msnbc app and apple tv and social media. thank you for watching, "deadline: white house" with nicolle wallace starts right now. hi, everyone, it's 4:00 in new york. all eyes are on florida. that's because the hurricane is currently gathering steam over the atlantic. hurricane dorian has the potential to be the most dangerous storm to hit florida's east coast since hurricane andrew. the governor of the state ron desantis has declared an emergency in every county of the state, with warnings the emergency can go on for several days. dorian, a category 3 storm now, is expected to hit florida early next week. for his part, donald trump plans to monitor the situation from camp davis, canceling his trip to poland. when it comes to managing the storm he will work with the department and depsy secretary of homeland security as well as

fema administrator, all in acting capacities and added scrutiny will be placed on the federal response to the storm, since it's the first one to hit since at announcement was made that fema funds were used for the border policies. covering it for awe with the latest on the storm, preparations and the president, we're joined by a special group of reporters and friends starting with nbc meteorologist michelle grossman. michelle, where is the big flow storm right now? >> you said it perfectly, we're looking at the storm in atlantic. it's a big, powerful storm with nothing in its way. it's collecting warm air from the ocean getting bigger and bigger. as for the latest advisory at 2:00, it blossomed into a category 3 storm. you can see on enhanced satellite, it doesn't take as much to see how big it is. well defined eyes showing how strong it is wrapping around there. let's talk about statistics, where we are in terms of the wind speeds and where we expect

it to go. right now it is 625 easts-west of palm beach, florida. winds are gusting higher than that. want to focus on gusts protecting your home and property. it was faster yesterday, faster this morning and starting to slow down. tonight we're going to see the slowdown. almost putting the brakes on it and that's not good news. it will collect more fuel to be more powerful once it goes over land. we're looking at the track here, category 3 storm. it came fast. on monday it started out as a tropical storm and even thought it could fizzle out once it went over land. it never did that. it jogged to the north and kind of has a free way into the state of florida. right now category 3 storm by sunday, somewhere between saturday and sunday, we're expecting a category 4 storm. that's 130-mile-per-hour winds by saturday morning. look at it by monday morning. 140-mile-per-hour winds. and i want to you notice where it is.

it will be over northwestern bahamas, right over land mass there. you want to heed the warnings if you're in this area, nassau, and we have a hurricane watch in place and that will certainly be upgraded to warning. we expect conditions to change there as early as saturday and then certainly on sunday we're looking at battering winds, catastrophic wind damage and also some flooding rains. as we go throughout time here, this has really slowed down so picture our cards going pretty slow at 10 miles an hour and then it halts to 4 miles per hour. most of us can walk that fast if we're walking at a fast clip so that is how slow it's going to be going, picking up that fuel from the ocean, and eventually getting to land and then unleashing all of that tropical moisture. we're looking at the potential force of land following tornadoes as it makes its way on to land. we can see power outages up to three weeks in some spots. you want to prepare for that. we're also looking at the possibility for life-threatening storm surge, some fluiding. when it comes to weather,

flooding is the biggest danger and deadliest form of weather. a hurricane watch is in effect for the bahamas, that includes freeport and nassau. heed your warnings now. use your evacuation plans if you can and into florida we will be making plans the next couple of days. look yet, the wind field in the red, about 25-mile-per-hour wind field in terms of hurricane and yellow will be tropical force winds. looking at life-threatening storm surge. this will be a story to watch over the next several days. keep in mind we have four days to go so we will watch it very, very closely, nicolle. >> michelle, what is the last point in time for state officials to look at this model. i know it changes. al was here yesterday and he had three different possible paths based on three different models. what is the last moment to look at that model before making any decisions? >> it's a couple key players, when you have a storm and a car, it doesn't have the steering

mechanism or steering wheel so you have other things like high pressure and low pressure. right now we have a strong area of high pressure in the bermuda ridge that may be breaking down. we have to see those players, what's going to happen to them and where is it going to steer? so probably by sunday we will know closer to where that landfall will happen but it's not just where it's going now, it's all of the mechanisms that come into play. just like football players on the field, whatter they going to do when they come together? >> michelle grossman, i'm sure you'll be working all weekend. thank you so much for spending time with us. >> you're welcome. >> let's turn now to msnbc's marrow attentous in palm beach, florida. i'm always so worried about these same people grabbing for the same bottles of water and same rolls of toilet paper and it seems like this is the most stressful way to prepare for a possible emergency. what is the mood of the folks there? i know they're used to this but you can never grow accustom to sort of the fear and anxiety of a storm like this.

>> that's right, nicolle. and because this is such an unpredictable storm, we're seeing that anxiety up and down the eastern coast of florida. 67 counties all across the state in state of emergency but perhaps none more than palm beach county, where i am now. this is right now where this storm is headed. we heard from michelle, that may change, but that is what all of the models are pointing to at the moment. we have 1.4 million people here. it is the third most populous county in the state. and here at a costco in palm beach gardens, i have to say i got here at 7:00 in the morning, nicolle, the line went around the building. the number one item people were looking to get, water. just to put it in perspective, the manager at this costco tells me just today he sold 4,000 cases of water just at this local store. they even have to limit the amount of water they're selling people to two cases per person.

and then in terms of evacuations, we're still a couple days out. but one gentleman from new jersey in line this morning summed it up best for me, he said where are we going to go? we still don't know where this thing is going to hit and right now it looks like the whole state could be impacted. people are definitely stocking up on all of their essentials, mostly generators, batteries, flashlights, nonperishable food items and most importantly medicine. it's a big retirement community as well and i just spoke to an older lady named robin and she said listen, governor desantis said most likely you will lose power. i don't want to be roaming around next week looking for my prescription and medicine. nicolle? >> mariana, most people who aren't in the storm's path getting ready for back to school, buying supplies and groceries, what are the spirits like of the folks you talked to? obviously it's never a good time for a hurricane to hit but this is about the worst if you have little ones heading off to school soon.

>> you also have the labor day weekend. i live in miami. i have friends and family, people that were headed out to universal studios, to disney world, prepping their kids for the first days of school. i've got to tell you, it seems like the city of miami, i was in miami beach yesterday, palm beach gardens, i spoke to the mayor late last night, seems like everyone is at a standstill, glued to the vel igig television, should i stay or go? it's tricky, and a lot of people because of the unpredictable forecast deciding to hunker down and that means we will see longer lines at the grocery stores and at the gas stations. nicolle? mariana atencio, i sound like your mother but i have seen you in these storms and you're usually out on the front lines. please be careful, my friend. with us, joe kol vin at the table, national correspondent for "the new york times" magazine, mark lebowitz and

reverend al sharpton, host of "politicsnation" here on msnbc and president of the action network. i don't have to tell any of you, presidencies can be made and broken and bent in president's responses to a hurricane. thinking about my own experience with george w. bush and hurricane katrina. donald trump deciding to cancel plans to travel to poland but at the top he's got acting officials at the all of the leadership posts atop of homeland security and fema and their big news the last few days on border security is they were taking money from fema to pay for it. >> yeah, this is the stage -- this is the kind of story where people immediately get cynical about people talking about it through a political lens. obviously we have a life-andlife death scenario in a storm in florida. these are traditionally, like you said, make-or-break moments for presidencies. what's unique about this is there was a few days of a buildup. it's entirely unpredictable. and you have a president who placed himself right in the middle of this partly by the

fema funds, he's canceled a trip and the other part is he owns property in palm beach county, mar-a-lago. so there's a personal component to this and you would hope politics doesn't overcome too much of this and first responders and people affected can deal with it. but, yeah, it's unpredictable. it's an unpredictable presidency and hurricanes are unpredictable. so we will see. >> jill, it's unpredictable and might be cynical but it's cold, hard facts donald trump's response to hurricanes have been uneven for the american citizens living in puerto rico, he basically said bleep you. you're corrupt. your politicians are corrupt and threw bounty paper towels at them. other hurricanes he's been excited to put on plastic gloves and hand out supplies and shake hands and sign hats. what is the white house sort of envisioning for planting the president at camp david to ride out the storm? ashley parker, white house

reporter for "the washington post" said yesterday sometimes his tweets are in all caps that include things like wow, what a big storm like he's just watching the weather channel like the rest of us and that's a fair observation. >> certainly. you see the president trying to play that role. the white house has tried to project the response, trying to show that the president is engaged here, giving read-outs. you saw the president actually record what was sort of bizarre weather update from the rose garden. >> i saw that! i didn't click it. is that what that was? he was talking about the weather? >> he was indeed. we have not seen one of those in quite a while. he was telling people, this is a big storm. please listen to your local officials, trying to sound strong. also saying he heard this could be the biggest one since hurricane andrew. this pattern over the president trying to hype these storms up in a strange way, trying to talk about them being the biggest, strongest that have ever happened. of course, he winds up oftentimes coming in there and doing sort of a disaster tour meeting with victims afterwards.

for the white house right now, it's trying to project this image of a president who is engaged. he canceled this trip he was looking forward to, going to poland. he is going to spend the weekend at camp david and continue to update americans probably on twitter. >> i'm sure there are a lot of his supporters and people in the state of florida, i don't think you care where the aid comes from, you just want the aid to come. i'm sure that's good news for the citizens of florida and kind of spns every american is entitled to from their president. the storm though has a lot of political resonance. hurricane andrew was a storm the federal, state and local governments had to deal with for years if this is indeed along the same sort of size and scope and damage of that hurricane. >> naturally, most americans are hoping that everyone is safe, not only in florida but the bahamas, puerto rico. and we clearly do not want to look at everything through a political lens but donald trump has made it where you have to look at it.

don't forget, he did not show this empathy until late yesterday when the storm had already left puerto rico. day before yesterday he was tweeting about how corrupt they were and how he was the best thing to happen to puerto rico. if anyone has politicized it, it's him. now that it's moving towards florida, towards mar-a-lago, all of a sudden i'm canceling trips. we all know he doesn't like to make foreign trips anyway, and he already canceled his big trip to go and purchase greenland so this is not a big sacrifice on thinks part. but the selectivity of what he's done, i'm still remembering what you stated about how he's throwing bounty towels the last time he went to puerto rico. this time he literally attacked the people of puerto rico while they were in the midst of this very storm now and he cut the fema budget about the wall he told us mexico was going to build. >> jill, he's also got acting

officials atop the department of homeland security and deputy secretary of homeland security post and in the position of acting administrator overseeing fema. what do we know about those officials? >> so peter gainer is currently the administrator at fema. that's probably a name most of your viewers ever heard of before. he replaced brock long last year. this will be his first hurricane season. by all accounts he's one of those longtime government emergency response managers who has done this before and who is, by all accounts, someone who is seen as quite competent in this role. that said, he's an acting official. we have from the top down, if you look at the org chart at the department of homeland security, it's really unprecedented, the head secretary hasn't even been nominated, heads of cdp, heads of uscis, the heads of almost every agency under the dhs umbrella are people who have not been confirmed, people who are

in those positions temporarily. you also have a president who approached the department of homeland security, which is just a very large organization, through a very specific lens, mostly thinking of it as an immigration agency. paid a lot of attention to the parts of dhs that have been responsible for working on wall contracts, working on the border and not giving nearly as much attention to the other entities there. the concern is always how engaged is the president, how much does he trust the people who are in there and with all of the turnover, how well are those people going to be able to work together? >> you think of these times of national emergency as you sort of hope for the best. we cover, donald trump promised the very best people. i think it's indisputable that's not what he's delivering. he has the most turnover out of anybody, most acting officials but you hope you're wrong when something like this happens. what does it say though when you're heading into a national emergency but an emergency on anyone in the path of the storm,

anyone in the bahamas, anyone live income florida, with people who have not been confirmed by the u.s. senate? the reason senate confirmation exists is so that senators can sort of feel around the resume and make sure they're qualified before a disaster hits. >> it's not the way it's supposed to be. it's not the way this has been planned for. it becomes a big issue if things go wrong in the response and if the hurricane does a lot of damage in florida. right now that's all sort of cued up in case it becomes sort of a piece of political rhetoric to use in case this goes south. but, look, it's an ongoing vulnerability. the preponderance of acting people in the government and, look, when things go wrong, it's an easy thing to point to. >> point to as possible cause. jill colvin, thank you for spending time with us, we're grateful. >> thank you for having me. after the break, an abrupt

departure from the aide who has seen it all, donald trump's personal assistant. she has seen everyone in and out of the oval office and knows what goes on, on the president's workday more than anybody else on the planet is out after accusation she dished about the president with reporters in an offthe report gathering. and we will take in the cruelty of immigration policies to unthinkable depth, a policy to deport six children currently receiving life-saving treatment in the u.s. joe biden unapologetic after conflating several stories about battlefield heroics. the latest test for the democratic front-runner. [dog barking] [dog barking] [dog barking] [dog growling] [horn blaring] [cat meows] (vo) the subaru crosstrek.

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"the new york times." listen up. donald trump's personal assistant, the person who sits right outside the oval office all day long and sees and hears just about more than anyone else is out of that sensitive and crucial post after an accusation she dished about the president with reporters. madelyne westerhout had served as the president's gatekeeper since day one of the administration. "the new york times" broke the story last night and reports, quote, miss westerhout's unabru unexpected and abrupt bee part chur came she shared details about his family in a recent offthe record dinner with reporters staying at hotels during bedminster, new jersey, during the president's working vacation. according to one of the sources,

westerhout's reported breach of trust means she's a so-called separated employee so she won't even be able to return to the white house. joining our conversation, "the new york times'" marat day and hans nichols, who i'm told on good authority has spent some time gathering, amid other reporters, near bedminster. what is that scene like, and what do you make of what "the times" is reporting? >> do you want the color or seam? >> it's friday before labor day. give me color. i have color, eight people work in the white house and two look like hope hicks. it's amazing. i have never heard of her or seen her picture. >> it is a powerful job. it's right outside the oval office. it's a gatekeeper, crucial job. the kind of source reporters want to cultivate. you remember from your time in the bush white house, when you travel, it's an opportunity for reporters to go out and drink with sources. i say drink and drink heavily sometimes because want to gain trust.

the whole name of the game is to have these offthe record conversations so you can try to figure out and piece together what's happening inside the white house. at bedminster, it depends where the press stays, they stay at different hotels. you try to get together and have these conversations. what's unique here is not these dinners happen, they're fairly routine across all administrations. what's unique here is she shared something of personal detail according to nbc news, "the new york times" is saying a family matter. we still, nicolle, and this is truthful, we actually don't know what that was. given as you're alluding to this is a friday in late august and you probably have a lot of bored reporters around, i suspect we may find out just what that is. we're also going to talk to the president in about an hour if he talks before he leaves for camp david on the south lawn. maybe that's my fist question, why did she abruptly resign. >> just to sort of pull back the curtain even more, the dynamic is exactly how you describe. i know you and mark because of dinners like this.

you both traveled with george w. bush and john mccain and other people i worked for. what is sacred and what hasn't been broken to my knowledge is whatever she's shared remained off the record, right? >> correct. but like -- >> the president found out about it. >> but off the record means different things to different people. when obama distilled his foreign policy on the back of air force one -- and i can talk about it because i wasn't on the plane and it's now been reported, but his driving doctrine was don't do stupid stuff, except he said that with a different s word. and that was initially conveyed off the record to reporters and that somehow leaked out. look, there's off the record and then there's off the record and then there's another layer of off the record. if something is truly damaging, sources really don't tell you about it. and so a lot of this can be fairly innocent stuff. we will see how innocent this is, we will ultimately find out.

it's building trust and having these conversations. but i think there's something different here. i know there's a friday afternoon story but there's something different we have not quite gotten to the bottom of. maybe the president will reveal it or from additional reporting but i suspect we have not heard of end of this particular anecdote that's turned into more of an episode. nicolle? >> i see this story from both perches on which i sat. one is someone who traveled with a president and candidate and was around him enough to hear them on the phone with their kids and their family and know what's private is private, as well as one who's been at those dinners and has sort of talked about some of the indignities of my job more openly at a bar or at a dinner. what do you -- do you know anything -- can you add anything to the story to your paper? >> it's my paper and i guarantee you maggie and harry will not tell me a thing that hasn't always been in the paper if i were to ask. >> right. >> if you're inside this world,

there are a million auxiliary questions here, how did the president find out about it? was it innocuous and the president responding because maybe he didn't want her working there anyway? how big was the circle? who was at the dinner? of course, what was the thing about his family? there's a lot of, again, procedural noise around this but the fact is, look, there's not a more sensitive job in the white house pretty much than the job she has, and she's basically just there and she hears things and she knows who calls and she knows who walks in, who walks out, family stuff. and it's almost zero tolerance as far as what you can say. look, occasionally, you're going to get burned and sounds like she did. >> you're going to get caught. i never heard of her before so let me read about who she is, this is our friend tim alberta who writes about her in his book. 25-year-old madeleine westerhout broke down crying inconsolably over president trump's victory. to the amusement of her rnc

peers, she was later chosen as the president's executive assistant, and now sits just outside the oval office. i don't know anything about her, but she was weeping on election night when trump won. and i read tim alberta's book, it's ex-quit izly reported, i trust this account, to the amusement of the rnc peers, may think it's funny the 25-year-old crying on the night he won is now sitting outside as the gatekeeper. >> it adds a little intrigue did she reveal something innocuous that the president got upset with? or has she been serving as a master f masterful source? >> i doubt that. >> i doubt it too but there's been so much secrecy and privacy and staff upheaval in this white house, it's hard to not let your imagination get going that she might know. >> that's what stood out, she's

tearful on election night. i want to ask you one other category of questions. this to me has all of the things the president cares about in it. a person who really does see probably the most personal aspects of his life, not just his job but his life. a person, a reporter he cares about more than anyone else in his life, he cares about coverage and what people think about him more than he cares about what allies think about him, more than he cares about what anyone else cares about him. so this is someone who had all of the goods on him talking to the people among whom the president is most self-conscious. >> i think that you hit the core because i think the fact you have a president that's so over the top with wanting reporters and the media to have this image of him, that it could be innocuous, it could be something of value that she said but don't get between me and the press. don't deal with anything that could in any way deal with my brand that i'm not controlling. and we're talking about former

presidents who, of course, always want to protect their presidency, but they also are comfortable with, you're going to get negative press, you're going to get good press. he's obsessed with this. this is a man who watches television all day and all night. what are you talking to anybody before? it could be absolutely nothing. but as far as crying on election night, we read reports the first lady cried on election night. >> again, i should say, and hans, i will give you the last word, we don't know the nature of those tears. election nights can be emotional. we will just leave tim alberta's reporting intact and let it speak for itself. but you're going to head out there and try to get some information out of him. anything to button up this really intriguing story for us. >> my final thought will be from a reporter who remains anonymous who has a metric, he said three off the records equal one

background. i know none of us would ever use that but we all respect off the record. we will see what the president says and there's more reporting to do on this. look, there are serious leaks you can have sometimes about matters of state about classified information, those are big deals. this seems more like a parlor game. but we will see if the president engages on it here in a little bit. nicolle? >> hans, thank you for spending time with us. we're grateful. up next, a biden campaign war story that seemed to get it all wrong with one big exception.

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scrutiny from the press and seeming indifference from democratic primary voters, joe biden is defending the dramatic telling of a story of battlefield heroics. "the washington post" reports the tale he told about pinning a silver star to a navy captain war hero who tried to refuse it

was actually a jumbled combination of three actual events. "the post" describes it this way, in the space of three minutes he got the type period, location of the heroic act, type of medal, military branch and rank of the recipient wrong, as well as his own role in the ceremony, end quote. the biden campaign today pushing back saying the notion the story was false is unfair and pointing me to the quotes to arm staff sergeant chad workman who tells "the washington post" in that article that his interaction with biden was as biden described it, and quote, he has that look where his eyes can see into your eyes. i felt like he really understood. biden himself is also pushing back as well as insisting the spirit of the story is correct. >> i was making a point how courageous these people are, how incredible they are, this generation of warriors, these fallen angels we lost. and so i don't know what the problem is. i mean, what is it that i said wrong?

>> joining our conversation on south carolina, msnbc correspondent garrett haake, who's been closely following biden's campaign and has a flight in like seven minutes. garrett, go. >> nicolle, look, you laid it out pretty well. biden and his campaign are not even dealing with the question whether or not they got the details wrong here, which they did, they're making the argument the factual basis and the point of the story is accurate, it's truthy enough to borrow from stephen colbert. i think the key point here buried in "the washington post" story is the person who could have been most offended by this, the sergeant involved in the actual story, thinks biden gets it. how does this play on the campaign trail? i have been talking to democratic rotors at biden events across the state and talked to bernie sanders and folks out with him and the general consensus for democratic voters here, essentially donald trump killed the political gaff as we know it. compared to what donald trump says and does every day,

democratic voters look and shrug. and it's not just biden voters. a number i talked to this morning say they're with bernie sanders and they have issues with joe biden, but it's not over this. i will expand on that further to say even when i talk to folks that might say they're voting for mayor pete or beto or perhaps they think joe biden is too old or joe biden is not the man for this moment, they make that argument in generational terms, not because he has chronic foot in mouth disease. that is something democratic voters have known about joe biden for 30 years. even the folks who don't like him don't not like him because of that. at least that's been my takeaway from the voters i have been talking to. >> garrett, i talked to the campaign today. and they are sort of finally at a place where they're hanging a lantern around their vulnerability and putting it all under the umbrella of authenticity. you're right, the story is not as he told it on the stump and it's not even about truth and lies. the story was conflated, and i wouldn't call it a lie, he just

conflated three different battlefield heroics and then attached it to the one ceremony he was a part of. but this idea that the press is doing its job, it is our job to put out when the facts don't back up things and not just with biden, for everybody and we do it for trump too. but this does, i think, expose -- biden has been making gaffs his entire career. certainly his entire foray into the 2020 primary. and he's at a solid 32%. it is not something that's reflected in his polling or standing with democratic voters, full stop. >> yeah, i think that's exactly right. i said this when i was on with you on tuesday, i think. to me still at the bottom line on the races is the one unforgivable sin is being inauthentic. and nobody has ever charged joe biden in four decades of public service of being inauthentic. that's why voters, those who don't even like him, are

generally able to forgive him for this. that being said you get enough of these over a period of time it could become a problem in the sense it becomes a narrative. the feeling sb that despite his best efforts joe biden can't plain get his facts right, that's a different issue. but my bar for when a gaff matters, it's when the candidate tells you something significantly about themselves or how they view their opponents they wouldn't say otherwise. that's why the hillary clinton deplorable line mattered more than others. and democrats use the the mitt romney 47% line so effectively against him. nothing in this particular story tells us something about joe biden that we didn't already know. >> garrett, please catch your flight and please tweet me and let me know when you made it and it's wheels up and i have not made you miss it. thank you very much for joining us, my friend. >> will do. >> this state of joe biden seems to be, phew, they accept me as i am? >> it's not so bad to be joe

biden. i wonder how much of this is about support for barack obama, especially among black voters. i also wonder if because joe biden is not only popular but is the most well known still among many voters, if that may erode over time, especially among black voters, we see it all across the country and here in new york where i report, which is it takes them a little longer to get to know and trust a candidate. there's a lot of room still and runway for folks like elizabeth warren and pete buttigieg and others to make inroads in key demographics and parts of the party. >> i was actually in south carolina with him yesterday. i did not talk to a single voter who was troubled by this. and on one hand look, i think he's cushioned on both sides. one, trump on one side and two put antibodies all over everyone to make all kinds of mistakes. the other side is a goodwill he accrued over years and expectation he's prone to this

stuff. on the other hand you have candidates like elizabeth warren -- >> who makes no mistake. >> or pete buttigieg, who are very precise and play to a different standard. at some point you step back and wonder is this defining the standard so far downward in this age of trump where we learned to, if not forgive, certainly sort of move past a number of things. one one, it can get him a nomination, because there's a lot of goodwill. but will this election in 2020 come down to a number of rambling sometimes challenged sep ten narians in joe biden and donald trump and maybe that's depressing in what we're looking at. >> that sounds it. >> clearly this is not the one that will knock joe biden out. when you have him conflating three different situations. but the person is talking about it did happen and i felt fine.

that's the end of that. >> don't rush through that. that's the most important part of the story. the campaign points to that. when you misspeak, when you get something wrong and the person about whom you misspoken is upset about it, the story has a lot more legs. in this case the sergeant felt the connection with biden and he's quoting as saying it's fine. >> and so he may have conflated it but i don't think this kills him. and anyone that's an orbiter, i'm an orator, i'm a preacher, i get the disciples wrong sometimes but they're still in the bible. he is running against somebody who fabricates things that never happened. >> and is it in the bible? >> he believes the whole bible, when he asked what was his favorite bible verse, he said the whole thing. that's who you're running against. compared to that, biden doesn't lose anything. but i think going back to mara's point, just elaborating on it, the big mistake i think democrats are making, i'm

talking about the other contenders, is not only not taking seriously the goodwill he gets from being obama they turn around in the second debate and started attacking obama. >> why did they do that? >> if you think it will take black voters who are supporting biden according to the polls overwhelmingly time for him to erode is not helping when they start attacking barack obama. >> where did that come from, attack obama strategy? >> they need to return to sender right away, wherever it came from. >> you was going to say the returning part of the biden gaff was not the gaff itself, but he refused to take any kind of responsibility for it. there's nothing wrong with saying i misspoke, i'm sorry about that. but let me correct the record, and this isn't that big of a deal. >> or seize the opportunity i have pieces of three different stories. you have a minute? let me tell you all three. get a briefing. here's the one and i remember this harrowing part.

there's always a way, and if you're a candidate with humility, george w. bush was always different things but he had copious amounts of humility. if you have humility, you can do what you just said, let me tell you all three stories. >> you do but you have to be careful, especially in combat context. i walked into this event yesterday, i heard about it and somebody said did you hear biden made up a war story? and i'm like what? this is the first sort of flash i got of it and then i heard the details and that's not what it was. you're right. there is i think if the gist of it is okay and if the person he's talking about has his back, sounds like he did in this case, means the world. after the break, we long stopped asking where the bottom is for the trump administration's policies that combine cruelty and incompetence with devastating effect. the candidate for a new low is next.

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imagine being in charge of the federal government, of the richest and most powerful nation on earth and deciding what that government ought to work on is figuring out, you know, where are all of the really good pediatric hospitals in this country? and then try to figure out if there might be kids in those hospitals that are currently seeking ongoing treatment that is saving their lives so you can somehow figure out a way to force a stop to that treatment and kick those kids and their families out of this country, so they can no longer get the care that's keeping them alive. kids with cystic fibrosis, kids with cancer, kids with rare diseases. imagine being in charge of the u.s. federal government and choosing to use it for that purpose. to target the power of the u.s. government at children with cancer. >> as only she can put it. that was our friend rachel maddow. she's been following the story all week about a new policy change by the trump administration that targets the most vulnerable among us.

this first reported in "the boston globe" with a headline that reads, i feel like i'm signing my son's death warrant. children at hospital hospital face deportation. the globe reports, these children have been granted medical deferred action, a special statsous that allows immigrants to remain in the country legally, receive medicaid and work while they receive treatment for dire health conditions. beginning last week, lawyers for some of these immigrants received boilerplate letters from immigration services informing them that the agency's field offices will no longer consider applications for renewal under that program. the letters told families if they did not leave the u.s. in 33 days, they would become undocumented and face deportation proceedings. last night rachel had a doctor on her program who put this in the starkest of terms. he been helping a young woman from guatemala with a rare genetic disorder who had been in the u.s. 20 years and was part of the clinical trial that's helped develop her treatment. >> whether it's months or one to

two years, you're really handing her a death sentence. it's as if we're pulling the plug on a respirator or stopping feedings for a patient that needs that type of support. >> joining this conversation is former u.s. attorney joyce vance. joyce, i want to ask you how this is legal, but i suspect i know the answer. it doesn't matter to trump administration if it is or isn't and they will just change the laws. but how is it happening is my question? >> i think your point is well taken. we will see legal challenges as to whether or not the administration can do this in court but the real issue, like you know, is the government only has bandwidth to do just so much. immigration is a big problem. there are a lot of people in this country who are not documented. so the question is, who should government focus its resources on? in the obama administration the

priority i was given as a u.s. attorney was focus on the people who committed violent crimes and who were here without documentation. that seemed like a really sensible priority and good place to focus my resources resource. i don't understand under what possible universe deporting people who are medically fragile is a good use of the limited resources that we have in this country. it's inhumane, it's inconference criminal. and the story rachel did last night, these are stories that have helped other american citizens. it literally makes no sense. >> i just want to be really transparent. administrations screw up, and sometimes they don't even know that they have changed a policy that's doing something this horrific. is there any -- and sometimes you don't know you have screwed up until press brings attention to it. i mean, and it seems like trump's brand on immigration really is around what you describe getting rid of the bad

people first. this seems too heinous even for trump, joyce. >> it really does. it's hard to imagine, and some of the reporting says that the agency that's granted these deferred action petitions for a long time about a thousand of them a year, uscis, is no longer doing them. suddenly that responsibility has devolved on i.c.e. yes, they are both parts of dhs, but they're two completely separate agencies with separate leadership, separate structure, and i.c.e. was unaware that they had been assigned responsibility to this according to reporting that quoted some of the folks at i.c.e., just didn't know that they were suddenly responsible for this. >> all right. so here's some of the reaction inside the government, guys. senator ed markey, it's unconscionable, it's wrong. and we are here to say that we will fight. we have gathered many times in the last two and a half years. these same groups have come

together. we have now reached the bottom of the most inhumane of all of donald trump's policies. joe biden says he is seeking to deport sick kids, seeking life-saving medical treatment like every bully is trying to make himself seem stronger like picking on the most vulnerable among us. do you think this holds up, or do you think this is the story where they say, oh, no, no, let's get rid of the gang members first? >> first of all, biden mentioned this in south carolina yesterday. you had literally hear gasps in the audience. because most people that hadn't heard this story. and he was laying it all out. it was emotional. it was a really powerful political moment if you want to look at this through political eyes, which you have to. >> do you want to hear it? we have that. >> he's seeking to deport sick kids seeking life-saving medical treatment in the united states. like every bully he's trying to make himself seem stronger by

picking on the most vulnerable among us. >> yeah. i mean, again, very powerful moment. he also, i mean, was very deft. he puts it into the context of a bully picking on the most vulnerable citizens. it's a hard, hard thing to defend even if you are as hawkish on immigration as a lot of donald trump supporters are. >> so i hear the words coming out of my mouth and even i question them, right? so i'm saying even trump couldn't do this. but he's got babies in cages. >> i mean, i think it's hard to assign any kind of moral sensibility to this administration at all. but that said, knowing the little bit about how government works, you do have to wonder with all of the chaos, especially that his immigration leadership has undergone. does anyone know how this exactly happened? who made this administrative change? and i just have to say that, you know, one of the roles that journalists play is

accountability journalism in figuring out exactly who is responsible for making this decision, who can fix it, and where the buck falls. >> or do they see it as a problem at all. >> or was this intentional, is this a political move? all of those questions are things that i know that our colleagues are working on right now. >> and will the democrats stay on this? i would have loved to see some of the candidates, somebody like even steyer who buys a lot of tv time, about a commercial showing this. make this something -- >> and put it on fox news so trump sees it. >> and make it something that's in everybody's living room. the problem is that when he does these despicable things and immoral things, it goes to another news story. and they need to start the dnc or somebody to really freeze it in time and just penetrate that in the american mind because most americans would never go for that. but it's flipped so quickly for them to really understand the impact. >> but think about how broken it is. it used to be that just a white house staff would read -- i mean, a normal white house, i

don't know how they're organized, has a regional press office that deals with "the boston globe" every day. they would call the white house and ask a press person for a comment. and it would get chalked up the chain, and someone would sort of walk into the chief of staff and say if you want to get homeland on the phone and say wtf. the fact that you're even talking about buying -- i mean, we might not have time for these kids. >> and i think that that's the problem that you're not dealing with a normal process. i think that this president you've got to play to what he understands, media and outrage from the public. he understands, as you said, if you brought it across the cable stations and kept seeing it, that gets his attention. writing a memo to him, god forbid a book sending it to him, is not going to happen. he doesn't read that stuff. but he watches the television and he watches cable news. you need to penetrate that.

and not that it would touch his heart. it would be him saying, oh, this is bad coverage, this is going to cause voters against me. he will do the right thing for the wrong reasons, but you can make him do that. >> i think these kids will take it -- joyce, let me give you the last word. >> one of the underdiscussed features of this new switch in policy is also that it will no longer be possible or it will be difficult to get deferred action for people who have traditionally gotten deferred action because they're a witness or a victim in a criminal case. that means prosecutors may find that they're going into court and suddenly they don't have the witnesses that they need to convict the bad guys. so ultimately this policy is wrongheaded, it's backwards. i suspect it's like you say, it may well be one of those situations where the left hand didn't know what the right hand is doing. if the administration is smart, they will rescind it pretty quickly and go after more important sorts of priorities.

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my thanks to mara, mark, and the rev al, most of all to you for watching. some exciting news from our friend al sharpton, "politicsnation" is celebrating eight years on the air on saturday. so tune in as you always do. congratulations. thanks for being a part of this show. >> thank you. >> we're grateful. that does it for us. "mtp daily" with chuck todd starts now. ♪ if it's friday, a massive storm is coming. where will hurricane dorian hit? more importantly, how long is it going to linger? we've got a brand-new advisory from the national hurricane center. plus, who gets the last gaffe? biden pushes back after his latest campaign trail