but only having this conversation not because administration stepped forward but reporters were doing excellent work and deserve credit. >> great to you have. come by anytime. that's it for this evening. "the rachel maddow show" starts now. hi rachel. >> thanks chris. city in ukraine called kharkiv. karr kif. it's eastern ukraine, close to the russian border and march of this year 20,000 people had to be evacuated out of there because arms depot used by ukrainian army caught fire. that's what that looks like. fire is never good but in place storing thousands of tons of artillery shells is really not good. moved 20,000 people out of the way for obvious reasons and that

kept exploding and burning for days. kept blowing off artillery shells every direction. happened in march. fire stopped and got back into town found pieces of missiles, artillery shells and tank rounds all over the town. ukrainian government said the fire didn't start by accident. that's nearby where russian and russian-supported troops have been pushing at the border. ukrainians say they think it blew up because somebody flew a drone over the depot and dropped incendiary device into it, set off the fire and rounds going. days-long set of explosions. in march. earlier this month it happened again in city right on the front lines of that russian land grab

in ukraine. in eastern ukraine, the donetsk region. authorities say it was also arson, sabotage, somebody set it on fire. today it's happened again. footage from this one, reuters, the camera is well back from the ammunition depot. you can see the individual spiraling, zigzagging flashes of light. extrude up tracer fire or drunk fireflies. see them going off one by one. something is going on there. but ultimately get what is a massive blast because this is a depot. there it goes. reportedly holds about 20,000 -- 200,000 tons of ammunition. rocket artillery, tank shells,

missiles. this started going off last night. various explosions went off all day long today. including these gigantic mushroom clouds you saw. ukrainian authorities say this too may have been started by sabotage, a drone flown over the ammunition depot and dropped something into it to set it off. about 30,000 people evacuated from immediate area where this happened today in ukraine. unnerving that this has happened a third time. i'm sure very upsetting for the ukrainian army to be losing ammunition this way but this is particularly unnerving. happened really far from the front lines and fighting. basic map of ukraine. fighting is eastern part. kiev is the capital city. this is southwest of kiev.

in the heartland of ukraine way out of the way. but ukrainian government is saying today that russian were able to get them even there. russia seized a big part of ukraine. crimea in 2014. fighting in other parts of eastern ukraine ever since. "daily beast" has good reminder how russia fights using information warfare alongside military tactics like blowing up depots and invading neighboring territory. as facebook is struggling to answer questions in this country how its platform was used in election last year by russians and why not been more helpful in figuring this out. daily booeft reports that facebook has been in this space before with the russians.

at the same time that russian troops were invading crimea, operators were using surprisingly effective technique on facebook to clear ukrainian voices off oessocial media so t wouldn't have competition for the media space. find ukrainian activists, arguing in favor of ukraine in the conflict and go to online facebook posts be those people and click report on those posts. whatever that person's argument was, whatever the picture or thing was that person was sharing, these russian operators would swarm it and report it over and over again to facebook as porn. or they'd report it as inappropriate nudity or something you can flag to facebook as reason a post shb taken down. online equivalent of swatting. where you call in the s.w.a.t.

team, call the police about neighbor, say a terrible crime is being committed and nothing is going on and police respond and neighbor has to deal with annoying, expensive and potentially dangerous police response. its one thing as nuisance, a one-off effort to harass as prank but systematic state-sponsored tactic of warfare, you get good at it and do it in bulk. russia/ukraine stuff in 2013, blowing the whistle hundreds of times, thousands of times for each post and activist and it worked. became such a point of concern that president of ukraine raised the issue with facebook. please consider creating office in ukraine to deal with this

special problem that russian operatives were taking ukrainian voices off social media. facebook laughed that off. but "daily beast" interviewed the activists who were shut up by facebook because russian operatives targeted them to be shut up. around the time that russian troops were literally invading ukraine and taking over the country, facebook was helping russian government shut down opposition voices from the country they were invading. one of the activities said i posted a picture of my city with a picture of a rainbow over it and the picture said everything will be okay. that's what he posted. russian operatives swarmed that and reported it over and over and over again as porn. and that activist was blocked from facebook for a month while russia invaded his country. facebook ceo mark zuckerberg put

out a new statement tonight. expressing regret for having made dismissive comments about the power of online misinformation and potentially shaping the outcome of the presidential election last year. but the more we learn about what russia did in our election last year, clear it becomes that russian intelligence and military don't see facebook and information warfare as a side show or lark, not experimental thing they're dabbling in for fun or to harass people, it's really central to their real war efforts and overall geopolitical strategy on this planet. as russia was literally seizing territory from neighboring country in last few years, one of the only modern industrialized nations in generation to have invaded a neighboring country and taken over part of its territory, russia simultaneously took to the information space to shut

down activists from that country. also been all over the globe promoting secession moments and breakaway independence movements in all sorts of countries. in other words, they've been looking to get bigger busy making sure everybody else gets smaller. taking over neighboring country's territory to make russia a larger country while promoting in online space movements to break apart competitors and rivals in global space. in iraq russia one of the other noegs nations on earth that supported the kurdish referendum where the kurds voted to breck off iraq and become own nation. u.s. government very opposed to that. fighting for a decade or more in iraq to keep it together as sij nation and government. russia is all for blowing it apart.

supported that referendum as it donald trump's campaign manager paul manafort. latest consulting job since warned by prosecutors he's about to be indicted, advising about the breakup iraq referendum. going to be another in spain, catalan region is voting if they want to break off from spain. russia is supporting that one too. what is the russian interest in kat lonia? i don't know but it is part of a theme. and we've talked about this on the show in the past. russia for years in this country has actively promoted the secession of texas, the quirky texas secessionist movement to the point of inviting texas secessionists to russia. paying their way to help them

promote the independent republic of texasstan or whatever. in the immediate wake of president trump's victory in the election, new flurry of enthusiasm in efforts to have california secede from the united states. until one of the best funded, slickest california secession outfits last year turned out to have its headquarters in russia. literal, government-funded free office in moscow. and leader of the movement, applying to get it on the ballot in california and everything, was living in siberia while running that movement. russia also famously supported secession within the european union. major supporter of the u.k. independence party which went to the brexit vote. and massive financial supporter of the national front in france

which among other things promised to break france out of the european union along the same lines as brexit. if you follow them individually looks complicated, russia volved in one way or another. all over the world sometimes seem left wing or right wing or just strangely interested. in the u.k., france, spain, middle east and united states and disparate places. looks complicated as individual stories but step back and simple as can be. russia is busy making itself as big as possible, including taking over parts of neighboring countries while simultaneously supporting movements all over the globe to make other places divided as small as possible.

while don't you all split into million pieces like we have. i have reason to believe that russia doesn't watch this tv show. so experiment. fake secessionist movement in the united states, create it. on the theory i they'll support any movement like that in of the west for any reason. really want the west to break apart in small of pieces as can be. there is at kernel of the movements legit organic interest in those places of maybe breaking off even if tongue in cheek. but russia will take that and build from it, fund it, give you free offices. hook you up. staff it from moscow. let's make up new one and see if we get russian support. first idea was movement called nohio. see if they bite on that. then somebody else on the staff

came up with no, tennesseeya. maybe like a southern one. and indiana becoming outdiana. or illannoyed. we're out of here. tried on a few different ideas. four finalists. vote online or at twitter. which fake secession movement we should create online to see if it attracts russian support. choices, a, new at any point republic of manhattanistan. or b, new independent region arizone. next is c, connecticut. and option d.

new mexit. the theory, if you build it, they will come. any inkling of anybody wanting to break off any part of the united states, anything that exists in the west from anything that constitutes existing international order where russia isn't a superpower. any cent fugual force to pull something apart will attract russian trolls like flies to brexit. we'll see. i'm excited did b this. alongside russian efforts to promote outright secession, as we learn more about what russia in election last year online and on facebook. you can see the same concerted effort under way. not to completely break the country apart as geopolitical unit but break our population apart. get american people at each other's throats.

among the facebook ads bought last year by russia not only referenced black lives matter movement but specifically targeted black lives matter related russian advertising to audiences in ferguson, missouri, and baltimore, maryland. taking places in united states riffen by anger and violence about the police treatment of african-americans and into that came the russians to fuel it and kindle it. knew enough about the subtleties of the issues here to target those ads to location where they might do the most harm. "daily beast" reports in stunning story that facebook group called united muslims of america, went online during the elections last year, that organization actually took over

the dormant name of legit organization in california that wasn't active anymore. the group that was operating last year in the election was run by russian operatives. site has been traced back to the russian government. last year leading up to the election donald trump was insisting, even on close questioning, that hillary clinton invented isis? at least one of the online originators of that claim was this russian government operated facebook page united muslims of america that said hillary clinton created, funded and armed al qaeda and isis. site also claimed that john mccain created isis. needless to say neither created isis. but russian government impersonating u.s. muslims on facebook last year claiming that was true and happily echoed and insisted upon by the

presidential candidate for the republican party. politico.com also reports that facebook ads supported division among voters on the left. one of the ads they ran on facebook last year said choose peace and vote for jill stein. trust me it's not wasted vote. grow a spine, vote jill stein. bought and paid for by the russian government. not to say that jill stein solicited it or knew about it but russia wanted votes for her. alongside paid ads promoting donald trump and criticizing hillary clinton, russia was running ads saying you wouldn't waste your vote if you voted for jill stein. #hint, yes you will. interesting to see if we ever

learn where those ads were targeted and if they ended up targeting would-be democratic or liberal voters in some of the states where jill stein absolutely did outrun the vote margin between hillary clinton and donald trump. other ads promoted votes for bernie sanders, reportedly right before the election, long after bernie sanders had left the race and endorsed clinton and said people should vote for her. russian operators saying still vote for bernie, wouldn't be wasted vote. we're starting to see clear lie how they operate. what they're trying to do. russia supports division in the countries and geopolitical entities they see as their rivals. russia seeks to divide or silence when they can political movements and leaders that oppose them. russia also seems to just like far right populist movements

that bring out most antidemocratic and ugly tendencies in western countries. turning native populations specifically against immigrants, refugees, muslims. in germany, angela merkel reelected but first time in post-world war ii era, a far right party will be represented in the german parliament. afd, about 13% of the vote. will be represented in parliament and their interests in the election were promoted by russian state-run media and bots and trump campaign veterans. harris media, hired by the trump campaign in the paul manafort era ran digital operations in germany for far right antimuslim, anti-immigrant group

that did so well in the elections. thanks in no small part to additional boost from russia. learning more every day about what russia did in our election. as we get more detail about that, it's becoming easier to see how investigators may be able to determine whether or not the russian operatives working to influence the election had american confederates helping them do their work. set to speak tomorrow morning in washington. facebook has started reportedly to hand over information about what russian operatives bought what ads targeting which people during our election. and as facebook in particular gets dragged kicking and screaming into disclosing how well russia used their platform to silence dissidents, shut down ukrainian activities but

misinform americans to a specific and illegal political end. spookiest part of all of this, russia's action in that information space, very clearly bled out into the real world. they did not just change what we saw or in some case what's we thought and thought about, didn't just presumably start fights and change votes, they also changed real lives in the real world in our country in sometimes violent ways. one of the most unsettling incidents of that just reported out by "new york times." caitlyn dickerson, she joins us next. results it was a shocker. i'm everything. i'm from all nations. i would look at forms now and wonder what do i mark? because i'm everything. and i marked other. discover the story only your dna can tell. order your kit now at ancestrydna.com.

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be in the "new york times" sunday magazine. how fake news turned a small town upside down. height of the 2016 election, exaggerated reports of juvenile sex crime brought a mail strm to idaho. caitlin dickerson. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> tell me specifically what you found in twin falls. i heard anger ginned up against yogurt and other things. what did you find? >> to begin with a real sexual assault case five-year-old girl who was white american and seven-year-old boy who was refugee but turned into

something larger than that in fake news stories that turned out to be untrue and used to prove the point that refugees and muslims were inherently dangerous. at certain point choeb ani and other officials brought in and turned into conspiracy theory. >> it was real issue. represented in false news story as if gang rape of child by adults and had been a -- either racially motivated or inflected assault. >> that it was influenced by religion is the narrative. young girl was gang raped, held at knife point by syrian refugees even though there are none in the town at all. done by adults even though altercation with seven-year-old and all was proof that isis was in the town and town was under attack. >> how did it manifest in the

town. it's one thing if fake stories are circulating about a thing in the united states. how did this manifest in real lives in twin falls? >> people felt it intensely. reported in online blogs then moved to brietbart and info wars and during that time specific elected officials were called out by name. addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses posted online and barraged for entire summer intensely with violent and specific threats. so for the people receiving threats they were scared. police had to patrol their homes. talked about being scared to walk out to cars after work. mayor's wife said she did charlie's angels in her home when doorbell rang, duck under the counter. getting specific threats and people living in town were

reading online that town was under assault by dangerous sexual deviants. they were scared too. >> promoted heavily by brietbart, steve bannon talked about this daily for a long time on radio show. dispatched a full-time reporter to go to twin falls to not necessarily report on the story but hype it. >> lee stran ahan. steve bannon described him as pit bull and said was going to let him loose on the town. conceit they said was reveal the true story. they were writing and saying on the radio that local police, prosecutor and local paper involved in a cover-up, trying to conceal the crime. they were trying to say something unfortunate and sad happened but nothing to do with islam or isis or refugee resentment. it's something sad that happened between two kids.

>> mr. stranihan is now working for sputnik? >> he now hosts a drive-time radio show for sputnik. yes. >> one of the things we've since learned is this is one of the -- for lack of better term -- fake news stories in the united states that russian operatives latched on to and ploeted and appeared try to arrange protests around these stories. real life events to happen. traced baaing to russia. >> first known attempt that russian government made to conjure up political rally on american soil. took place in twin falls in addition to the false details having spread. protest itself wasn't massively attended. lot of the people upset were in other states or countries.

nevertheless it happened and people showed up and protested at behest of russian-linked accounts. >> it's on one level disgusting. on the other hand fascinating story and depth of your reporting on this really helps us understand its import. thanks a lot. we'll be right back. that's a whole different ballgame. i was in shock. i am very proud of the development of drugs that can prevent the rejection and prevent the recurrence of the original disease. i never felt i was going to die. we know so much about transplantation. and we're living longer. you cannot help but be inspired by the opportunities that a transplant would offer. my donor's mom says "you were meant to carry his story". rethink your allergy pills. flonase sensimist allergy relief helps block 6 key inflammatory substances with a gentle mist. most allergy pills only block one.

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grip of this, hurricane maria, made landfall in puerto rico one week ago in early morning hours as category 4 storm. last time storm is it a big in 1930s. now in the aftermath and inarguably things are getting worse and not better with the passage of time. because of what now quite starkly appears to be inept, inadequate and most of all disorganized federal response. you're used to thinking that heart-stopping wait time for a hurricane is while you're waiting for the storm to pass over. for the storm to be gone. but this time what's killing these americans is waiting for the relief effort to hit its stride. a week in, half the population has no drinking water. week in, 97% of the island has no electricity. week in, many communities not just running low on fuel but on food. part of the reason we know this

is a disorganization failure because significant quantities of relief supplies are making it to puerto rico and they're stuck at the port. thousands of containers of supplies are sitting at the port because nobody's organized drivers to truck those supplies out of the port and into needy communities all over the island. that effort is thus far not coordinated with effort to clear the roads so the trucks could get through if they had drivers for them. definitely no shortage of people willing to help in civilians helping each other, which we've seen in incredible measure. but also in terms of responders trying to do their best, there are responders on scene. a lot of them. doesn't appear to be anybody leading things to get it going in systematic way or in effort large enough to meet the needs of the island one week in. even now a week in, food and

water running low and some communities still not having received any aid at all, the organization of the effort appears to be still in its very earliest stages. as mayor of san juan told us last night, that disorganization means that even though there's fuel on the island, dozens of hospitals don't have fuel they need to keep the generators running, so they can't power machines to keep people alive in intensive care units. not just far-flung areas but puerto rico's largest city. patients already died in hospital for lack of fuel because no power to keep life support machines on. "washington post" reported on the san lorenzo in the mountains outside of san juan, separated from communities by powerful river. took out only bridge connecting them to rest of the island.

desperation has been mounting, local people trying to cross very overflowing river on their own, very dangerous. but here's the part of this that is absolutely mind bending. a fema team arrived in san lorenzo to try to help the people stranded there. but turned out they had been dispatched to that isolated community with no food, water or medical supplies to deliver. between having trouble to communicate and find their way around once they got there, fema team took real risks to get there and couldn't help once they got in because of disorganization. risk to them and waste of effort to the people they weren't able to help once they got there. ap called this a do it yourself affair. spoke to person after person, said there's been quote, no

help. quote, people have to help one another now. it's hard to know for sure what is happening on the ground in a lot of places on puerto rico, so much of the island is cut off. but people are sounding the alarm. if this keeps going like this, if this effort doesn't get organized fast, we could start to see a spike in the death toll. elderly patients in nursing homes with no power, water and ability to prepare food. sick patients in hospitals that still don't have power. this is not a political story except that it's politicians who have to fix it. right? this is about life and death. a week in and only beginning to get a sense of how much need there is. one very good nbc reporter been there since the storm hit, made a trip out of san juan to look at community hit by hurricane, rain and wind and water and massively by mud. he joins us next.

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and supplies up to the area and it's impassableme. much of is collapsed. lot of it was mud slide. that's mud slide. there's one here. all the foliage ripped off the trees. >> that's nbc's gadi schwartz in puerto rico earlier today. rural community. as gadi was saying, it's been largely cut off from the outside world since the storm hit a week ago. residents with zero power and zero running water all week long. walking miles for gasoline to power generators. had zero assistance until today, very first work to clear the mud slides. joining us by phone is gadi schwartz, been in puerto rico for eight days reporting on the hurricane and its devastation in

its wake. gadi we appreciate your time. >> reporter: no problem rachel. >> tell us how you're able to get around and what you make of the progress toward physically accessing interior puerto rico and towns that have had such trouble getting aid. >> reporter: first things first, start and end the day thinking about how much gasoline we have, we have to ration it, and sometimes waiting in hours long lines. really how far we go into the island depends on how much gasoline we have and how much to get back. something all puerto ricans are thinking about, whether go to town or not, stay home, try to go to work or check on loved one. gasoline is first and foremost on our minds. then we go out, security guards

are really familiar with puerto rico have been instrumental getting us into areas. today we wanted to go to these cutoff towns and we made our way past the road block. that's when you saw on the video. but striking thing we saw was this crew. earlier describing it as do-it-yourself help that is going on up there. we came across this road crew. they had assembled from all different places. one that seemed to be supervising was a woman, she was there telling the crews what to do. but i stopped to talk to her, asked her how her house was. she said it was destroyed but she was engineer and this is what she said, had to go out and help her island any way she could and she was going to try to work. long lines of gasoline, lot of

the people would be walking miles to get gasoline and saying look, we've got to go to work. at some point we got to go to work, need money, need to survive. next four to six months looking very bleak for a lot of these people. >> and scale of the devastation is gut-wrenching. stories about people doing everything they can to help each other and heartening but this scale of devastation, we have to worry about how organized and systemic the effort is get to the relief, roads cleared, aid distributed, people safe, take care of the elderly and infirm. what can you tell us about how organized the overall response is. >> reporter: this is something difficult because i think it is part of the story. in retrospect, probably should have shot it. it's as important to the story as what is going on on the outside. there's an air conditioned

convention center where we've spent a lot of time trying to get briefings and figure out what is going on. for the day we spent there over the weekend, there were hundreds of people walking around in tucked in polo shirts with government insignia and milling around for hours and hours and reporters and some of the people from different organizations were like we're not exactly sure what is going on, what we're doing. we've got this meeting and that. fema is on the third floor, we're supposed to be on the second. it seemed very disorganized and far cry from what was going on outside, especially in the rural areas of puerto rico where if you have gas and car and willingness to get out, you can find people in need very quickly. but this convention center was filled with a lot of people that are obviously there because they

would like to help, but just walking around, shaking people's hands and talking for hours. >> wow. >> reporter: in air conditioned convention center while the rest of puerto rico is under sweltering heat, no one has electricity and people are waiting entire day just to get three gallons of gas. >> wow. that tracks exactly what we heard from the san juan mayor last night. talking about how heartened she is with the people there to hem but frustrated that it's not working yet. gadi schwartz, nbc's reporter on the ground. thanks. keep us apprised. thank you. >> no problem. thank you so much. >> absolutely infuriating. be right back. woah. flo and jamie here to see hqx. flo and jamie request entry. slovakia. triceratops. tapioca. racquetball.

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yesterday cnn was first to report that robert mueller, the special counsel is about to start interviewing white house officials, past and present, as potential witnesses in his russia investigation. cnn had that story first last night and now abc news confirmed it. from various sources, names of six people, current and former white house officials believed to be in line for questioning by mueller's prosecutors. again, as soon as maybe tomorrow or the next day. those people include sean spicer, and reince priebus, fired from the trump white house and don mcgahn, the white house counsel and deputy no one's heard of and communications director hope hicks and jared kushner's spokesperson of all

people. one of the things to figure out is how regular, non-trump people will pay for what undoubtedly are expensive legal fees. even not up to the necks in this story, being questioned just as a witness can be a very legally fraught thing. it is a crime to lie to federal investigators even by accident. today, we can report exclusively on an interesting, new poll of public policy polling coming out tomorrow morning in full and reveals public opinion on everything right now from, you know, the health care bill to jimmy kimmel to lots of other stuff, but before that poll coming out in full tomorrow morning, check out a jib let we got. registered voters who say it's inappropriate for the president to use campaign funds to pay the legal bills? 64%. 64% of americans believe president trump should be paying

his own legal bills in the russia case. he is not. of course, those are being paid for by the rnc and by the trump re-election campaign. as are the legal fees of his son. his question of russian legal fees are paid by the president or anybody in that circle, that reporting has led us to a whole new line of questioning and interest about one giant pile of money that is sloshing around inside the white house. that could conceivably be used for that purpose, conceivably used for legal fees for all of the white house personnel and former caught up in this thing to do that with it. this giant pile of money is called the trump inaugural fund. we believe it is a fund of tens of millions of dollars. and we have very little idea what they'll do with it. on that subject, we have a weird new scoop doing on tomorrow night's show. you will want to see this. all right. we'll be right back. when you have a cold...

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we have been covering the story this week about how the president's former campaign manager paul manafort paid this week for an independence referendum in northern iraq, a semiautonomous region by the kurds. also significant kurdish populations in iran and syrian and turkey and the idea of a country, that's got the whole region freaking out. all those other countries did military exercises on iraq's border to show how freaked out they were by the referendum. it wasn't close. the yes vote over 92% for independence. so, is iraq going to split up? nothing like that would happen automatically but iraq is definitely up in arms about it. today the parliament asked the prime minister to send iraqi troops to kirkuk to take control of the oil fields up there. i should note that turdikurdish troops are already there.

they gave three days to give up control of the airports in the region or iraq would shut them down. kurdistan is refusing to negotiate. he said, quote, we'll not compromise on iraq's unity or sompbty. iraq is strong. some want to weaken it. but they have miscalculated. they have miscalculated. some, however, just calculated, you know, fine. may have just calculated perfectly well that despite the interests of the united states of america on this issue, maybe this referendum might be a way to get paid. paul manafort sometime around the time the fbi raided his house he signed up as a paid con sl taunt to promote this referendum. because he's reportedly told to be indicted in the russia scan z dal we are interested in the reports of manafort to be there for the referendum this week. we reached out the the spokesman

to fine out where is he? did he go to iraq? the spokesman won't tell us. here's one to grow on. if paul manafort is, in fact, in iraqi kurdistan, those airports are about to shut down very soon because of the referendum he just defied the u.s. to promote. if iraq follows through on the threats and suspends flights in and aout of that region, how dos paul manafort get home? can he? or is this part of the plan to maybe get stuck several thousand miles away at a very convenient time? maybe bob mueller can send a rescue party. where's paul? watch this space. that does it for us tonight. we'll see you again tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." good evening. >> good evening. might not work out for the perfect hideout. >> trying to avoid