical storm, but we've also learned this hour of the first fatality from harvey. that happened in rockport, texas. a man died in an overnight fire which cfirst responders could nt get to in time. i want to check on one of our correspondents. we have one of many canvassing the area. kerry sanders joins me from victoria, texas. that is a little northeast of where rockport is. kerry, we know this is a major water event, but explain what you're seeing specifically there. >> well, you know, you have the culverts and the creeks and the spillways going into the bayous and that's what we're looking at right here. thousands of gallons a minute rushing through here. we've seen more than 16 inches in a very short period of time fall here, and so the system

upriver, as you might say, is working really well. you can see that there is a fair amount of space here in this spillway for the waters to continue to rise. but this is all heading down to what they locally call the gaudalupe river, and as it's heading down towards the river, some of the creeks are already overwhelmed, going over their banks, and of course the gaudalupe river is rushing with all sorts of debris. the real threat here now is while this is doing what it's designed to do, you have a situation where harvey has parked himself over this region, and we're going to see rain here for the next couple of days. it's estimated we might see upwards of 36, 37 inches of rain here which means the system will be tested. in fact, it's likely that it may be actually broken because it's just so much rain, a historic

amount of rain. so if the gaudalupe river actually gets as much rain as is anticipated, it could rise to a near record level of 32 feet above its normal stage. if it crests at 32 feet, we're talking about homes in the area that will be flooded. i did get a chance to speak to one resident that lived nearby there. he had no homeowners or no flood insurance. he had homeowners but flood insurance is the necessary thing here. he said, look, if it happens, it happens. there's nothing i can do. i can't fret about it, i can just hope that for some way gravity does its business and the water gets down before it starts spreading out. but with the amount of rain that's coming here, thomas, i think that, well, at least what the prediction is, we're going to see some flooding events here. it's sad because, you know, this was a really tough hit on victoria. category 1 but trees down, power out, boil water alert in place. all of that only to be followed up by a flood would be just so

painful. >> okay, we're looking at those images. this is a manmade channel to deal with just this type of system to make sure that those waters are taken away swiftly and smoothly. from what you've seen so far, is this the most swollen it's been, or has it been worse? >> reporter: well, you know, as you go further down, i've made it all the way down to the river here, it's over the banks. i don't know whether we have those shots cued up, but yeah, it's working, as i said, upstream. but when you get further down, because this isn't the only one flowing that direction. it's flowing from various parts of the city here in victoria, and where it all converges, that's where it all rises. to look at it here, it looks like everything is doing as it's supposed to. that's great. it's really the next couple days to see whether it holds. >> it really is, this being just day one right now. nbc's kerry sanders reporting for us in victoria. stay safe. that's going to do it for

me. keep locked in here on msnbc. we'll bring you the very latest of storm coverage on harvey. much more after this. ♪ ♪ 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. get 0% apr financing for 63 months on all new 2017 subaru outback models. now through august 31. and when youod sugar is a replace one meal... choices. ...or snack a day with glucerna... ...made with carbsteady... ...to help minimize blood sugar spikes... ...you can really feel it. now with 30% less carbs and sugars. glucerna.

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what's the value of a walk in the woods? the value of capital is to create, not just wealth, but things that matter. morgan stanley hey there, everyone. i'm alex witt here at msnbc headquarters in new york. tropical storm harvey drenching texas with heavy downpours after making landfall last night as a category 4 hurricane. >> they got calls for help. there is no way their officers can be out in this. >> we just got word it's a category 4 hurricane. i hope and pray that people evacuate. >> some buildings have been