country didn't believe me until i was gone and then suddenly they believed it, they said things are great. >> president obama with some jokes there ats that bill and melinda gates event here in new york city. we'll have much more of what the former president had to say in our next hour. my colleague katie tur picking things up. >> you'll want to stick with us for that, craig. it is 1:00 p.m. in mexico city and 2:00 p.m. in san juan where we're following two major natural disasters. in puerto rico residents are hanging on as another hurricane batters the island. mariah made landfall as a category 4 storm. first responders are digging through broken buildings trying to find survivors of yesterday's major earthquake. first to hurricane maria, she slammed puerto rico head on. the strongest storm to hit the island in 89 years. >> all eyes on puerto rico, they

are not out of the woods, they have a full day of battering damaging and possibly devastating storm surge, wind and rain. >> it's a nightmare scenario. >> don't forget us. just don't forget us. >> we call this the blackout period, there's horrific destruction taking place. >> there are already trees that have come down right down here and we're seeing debris flying through this area. >> we have seen parts of roofs being blown off and debris on the street and rising water and there's no telling the extent of this damage. >> we have a big one going right now, i've never seen winds like this in puerto rico. >> in mexico, they are december separate for signs of life in the rubble of a 7.1 magnitude earthquake. >> crews are listening for breathing, for tapping, for yelling, for anything that would

help locate survivors. as they search through pancaked buildings. a lot of of the focus right now is at a collapsed school. 21 children are dead but dozens of others are missing. and that means they could still be alive. the death toll though across mexico stands at 225. it is expected to climb. >> we've got a team of reporters on the ground in both countries and here in our weather center. let's start with ron mott who joins me by phone. i know you've been at the school for much of the day. they are looking for children or teachers. are there any hopeful signs? >> my team, we've spent most of our morning and early afternoon here in the colonial neighborhood of mexico city, the largely centered around a collapsed 7-story apartment building. we have another team over at the school and there's a lot of concern about what is taking place there and at the moment, i'm outside of a hospital where

there are daughtoctors and nurs. probably within a mile or so of at least one or two building collapses where there are active search and rescue missions under way on the walk and drive over here we noticed there were a number of people in cafes and other shops watching live television coverage of these rescue efforts from various neighborhoods. more than throw dozee dozen bui said to have suffered either a partial collapse. a complete collapse of a residential apartment building yesterday at this hospital they were triaging and had a lot of walk-up -- walking wounded and they were triaging folks outside. i don't see that same set up here but there are a lot of doctors at the ready, at the driveway of this hospital, waiting in case there are folks who are discovered still alive in the rubble of all of these buildings around town to come in for first aid treatment and

medical trauma treatment at this hospital. we have a team inside checking with the hospital administration to see how much access we can get in the hospital. i can tell you, one of the things that is clearly present here there are a lot of young people, college aged students who are literally going block by block with shovels in hand and gloves and dust masks looking to do what they can to help. we've talked to a number of them and they said basically they are not going to wait around for the government, that they are going to come out and help their fellow neighbor suffering and hurting. we just passed a large group in a truck heading to various parts of this particular neighborhood but there are a lot of young people and frustration here that we've heard ut just in the few hours on the ground this morning about the government response to this. this was a monster earthquake, 7.1 and cruelly it occurred on a day they were -- a lot of folks around town were practicing earthquake response in various office buildings because it was

32 years ago they had a massive 8.0 that killed nearly 10,000 people and so it was just cruel coincidence that they got another major rattler on that date. >> you're talking about earthquake response and how they were preparing for this because this was on the anniversary of the 1985 quake. building structures, building codes, i know mexico is build on an ancient link bed, there's a lot of sand that can lick qui fi and the building codes there changed dramatically after that. they had to be fortified. in mexico city, were the buildings brought up to date? were they fortified after that last quake and are we seeing evidence that obviously or seems at least that they were not done so adequately. >> i mean, obviously after that quake in 85, they strengthen the building codes there and there's been a lot of new construction.

this is a massive city, it goes on and on and on. there are a lot of old construction here buildings that go back 60, 70, 100 years and thaef been not necessarily retrofitted and as we've driven around, you can see spore add ing damage here and there. the school that collapsed was an older structure. looking at that collapsed site there, you can clearly tell that was something that was probably pre-dates 1985. and the one thing to keep in mind with an earthquake versus hurricane, there's no real advance warning. it comes out of nowhere and we spoke to a number of people yesterday and they were shocked gone through this and get used to living with earthquakes in this part of the world but you never get used to the sensation about when it will stop shaking. so yesterday was one of those -- the type of rattlers where it was very violent and lateral and horizontal -- vertical i should say up and down motion with the

earth and went on for uncome forltable period of time. intact office towers did pretty well. it's the older construction that didn't fare as well in the 40 or so collapses. >> as somebody who grew up in southern california, you learn to accept earthquakes. you never totally get used to feeling them, especially ones as powerful as the one we saw here and excuse me a moment ago i said 1992, i meant 1994 for the earth ridge quake in california. thank you very much. joining us by phone as well from mexico city is freelance journalist an lush ya. we were talking a moment ago with ron about the frustration with the response from the government. 44 buildings across mexico city collapsed alone. they have a number of soldiers out there trying to help but this is pretty widespread damage and anybody who feels like they have the ability to do so go out

and search through the rubble. what have you been hearing and seeing on the ground today? >> i'm right now on the ground right in front of a garment factory that collapsed in front of the city. and they are still rescuing people during the building and thousands of people here, most are students, just ordinary citizens that people arriving they have heavy machinery and they are all helping out. people that are on top of the building right now are more professionals, people that have experience. you can see there really is a huge outpouring of support of residents here, bringing food and water and truck as well, donating traditional mexican breakfast. everybody helping as much as they can. there's a lot of chaos and the rescuers can't hear if there are people within. they all raise up fists and everyone raises up their arms and everyone is silence so they

can hear. they were able to pull out one person alive from the building where i'm at and have no idea how many people are still alive in that building but still trying to pull people out. >> and as the hours go on, i guess the hope for survivors becomes -- starts to diminish. the mexican government, what are you hearing from them with how they are going to be helping people either that were affected by this earthquake or those who might have lost everything? >> well, i mean, right here there are members of the army on the ground and police. they are very -- they will not answer questions or let me through. but i do know they are doing the best they can. i know last night when power was out in the city and buildings fallen down, there was no light, mexico city did not have power operating for light to get people out of buildings which

made it more difficult in those places. i know that i myself just back from the earthquake zone and the government response there was embarrassing and spoke to numerous and no food, no water and children playing amongst the rubble and not received three days any government help. hopefully this situation is better here. >> i know you can't predict an earthquake, nobody knows when they are coming but you live in a zone where earthquakes happen. this was the anniversary of the 1985 quake. they were doing earthquake drills earlier that day. how much of the focus is going to be on the government of mexico, mexico city more specifically about how they were prepared for something that frankly is going to be inevitable in that part of the world? >> i mean, i think unfortunately there's a very little government accountable, there's the government one of the -- that mexico has had in many decades

and it still doesn't matter because as much pressure people put on the government doesn't respond. for emergency responses, i do not have much faith that things will change. one investigator report came out that there were thousands of earthquakes alarms bought and they were actually in warehouses and never installed in the areas, including in mexico city and found on the black market being sold at five times the price of what the government acquired them for. that just explains here in mexico there is really ram pant corruption and we're entering election year, where politicians wants to look good. i will say as a reporter the last year in mexico many years covering the disaster, i do not have much hope that anything will change nor the government will be better prepared for the next earthquake but perhaps the people will be. >> thank you very much for joining us. just to recap, 225 dead from the earthquake right now.

94 in mexico city alone. they do expect that number to rise. and that does include 22 children from a school. there are a number of others in the school that are missing, believed to maybe still be trapped and rescue efforts are ongoing there to try and find any survivors. from one natural disaster to yet another, in puerto rico, maria delivered plenty of devastation since making landfall early this morning. roofs have been ripped off and roads are flooding. the mayor of san juan confirms the city is completely without power. let's get the latest from nbc's gabe gutierrez in san juan. >> the worst of the wind appears to have been passed by san juan but that does not mean the threat is over. still major flooding concerns for this capital city, san juan's mayor says half of the city is flooded, that dire assessment coming after hurricane maria slammed into puerto rico this morning as a monster category 5 storm. behind me you can see palm trees

still swaying but it was several hours ago we saw the worst of it here in san juan. we hunkered down inside this hotel, this concrete structure and this wall, preventing us from getting the worst of the winds, we were several floors up several hours ago and started to take on water and decided to go to saver ground. this has potentially devastating impact here in puerto rico. more than 10,000 people on this island went to emergency shelters although the government says that number he hopes is much higher. this is an island with 3.5 million american citizens and the question is how many of those heeded the dire warnings to evacuate, especially those in woo wooden structures that are vulnerable in flood prone areas. one official said you should evacuate or die. another huge concern here is this power grid, already damaged by hurricane irma which only grazed this island but still

knock out power to 3/4 of it, more than 60,000 were still without power heading into hurricane maria and now virtually the entire island is without power. so again, many officials here say this is going to be absolutely devastating. the damage assessment will begin this afternoon and we'll take quite a while. research and rescue teams are preparing to head out for water rescues necessary, but some of those including fema are trapped inside their own hotels and having to cut their way through debris in order to get out and help those that are stranded. so again, this is an ongoing situation here, some areas are expected to be without power for as much as four to six months. >> gabe gutierrez in puerto rico. thank you. joining us on the phone is puerto rico secretary of state lu luis rivera marin, we're getting

reports that all of puerto rico is right now without power. can you confirm that? >> yes, our power grid was heavily hit and compromised because of irma and certainly the devastation, the high winds, the lines had the effect power being down. our focus now is make sure our lights are probably taken care of and we were -- were hesitant to leave their homes and pets behind to seek shelter. fortunately in the more than 10,000 people did seek shelter earlier yesterday. and we had many, many thousands seeking shelter at the end of

the day. we are still under tropical storm force winds in san juan and hurricane force winds in the western side of the island as you know. it made landfall in the eastern side as a category 5, 165 miles per hour hurricane. and it just crossed the island across and came out on the west side and the whole island was under hurricane force winds, the destruction was massive. i spoke with the north coast, the city who lost its roof as well as in a island municipality in the east side of puerto rico. certainly catan na, 80% of homes were flattened, destroyed.

these are very vulnerable structures, wood construction with continue roofs and refugees are being well taken care of. certainly power is an issue but at this point in time, what we're making sure, we as soon as possible get our search and rescue teams to take care of our people. >> the eye of the storm has passed over the island. when you look at radar, it looks like it was just -- it was shot through the belly of puerto rico. good luck, we'll check in again i'm sure as the storm moves on to find out what sort of damage you sustained and how the recovery process is going to even begin especially knowing that the entire island is without power now. secretary, thank you very much for joining us. and next, the latest republican effort to repeal and replace obamacare faces new and high

profile criticism. one of those critics is comedian jimmy kimmel who let loose on one of the bill sponsors, senator bill cassidy. >> most of the congress people who voted this bill probably won't even read it and they want us to do the same thing, treat it like an i tune service agreement. this guy, bill cassidy, just lyled right to my face. >> another critic of that plan is colorado governor john hickenlooper, one of several governors who signed a letter against it and he joins me right after a quick break. i work overtime when i can get it.

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when i see people trying to undo the progress for the 50th or 60th time with bills that would raise cost or reduce coverage or roll back protections for older americans or people with preexisting conditions, the cancer survivor, the expecting mom or the child with autism, or asthma, coverage once again would almost unattainable. it is aggravating. >> former president barack obama was in new york city a short time ago and blasted efforts by republicans to repeal and replace his signature legislation, the affordable care act. last night late night host jimmy kimmel made an impassioned play against bill cassidy and the latest effort to kill obamacare. >> a few months ago after my son had open heart surgery, which

was something i spoke about on the air, a politician named bill cassidy from louisiana was on my show and he wasn't very honest. he said he would only support a health care bill that made sure a child like mine would get the health coverage he needs no matter how much money his parents make. this bill he came up with is worse than the one that thank god republicans like susan colins and lisa mur could ymur you xi torpedoed. he lied to my face. >> get regular checkups and maternity care, et cetera, all of those things that people who have health care get and need? >> yeah. >> so yep is washington for no, i guess? >> just hours ago both senators cassidy and graham responded to jimmy kimmel in an interview with my colleague kasie hunt.

>> he called you a liar last night. >> it was a personal attack. i can't help that. if you're in texas or in maine or virginia or missouri, there will be resources you do not have to provide you coverage and we have protections for existing conditions. >> something about jimmy kimmel is funny, easy think a very decent fellow, he had a sick child and nothing is more emotional than a sick child. so here's what i wished he would have done. i wished he would have called senator cassidy to ask him what i'm reading true because he heard some liberal talking points that are absolute garbage. he bought it hook, line and sinker and didn't give him the courtesy of having his side of the story. >> nbc's garrett haake is live on capitol hill. he was talking to senator barosso and asked him one time after another, can you guarantee that this bill, the graha graham/cassidy bill will not make it so preexisting conditions, premiums will not

skyrocket and therefore make them unaffordable? that's something that i either he couldn't answer or refused to answer because he kept going back to obamacare. this legislation seven days ago seemed like a long shot because of concerns like those, what changed in the last week? >> well, to your conversation with senator barosso, he can't answer that question and part of the confusion on the issue is that nobody can. what this bill does, it essentially let's all 50 states or requires all 50 states to come up with their own plans and every state will do that differently. it leaves out for people to say of course in my state, we might not change the rules that much but some other state they would. there's something for everybody on the talking point side. >> he couldn't even say that for his state, wyoming. >> because he's not going to write the rules for wyoming. that's the split between the state and federal government. nobody knows what this will look like in their states four or five years out. as to what changed, these are

deadline oriented people. all of a sudden we have a deadline, a week from friday where they will not try anything to reform or repeal obamacare without 60 votes. they know they are not going to get there. there's a fire under a lot of these republicans running on this promise for so long to try to get something, anything done in that next week and a half. i think that has created the deadline has created a push and the fact that few really only one republican senator has come out and said i'm note voting for this, rand paul, has given them hope that maybe there is a way to convince the other 50 some odd republican senators they can get behind this and maybe actually pass something. >> a few weeks ago, maybe months at this point, time bleeds into itself every day here, senator mccain was talking about going back to regular order, holding hearings. it's unclear where he is on this bill, whether or not he's a no or yes. but try to explain to me, garrett, whags the distaste for

going back to regular order, for trying to get something like health care done in a bipartisan fashion? it seems to me that that would alleviate some of the risk for 2018, for 2020 and behoof both sides to find something they can agree on. >> sure, the opposition to that it takes a long time. the whole point of regular order -- >> takes a long time to get things right. >> fast food is unhealthy for a reason. >> well, i can't argue with you about that. it takes a long time to get these things done and republicans to have full control in washington have an ambitious agenda and didn't plan to take eight or nine months on obamacare repeal. there are already behind schedule. in terms of doing something bipartisan. folks feel that's not what they promised or ran on, these republican senators, many of them almost all of them essentially have been saying we're going to repeal obamacare. doctor democrats have said we'll

work with you on changing but that repeal word is a nonstarter. the idea that there's going to be a bipartisan deal that makes both of those sides happy has not been the case on this issue of health care at all. so interesting because donald trump ran on getting deals done in congress. garrett haake, thank you so much. >> senator republicans new plan to undo obama's signature health bill was dealt a blow when a bipartisan group of governors voiced opposition. colorado governor john hickenlooper was one of them and joins me now. governor, thank you so much. you are pushing for a bipartisan solution but that one stalled, do you have confidence that there is some middle ground that can be reached between these two parties? >> without question. i think as senator alexander or

senator murray's committee was clearly making progress, five governors who testified a couple of weeks ago, three republicans and two democrats and the questions from both republicans and democrats to the governors were piercing. they were focused but not critical. everyone there trying to understand stability to the private market, to really focusing on what kind of reinsurance fund would really work so we don't have a small number of -- tilting cost of insurance for everyone way up. those solutions seem to have pretty bipartisan support. when senator mccain talked about coming back to regular order, what a great basic idea, right? we all work together. we all care about controlling costs and don't want to roll back coverage. yet cassidy -- the graham/cassidy bill does seem to be rolling back coverage and has

a high probability it's going to roll back coverage and shift costs to the states. >> what are you most concerned though about this specific bill? why are you a definite know on this? >> certainly from the point of view of colorado, it's $800 million a year, maybe a billion a year of additional cost for the status quo, but on a larger scale, it's almost like groundhog day, going back to all of the republicans to focus on trying to get one big without any bipartisan support done so they can check, we've got a political victory. >> do you think this is more about a political victory than it is about fixing health care? >> yeah, i think that it's going to take a little more time and how do we cut costs so we really can make sure we cover more people in every state? how do we get to more transparency and begin to put in waivers and systems by which we make sure we're not paying for

volume but paying for quality. that is something john kasich and i have been talking about for months and months and months. >> governor, there's a deadline, do you believe someone like bernie sanders who says i want a single payer system helped galvanize republicans to get something done so they would never see something, at least not in the near future like what bernie sanders was doing? >> no, i don't -- i think they've been looking and certainly senator cassidy and senator graham have been talking about this for a number of months. maybe that was a little stimulus, but i think their focus has been to get a complete repeal and then replace it with something, we'll work out details later, that's not the way good government works. we should all agree we want to strengthen the health care system in america. that's what we're talking about here. >> governor, last question, shouldn't be too much of a curveball for you, did you end

up going to see fish at -- >> i did not get there. >> i'm not surprised. my schedule is always a little convolut convoluted. >> bummer, you missed out. thank you very much for joining us, colorado governor john hickenlooper, appreciate it. >> and it's just an hour -- after the half hour here on msnbc, we're continuing to follow two major disasters unfolding in both mexico and puerto rico. searching through the ruins of a mexico city school that partially collapsed after yesterday's earthquake. authorities have recovered 25 bodies, most of them are children. mexican officials say 225 people were killed in the deadliest earthquake to strike the country since 1985. also on the anniversary of that earthquake. and the white house says president trump had a lengthy call with mexican president pena

nieto and hurricane maria is still devastating puerto rico. during a news conference it was said that 100% of the island is without power and that quote, we will find our island destroyed. san juan's mayor told nbc news that half of the city is flooded and the island's governor says he asked president trump to declare it a disaster zone. san juan's mayor talked with nshs news about what people will find if anything once the storm is over. >> they are not going to find a home. everything will be lost and it will take a while for us to get to those who need it the most. i'm 54 years old, never seen devastation like this one. it's -- the human spirit is going to have to rise up real high and i'm sure we have the

strength to do it but we have to find it within ourselves. >> let's go to nbc meteorologist dylan dreyer. are they going to be experiencing much more intense winds and for how long? >> katy, the storm is weakening because it moved over land but it is still a major hurricane at this time and the winds will continue for the next several hours. you can see the center of the storm after it made landfall. we might see additional strengthening but at this point the damage has been done in puerto rico as it passed the eye of the storm just to the southwest of san juan, putting san juan on dirty side of the storm. the side where you see the strongest winds. right now winds are at 115 miles per hour, moving northwest at 12 miles per hour and we do still have the potential of seeing very gusty winds, perhaps up to 125 miles per hour which is caused significant damage. some of the highest reports we've gotten so far, northwestern puerto rico where

we've seen a report of 108-mile-per-hour wind gusts, that storm surge up to 6 to 9 feet for most of the island, including san juan, 4 to 6 feet on the northwest side of the island. additional rainfall could be as much as 3 to 5 inches in and around san juan. a lot is falling in the mountains, source regions for many of the rivers that travel down into the populated city. so that could create even more flooding as the storm continues to rain itself out as it moves through puerto rico. we still have hurricane warnings there. we have hurricane warnings for part of the dominican and also up into the turkz and caen tur well, most likely going to strengthen back into a category 4 hurricane as it passes northeast of the dominican republic but winds in this area should only be 45 to 75 miles per hour. we could see in turks and caicos 100 to 125-mile-per-hour winds then it's going to continue out into the water after that

there's still a lot of question marks on exactly what's going to happen. the majority of the models keep it on this path but watch what happens as we go into tuesday. some models take it into the mid-atlantic or possibly the northeast although the majority of the models do want to keep it out over the water and turn it away like jose did. that part of the forecast we still need to iron out the details. >> thank you very much. >> i'm joined by phone by brett adair in san juan, a storm chaser and meteorologist who lives storm media. they obviously missed irma, a category 4 storm down there in puerto rico when it hit the island. how does it compare to the other storms that you've experienced? >> well, the most clear comparison that i can make and this last three to four weeks has been like the gauntlet of hurricanes impacting the u.s. territories, i compare this one closer to hurricane harvey that

hit south of houston, texas. we're in san juan, standing on ashford avenue taking a look at the devastation here out front. some of the lower levels of multistory buildings have been blown out. there's a lot of glass buildings and the winds, once they started coming in, they blew the glass out and pretty much gutted the bottom levels so you got a lot of rubble laying around and trees and power lines are damaged and pretty much all of the roads are basically impassable. >> you're a meteorologist, i hope you can answer this question. we're seeing a higher frequency it seems of major storms and part of that is the storms are getting more powerful in a shorter amount of time going from a category one to a category 3 or 4 in just about 24 hours. have you experienced the pace of that before? >> this is absolutely something that we have not dealt with in a long time. the last time we've seen storms

in the atlantic basin rapidly intensify like this and do such destruction was 2004 and 2005, obviously the united states remembers katrina, rita and wilma and those storms. and i think we're going through a cycle and we just happen to hit part of that this year. >> brett adair, meteorologist and storm chaser with live storm media. thank you so much for joining us by phone. >> thank you. >> up next, back to the breaking news in mexico, the death toll from yesterday's earthquake is still rising, the latest on the search for survivors right after the break. david. what's going on? oh hey! ♪ that's it? yeah. ♪ everybody two seconds! ♪ "dear sebastian, after careful consideration of your application, it is with great pleasure that we offer our congratulations on your acceptance..." through the tuition assistance program, every day mcdonald's helps more people go to college.

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with less pain, i can do more with my family. talk to your doctor today. see if lyrica can help. crews are using their bare hands to try to find survivors in mexico. we're watching those rescue efforts and they are glimmers of hope in what is otherwise a dark day there. the death toll is still climbing by the hour. joining me now by phone from mexico city is elias lopez, you were out yesterday covering the story but were caught up in people running from a gas leak and hurt your shoulder. your reporters are on the ground

today, what are the stories that they are relaying to you? >> thank you for having me the stories are trying to rescue people out of the rubble in collapsed buildings. we know the window of time is closing but there's still witnessing miraculous rescues, one of our reporters in the neighborhood of mexico city and just witnessed a rescue of a man who was expected to be the last survivor for that building, seven story building. it was a very emotional moment and the efforts continue. >> i was asking somebody else a little earlier about this because i grew up in california and we had a pretty big earthquake there in 1994. the buildings after that were retrofitted and there hasn't been a major earthquake since then so they haven't been tested but the retrofitting process in

mexico city, especially since it's built on sand, how seriously was that taken after 1985 and why aren't schools, why are places where kids are retrofitted? >> look, that's pretty much the question. 1985 was a huge wake-up call for mexico and implemented on paper, to see the question you ask and where they take it seriously. we know there are many older buildings that predate '85 earthquake from the 20s and those seem to be standing, now we're seeing buildings are collapsing after the earthquake. so evidently their infrastructure was lacking. i think we're going to see that -- we're going to learn about the school that collapsed was a private school and if they

are held to standards what they should be. yeah, that's already been clearer and clearer. >> 25 people taken out of that school, 22 of whom were children. i was talking to somebody who experienced the 1985 quake down there and said the same thing happened, a school collapsed like this. you would think there would be precautions taken for the next time, serious precautions. the death toll stands at 225, they do say it could rise. any idea of how many people are missing and what they anticipate the number might look like when all is said and done? >> mexico city there's still 50 or 60 people counted and believed to be buried under the rubble and south of the city, there was also widespread destruction and efforts continue to find survivors and also a lot of people here buried there. i think we've seen a wonderful

response by civilian society. asking tough questions of course society in general needs to ask and see preparedness and people taking action immediately, getting supplies and organizing, but i think, yeah, asking questions. the fear is that -- >> elias lopez of the new york times in espanol, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> the latest from the u.n. general assembly. today's focus has turned to iran and nuclear deal brokered by president obama. now president trump is signaling he may shred it and iran's president pointing the finger back appearing to call trump a rogue newcomer. first, tom price is taking a little heat after politico found he took five private flights

last week for events in maine, new hampshire and pennsylvania. the cost? tens of thousands of dollars but it's still unclear who picked up the tab. the secretary who's a vocal credit of federal spending declined to comment on politico's story but the health and human services department tells nbc news that price only takes private flights when commercial flights can't meet the demand of the schedule. they always work to do what's moer effective and efficient but the timing of this couldn't be worse. not only has price been under fire for stock trades he made as a congressman but now the second member of donald trump's cabinet to get caught up in controversy over the same such private flights. just last week treasury secretary steve m nunuchin was the highlights for requesting a plane for his european honeymoon. a request he later rescinded.

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on the president's third day at the u.n. general assembly, tensions with iran seemed to take center stage. in yesterday the speech he threatened to pull out of the iran deal. today trump announced he's made a decision. he's just not ready to share it yet. >> have you already made up your mind? >> mr. president, have you decided? >> you have decided? >> when will we know? >> thank you. >> will you remain -- [ inaudible ]. >> have you decided to stay or to leave? >> i have decided.

>> okay. >> can you tell us what your decision is? >> i'll let you know. >> and over at the u.n., the irani president rouhani responded. >> i declare the country of iran will not be the first to deny the agreement but will respond decisively and resolutely to its violation by any party. it will be a great pity if this agreement were to be destroyed by rogue newcomers to the world of politics. >> and a former ambassador to syria, iraq, afghanistan, and lebanon, now at princeton university. rouhani called the speech

ignorant, absurd, hateful. and ratcheting up of tensions between iran and the united states contextualize that for us. what does it mean? >> katy it means nothing good. we've been through these exchanges before, have a long history in iran. when iranians hear the president speak in this fashion they go back to 1953 when the cia and britain's mi-6 basically overthrew an elected irani government. this kind of rhetoric i think will take us into a war, but it is going to harden positions throughout iran on issues such as their ballistic missile program. so i don't know what the intent was here. it is going to make any kind of compromise on the part of the iranians somewhere near impossible. >> part of the iranian deal was intended to change the opinion

of iran of america. somewhere "death to america" is said on the streets. it's not even a possible thing to do with an international deal like this, to cut back on nuclear capabilities? does that make sense? or does president trump have more of a point here? >> well, look -- the iran agreement is an arms control agreement. a reasonably good one, i think. but it is not a treaty in friendship and some in the obama administration tried to pretend it was. that it would bring about a fundamental change in iranian political behavior. well, it won't. and it hasn't. they pursued their other agenda in iraq, in syria, in yemen. completely against our

interests. while, as far as we can tell, they've respected the agreement itself. so, you know, we've had this kind of thing before. in the reagan administration. the reagan administration concluded some pretty important arms agreements with the soviets that did not stop reagan from labeling them the evil empire. we should have taken a page from that book. and the other thing, katkaty, we got to remember. this agreement is not iran's plan a. it's plan b. plan a. was to have the negotiations fail and the u.s. blamed for it. so what president trump is doing is, as he calls into question whether or not we're going to remain committed, is gishing them a second chance to get their plan a., because if we pull out of this, then the whole sanctions regime is going to collapse. >> iran is focused today, yesterday north korea -- but today, madeleine albright responded to donald trump

calling kim jong-un rocket man. take a listen. >> i think we all want to make sure that america is strong, but i think his speech weakened america, and i think it's something that is going to make it very hard for us to carry on a lot of diplomatic work that we have to. >> the threats delivered towards north korea came across, i think, to many, the international community, as well as in the united states, as being inappropriate, and over the top for an american president, and more importantly, counterproductive. >> i don't think it's ideal or appropriate for the president of the united states to stoop to the same level as a 30-year-old murderous dictator in north korea. >> madeleine albright and susan rice there. critics of them would say they tried appeasement, essentially appeasement, or a ratcheting down of tensions between north korea. that didn't work. they just built more missiles. they now have much, better capabilities. nuclear capabilities. maybe donald trump needs to take a different tactic. is that the right way to look at that?

>> well, listening to secretary albright just then to refer to the north korean leader as a murderous 30-year-old, that's right up there with rocket man. >> hmm. >> so -- look. what the president said in substance was not that much different than we've heard defense secretary mattis say. the north korean -- neither secretary mattis nor president trump said exactly where the limits are, which is important, to state aim big gmbiguity here. we have a rogue state. it is the north koreans. what is the impact of our policy positions in the way the president frames them? not on north korea. but on china. if this is going to get to a

less worse place, it is going to take a common effort by the united states and china. so that's the filter i would pass this through and i imagine that the chinese if they look at all this, wonder if they're dealing with not one -- dangerous leader but two. >> former ambassador ryan crocker. ambassador, thank you very much for joining us. >> thank you. and one more thing before we go. the debate about health care is raging once again and i came across this on my instagram this morning. let me introduce you to a young man a fighter, who is frankly the reason i'm sitting here talking to you today. back in 2015, right before i was assigned to cover the trump campaign i was just visiting new york city. a foreign correspondent living in london at the time, but came back to fulfill a make a wish from aaron.

i got to spend time with him and his family. you can see, bound to a wheelchair but larger than life. to this day stops at nothing to try and make a difference. he is a daily reminder of resilience. and with the fate of obamacare and medicaid in the air, aaron and his remarkable parents who live in pennsylvania posted this plea on instagram. and i thought you should see it. >> we're the family from lancaster county, pennsylvania. what medicaid means to us, it provides nursing services for aaron both while he sleeps and when he goes to school. it provides access to quality medical care to help keep him healthy and equipment and supplies so we can take care of him in a home setting. we're asking everyone's a port sow oppose any legislation that cuts funds to medicaid and asking for everyone to call on their legislatures tofor a bipartisan position to the

health care crisis. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> that will wrap things up from me this hour. ali velshi picks thin up. aaron and his family are remarkable. >> yeah. appreciate you doing that. >> by the way, people don't necessarily know. we got a chance to toast you last night. congrats on the release of your book as the campaign trail. a great read implts didn't get a toast, because you drank all the alcohol. >> well, somebody had to. have a good rest of your afternoon, katy. good thing we weren't on tv when we toasted. and two catastrophic disasters we're following. hurricane maria letting up after pounding that islands after hours and hours of strong winds at times measuring 155 miles per hour. our first look at the damage and destruction left behind by this massive storm. the strongest to hit there in 89 years and had left the entire island of puerto rico without pow perp about 2,100 mile ace way,