msnbc.com/hughhewi msnbc.com/hughhewitt. now to my colleague alex witt. the president is tweeting so you will be busy this morning. >> you said it, hugh. meantime, for all of, i'm alex witt here at msnbc in new york. at the half hour, here's what we're watching for you. the president in a series of tweets attacking the mayor of san juan, puerto rico as outrage grows over the response to the disaster there. the president has a series of phone calls with authorities on the island. this comes after the mauer suppressed frustration. we'll have more in just a moment. >> is now the former health and human services and the eighth high-profile trump administrator to be shown the door. in his resignation letter tom price says he regrets the distractions he caused. he quit amid outcry over his use

of chartered planes. in cuba, the u.s. is withdrawing the majority of its embassy in havana and warning americans not to visit the cup. it comes in the wake of what senior state officials now call targeted specific sonic attacks on u.s. diplomats. at least 21 of them have been hurt. very bad things happen in cuba. very bad things. you're going to see what's happening in cuba. but they did some bad things in cuba. >> the u.s. has not identified the source of the attacks, but it is not ruling out the possibility that a third country could be involved. let's go right now to mounting criticism in puerto rico surrounding the handling of the humanitarian crisis there. the latest coming from the mayor of san juan. >> we are dying here. and i cannot fathom the thought

that the greatest nation in the world cannot figure out logistics for a small island of 100 miles by 35 miles long. so may day. we are in trouble. >> mariano, with a good morning to you. brynn us up to date on what the situation is like there. >> reporter: alex i'm at san juan international airport at the moment because a c-17 has just arrived here with those desperately needed supplies. the water, the fuel, the medicine, the food. those supplies that we have seen hundreds of puerto ricans lining up to get in the past couple of days. the situation here growing more and more dire as the days go by. there is no cell phone service on much of the island.

no power on much of the island. people were lining up for ice to preserve the little food they have left. yesterday elaine dupe responding to criticism. the mayor of san juan saying the additional supplies will be headed here very soon. let's listen. >> the people, despite the working together, i know the people in puerto rico and the u.s. virgin islands are suffering. we are here and we have been here to help them. we are continuing for any additional supplies and personnel to further assist distribution efforts on the ground. >> reporter: it is very dire, al. it is almost "the perfect storm" after the storm with no cell service, devastated infrastructure on the island and the access to fuel is very limited. it is tough for these supplies to get to the people who need them most.

alex? >> all right. having a little bit of technical difficulty but i think we got the sense of things. it is the storm after the storm, as you have been saying. thank you for that. for all of you, you can help the victims of hurricane maria. go to msnbc news.com/puerto rico. the ranking member of the budget committee. always good to see you on a saturday morning. let's get right to your reaction to the president's tweets this morning attacking the mayor of san juan. you heard her there in part saying democrats have turned her against him. wasn't this weekend the best opportunity to try to reset his administration's response, especially if he's ready to go there and visit tuesday. >> it's mind boggling, alex. i can't say any more than i'm surprised by the president's contact. he has eliminated the word surprise from the vocabulary. he does things that are absolutely outrageous. and to try to inject partisan

politics into this when you have a desperate mayor who is obviously dealing with an enormous human tragedy and accuse her of succumbing to politics is so uncalled for, so inappropriate and doesn't help solve the problem. that's the thing. this administration did a fairly good job apparently in houston and in florida. they were late to the game in puerto rico. and while there were thousands of fema workers down there, this is something the military should have been assigned there on day one. and the jones act, which allows ships carrying foreign flags to deliver goods, that should have been waived on day one. so is they are obviously trying to grasp for some redefinitely shup here, but i think the president dug a deeper act. ? the jones act put aside. a full week after the devastation there. i want to play for you what the president said yesterday about

the steps help to go rebuild the island. here it is. >> ultimately the government of puerto rico will have to work with us to determine how this massive rebuilding effort will end up being one of the biggest ever will be funded and organized. and what he will do with the tremendous amount of existing debt already on the island. >> what do you think is behind this talking point? i'm looking at where puerto rico will get their money from. the you know is not reaching out for appeal because they deal with less developed countries in the world when they do this kind of action. this is a u.s. territory. >> absolutely. i'm not sure again what president trump was trying to accomplish with that. the whole idea of their debt is kind of irrelevant at this point. clearly it's going to be a very difficult rebuilding effort. but i know that leadership in congress as far as i can tell

both republican is and democratic leadership are committed to treating puerto rico the exact same way they would treat any state. that's appropriate. that's the way it should be. and i think the president ought to just go along with congress on that and say they are american citizens some puerto rico. yes, they are an island surrounded by lots of ocean water, as he stated the obvious. but we're going to treat them the same way we would treat any of the contiguous united states. >> congressman, stay with me, sir. the governor of puerto rico is having a news conference right now. here it is. >> january 2018. so it gives us some flexibility to the payments, leliminating a little bit of stress on the people of puerto rico. i want to remind everybody that our priorities at this juncture be food delivery, delivery of

gas, making sure the hospitals are working, making sure we can get more hospitals online, that they get their decembiesel and fuel, establishing as best mechanism for robust communication, whether it be be telecoms or otherwise. and the air traffic control so we can get more assets here in puerto rico. let me talk a little bit about the gas situation. we have been upping the number of gas operators that have opened in puerto rico that has alleviated some of the stress. to give you perspective, four days ago we had 450 gas stations open. now we have 714. that's somewhat over 50% of the gas stations that we have in puerto rico already operating and are receiving fuel at this juncture. so our expectation here is to continue identifying those gas

stations that can operate. those operators that at the on set of this catastrophe were not found so they can operate appropriately. they can get fuel in an organized, logistical phaerp and is have appropriate security. at the same time, we informed that the reservoirs of diesel have increased. we are almost to 600,000 barrels of gasoline. we're at 722,000 barrels as well. and we will be receiving through the ports, more fuel disbursement starting october 1st all the way to october 7th. we're going to have about eight of these efforts. we want to notify the people of puerto rico and everybody that

we have supply directly to municipalities through our general services account. 16 municipalities. we will post them as well. they have been signing contracts and can get fuel directly from the general services juncture of the government. fema has been working extra hard on this effort. and particularly the distribution of food. we have 11 original staging areas that have been receiving food and water across puerto rico. in addition to that, fema has taken several other on missions so we can go to direct municipalities where hard-to-reach -- the roads, although accessible are harder to reach. there has been consideration towards that effort.

i want to let you know that the government is working in conjunction and in collaboration with fema. our housing department, the office of the first lady, family department are also doing efforts to distribute food and water in different areas in puerto rico. and we are coordinating all the logistics with fema so we can make sure they arrive at their destination. in terms of telecoms in general, police have reestablished communication through radio in san juan and callas at their stations. the other areas, it will help us work with other areas and distribute information by enhancing this network. we have also established sat in

ponce and it augments the stretch from about 200,000 more clients than we had yesterday. our expectation here is that for next week we're going to have sat cows in different places making sure that the different regions in puerto rico can have access to the telecoms. we have lifted 163 antennas. >> all right. we will keep monitoring this in the control boothe. congressman, you heard him at the start of that. he is outlining just the basic needs. he is talking about delivery of food, water, gasoline, trying to reestablish telecoms and make sure hospitals have what they need to stay open. as you heard, this is a 100 mile long, 35 mile wide piece of land, right, this island? there are 11 fema staging

centers. if you even dot them evenly, people are going to have to be walking 10 more miles just on average to get to a fema center. we're talking about the basic necessities here. if you look back to last weekend, the "washington post" is saying that was our president's lost weekend. he was in bedminster. he went to the alabama rally friday night. he spent a large part of the weekend tweeting and discussing his disgust at nfl players that were taking a knee disrespecting the american flag. is this going to be potentially this president's katrina? >> well, i don't think aoeupts t it's the only one he's had, but it is is close to that. we have resources in this country which are regularly deployed almost instantaneously in a natural disaster. my own kentucky guard have the air traffic controllers that the

governor was talking about. in haiti several years ago, the military was there almost within hours. so, yes, i think clearly the -- when he was at bedminster, which apparently he is again this weekend while, again, this human tragedy is happening to american citizens, he's going to pay for this. >> and clearly this is something we need to stay focused on and will because it's about the potential loss of life. may i quickly ask for your interpretation of what has been put out there, the details released on the president's tax reform plan. >> well, you know, it's just mind boggling once again to me that people like president trump and mnuchin and others can stand there with a straight face and say this is not a big boom for the wealthiest americans. i'm not nearly as weigalthy as president trump.

this bill saves me $100,000 a year. it would save president trump $76 million a year, by one estimate. the sheer dishonesty about discussing the impact of this legislation is really immoral actually. we had lots of details to see. maybe they're going to come up with a higher tax bracket so that the benefits to the wealthy won't be as great. but the tax policy center, nonpartisan body said that 50% of the benefits of this tax cut would go to the top 1%. that's something that i don't think the american people bargained for when they put this administration in office. >> thanks so much. good to see you as always. a new poll with results that might surprise that tells us what most americans think about nfl players taking a knee and whether president trump should weigh in on the issue. secretary of state of puerto rico joins me to talk about how desperate the situation is there, what is needed and whether anything is getting

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we're going to cut taxes for the middle class. >> providing middleclass tax reli relief. >> it is vital to america's future. >> tax relief is on the way for the miles an hour family. >> now we're doing it. we're doing things. enthusiastic talk about the new tax plan. early assessments not as positive. critics say it would raise the deficit and help the president by cutting his taxes. joining me now is alina maxwell, progressive media for the clinton campaign and now with sirius xm. joe watkins, aide to george h.b. bush is and rick tyler. and political analyst. a big welcome to the three of you. good to see you as always. joe, i want to look at the analysis released on friday by the nonpartisan tax policy. it would benefit wealthy americans and businesses. on wednesday the president

called this a middleclass miracle. what happened here? what got lost in translation? >> i think it is still early in the process. obviously it would be much better i think if this was a tax cut for the middleclass. middle businesses are interested of course in making sure that they have what they need to put more money in their pockets, to operate better, to be less burdened by a huge corporate tax and so cutting the corporate tax rate is very important as well but there's still a long way to go in all of this. president trump wants a win. he needs a win and he's willing to negotiate, so what you see now may not be what we end up with. >> what do you think is worse, is it the plan or the rollout of the plan? >> i think the timing is pretty bad for the white house considering all of the humanitarian crisis they have to deal with right now with natural disasters. so when you haven't won on health care and you haven't won on other priorities of the administration, i'm certain that they feel like it's urgent that

we get a tax cut but that doesn't seem like the priority right now. they need to do something about puerto rico instead of talking about tax cuts which actually aren't going to be that large for the middle class. it's something like $1,000 bucks over the course of the year which really isn't that much money when you think about it. so i think this administration is out of touch with what's going on in the actual country and they're priorities are completely out of whack. >> rick, why do you think the president doesn't admit that he will benefit from this tax plan? aren't the taxpayers already finding this out? >> everything with this tax plan -- the timing of course but the language is all wrong. this isn't really -- first of all, it isn't tax reform. there's nothing reform about it. it's a tax cut plan. it clearly will benefit the wealthy, it adds up to a lot of dollars when you their taxes. the middle class doesn't get their benefits that they're

putting out here. politics is all about expectation and the expectation was this is going to be a middle class tax cut and it certainly is not. >> gary cohn, okay, you're going to get about a $1,000 tax break and you can renovate your kitchen and buy a new car. are you kidding me? >> there's a language problem. >> exactly. >> i want to talk about health and human services secretary tom price. out after taking more than two dozen private flights that he took at taxpayer expense. he has offered to pay back $50,000 that would be representative of what he thinks the portion is of his singular seat on those flight. the "the new york times" berated price before he resigned. why do you think it got under the skin? >> because it's bad headlines for the president. everything relates back to how it relates to his press and him. even his tweets are about bad news for trump.

if we're talking about corruption, we need to be thinking about this president has gone to his resort where he is taking in taxpayer money for golf carts and for the hotel rooms, for the press and for the secret service. if -- what tom price did bothers president trump, we should be looking at president trump's own action and him profiting off of traveling on the expense of the taxpayers. i think it's very troubling that the president of all the weekends to stay in the white house and focus on this unfolding crisis in puerto rico, he is still playing golf. why can't he take one weekend off? if there was one weekend to take off i think this is the one. >> rick, what do you think about that? and also the fact that the president talks about draining the swamp, how much damage does this do to that promise? >> it looks horrible. the word beyond hypocrisy is

stupidity and this is on stupidity and he lost his job over it. i think the president -- this may sound too overly simplistic the fact that the images coming out of puerto rico took so long because of the dang that was done there and it was difficult to cover from the news so it wasn't platformered all over the television until it was and then when it was he realized it was a problem. it's very interesting the president seems to manage by how much coverage it's getting which allowed him to do the football tweets and then he talks about how the optics are bad. it's not -- of course they are bad but it's really the response and the government action that's lacking here. >> regarding the optics problem, the president said he did not like the optics of this week regarding tom price but here's what we've seen. we've seen criticism for the administration puerto rico's response, we learned about the flights about zinke and the epa

administrator plus jared kushner's e-mails. is there an overall optics problem, joe? >> this is a bad week and obviously the optics are bad but what really matters is not just what tom price did was really not very smart, for somebody that's been in congress and understands the importance of being fiscally responsible but what really matters is the response to puerto rico. you got people that are in jeopardy, people who are dying there and so it's so important that the response to puerto rico be strong and don't even worry about optics. just get it done. people are dying, just get it done. >> rick brought up the nfl situation from last weekend and administer lina i want to show -- 59% of whites saying the players are doing the wrong thing, 82% of the blacks saying it's its right thing. >> black americans understand what the intention behind the

protests are which is to put a spotlight on police brutality and the police killing of unarmed black people in this country. that is a crisis, that is an ep dem ing. colin kaepernick took a knee in order to put our focus like a laser on that issue and i don't really like the unity protest, the locking of the arms, it minimizes what the focus should be which is on fleece brutality. it's not surprising that there's a split along rashlg lines. white americans and white players even don't necessarily understand really how every single black person in this country realizes that when an unarmed black person is killed by the police that it could be then, one of their family members so it's much closer to home. we all should have a little bit more empathy and look at this issue as a serious one that colin kaepernick and others taking a knee were trying to put the spotlight on. that's an important issue. >> despite being out of time, joe, you want to quickly weigh in on that. >> i agree with jolena.

she's right on point. >> rick, you too? >> i think -- interesting how the president made it all about himself again and it's unfortunate in a sense that the nfl actually is united against president trump and we sort of lose the issue. >> okay. always good to see you three. thanks so much. >> thank you. jared kushner and the revelation this week about his personal e-mail, new information about a mistake his attorney made in our next hour. do what i did. ask your doctor about humira. it's proven to help relieve pain and protect joints from further irreversible damage in many adults. humira works by targeting and helping to block a specific source of inflammation that contributes to ra symptoms. humira has been clinically studied for over 20 years. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions,

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good morning. i'm alex witt. it's 9:00 here in the east, 6:00 out west. the trump tax plan. a new analysis tells us exactly who stands to profit most and whether the president's bottom line will be helped even as he denies it. grounded, health and human services tom price resigns. the big question what happened to president trump's vow to drain the swamp. desperate hours and days. puerto rico still in dire need of