elections shows that the democrat dan mccreedy is actually ahead by 4 points. that election is happening on september 10th. mark your calendars. rachel will be back next week, and you can catch me tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. for my show "am joy." the "last word" with lawrence o'donnell is up next. >> thank you, joy. and joy, i hope you can hang around and run over here to this studio because a little bit later in this hour i would like to get your political analysis on what's happening in the presidential campaign. so unless you have to run out the door, could you run over here? >> i could be talked into that because you know what i love, lawrence, political analysis. i love to do it, so i will -- >> we need a few more minutes from you. just a few more. what should be a relaxing long holiday weekend is going to be a weekend of bracing for the worst in florida and the south eastern united states. msnbc will be tracking hurricane dorian all weekend, and we will

have the latest on the hurricane track on this program at the end of this hour. and that's an important time because just toward the end of this hour is when we will get the very latest forecast from the national hurricane center. that should be coming out and we should have it for you here at the end of this hour. and there are military storm clouds near the russian border tonight with georgia. it is another demonstration of russian aggression toward its neighboring countries that could become another international crisis over this weekend created by vladimir putin at a time when president trump is saying he wants vladimir putin and russia to be welcomed back into the g-8. russia expert evelyn farkas will join us once again tonight with her take on what vladimir putin is up to now and what the president of the united states should be doing about it. and our second favorite rachel will be back with us tonight. political scientist rachel bit cougher will give us more of her

explanation why the data she is using in her model has given her a prediction of the democrat winning a solid electorate victory in the electoral college in the next election. and we begin tonight where we left off last night with the clock ticking on the death sentence that the trump administration has we hope unwittingly imposed on maria izble. this is the most important story we discussed last night and it is the most important story we will discuss tonight because a life hangs in the balance. all because of an immigration policy change made by the trump administration which has decided to refuse to grant any extensions of permission to stay in the united states for medical treatment. that decision has been met by understandable outrage and moral condemnation since the story first broke. that radio station wbur in boston this week and then in the boston globe and then yesterday

in "the new york times," and that moral condemnation is completely understandable. but i for one am going to leave that out of what i have to say about this story because we are presenting this story again tonight with an objective. the goal here is to inform you of the news of what your government is doing but possibly even more importantly in this particular instance the goal here is to save a life. and the people who have the power to intervene and save this life will not hear the plea for her life. if it is hurled at them wrapped in moral outrage. the government officials who can change this death sentence in the coming days cannot be condemned into changing their policy. but they might be persuaded to change their policy if we keep telling them the story of maria izble. she came to this country when she was 7 years old. at the invitation and request of

my first guest tonight, dr. paul hermatz who told izble's story to rachel last night. he needed patients to conduct clinical trials for a rare disease and he could not find enough patients for this rare disease to study in the united states. there's the full formal name of the disease on the screen right now. the professional shorthand for it is mps-6. it causes spinal cord compression and other growth abnormalities. and the doctor convinced izabell's parents to bring her to the united states to help medical research, to help other children who would be born with her condition. she's been participating in medical students throughout her life in the united states. her doctor credits her with helping him and his research team in making dramatic breakthroughs that have helped people with her disease live longer. patients with her disease used to live just a bit beyond the

age of 20. now with isabell's lifelong participation in these studies patients can now live longer than 30 years. two weeks ago she received a letter saying if he doesn't leave the country within the next 33 days she will be deported, and every day between now and her deportation order we are going to try to find a way to persuade the people in the trump administration who are doing this, doing this to this patient to change their minds. because this is what isabelle's doctor told rachel last night. >> you're really handing her a death senitous. it's as if we're pulling a plug on a respirator or stopping feedings for a patient that needs that type of support. >> i think it's fair to assume no one in the trump administration who participated

in this change of policy decision has ever heard of the disease that isabelle struggles with, i certainly have never heard of and the breakthroughs isabelle -- but many of them do know now. we have to try to make sure they all know in the hope that somewhere we will find a sympathetic ear connected to an open heart, someone who can begin to turn this decision around in the days that are left before she's scheduled to be deported to her death. the politics of governing is far more complex than the politics of campaigning. and the politics of campaigning you are just trying to beat the other side. and in the politics of governing you are trying to persuade the other side. and in your own lives you all know that the tone and

vocabulary you adopt for persuasion is very different than the tone you bring to open argument. if she's deported to her death, if the day comes we must report at this hour she has died in quat mulla because she was deported and denied medical treatment to help keep her alive, there will be moral outrage, there will be condemnation. but as long as there is a chance to save her life we are going to work on this story the way i worked on legislation in the united states senate when i was a democratic staff member, trying to persuade senators on the other side to change their minds. so we're going to frame our coverage of this story in optimism. our coverage of this story will be based on the hope that someone will persuade the trump administration that isabbelle should be rewarded for what she's done in this country, rewarded for medical research, lives she has improved and lengthened because of her participation in medical

research. we hope that someone will persuade the trump administration to reward maria isabelle bueso with her life. and no one is more persuasive in telling her story than the hero that's kept her alive longer than anyone thought possible when she was a little girl in guatemala and longer than anyone thought possible when she arrived in california at age 7. it is my honor to begin our discussion tonight with that medical hero who joins us now. doctor, thank you very much for joining us again tonight. i know your schedule is difficult, but it is important to you. and so joining rachel last night, joining me tonight i think is at this stage possibly the most help that you can bring to your patient. so thank you very much for joining us. >> thank you, lawrence. it's really been a whirlwind two or three days, and we're

beginning to see some hope in the responses we're getting on the internet, by phone calls, by people -- parents of patients with rare diseases, similar diseases that i take care of that are asking how they can help and people calling who we don't know that are just giving suggestions and leaving messages. and i think it's really beginning to move people that this is a crisis. and it's a crisis not just for isabelle but for all these very rare disease patients that are being asked to leave the country. i'm not a hero. i am a pediatrician. i followed some great scientists with these studies and really want to give them credit. it was the perfect time to bring a unique therapy.

we can mention -- was one of the inventors of this therapy when it was first brought to the human for mps-1 and he helped move this forward for mps-6, which was the second disease that had therapy developed in this group. so it was a tremendous break through to be able to give these patients back the missing enzyme. and it was a breakthrough of new science, genetics, all of the ability to do gene therapy within cells and make this protein that we can infuse each week. and the future is open. i mean, that's the amazing thing that she's healthy and bright and vigorous and we're within a few years of being able to do gene therapy. trials are ongoing in italy for

gene therapy for mps-6, and we just need a few more years to bring this therapy to isabelle, so she doesn't need these infusions weekly, so she can make her own enzyme. and it'll be an unbelievable tragedy if she's taken off enzyme and is not able to reach this permanent solution. >> i have to believe that isabelle is more than just a patient to you after almost 20 years now of treatment and working together. she's been a contributor to your research, and i'm sure one of the real friends, important friends in your life. >> she is. it's a small community. we only have 50 to 100 patients in the u.s. i know most of the patients with mps-6 over having worked with this disease for 20 years.

and i travel around the world and try to meet as many patients as i can. and they support each other. they know each other, especially the young adults that have grown up with the disease and now have hope that they can lead reasonably long and productive lives. and, you know, it's -- this is really hitting the entire community. and it takes the wind out of them to think that this unique therapy that's keeping them alive is being pulled away from somebody that is doing well with it. so anything we're doing with media and with congressional help, you know, potentially can break through this barrier and keep the therapy going. >> doctor, if you had a minute with president trump what would you tell him about isabelle?

>> i would say that she's a delightful, vigorous, productive person. she's -- you know, she loves to dance. she has many friends. she's always thinking about how she can help other people. she actually even in high school was organizing rare disease day to help educate her friends and schoolmates about rare diseases. she's spent every year she travels to washington to participate in congressional meetings on rare disease day, lobbying congressmen, educating their offices. she really is a engaged person. i think that's the way to say it, and she will produce many positive benefits that we hope all of our children are able to do when they grow up and become adults. and this would be a tragedy to take this opportunity to live

and contribute away from her. >> dr. paul, thank you for taking the time to join us tonight. we really appreciate it. and we turn now to the politics of governing, to the politics of persuasion and what it might take to convince the trump administration to save isabelle's life. she's a former deputy chief of staff to president clinton and lecturer at the university of california berkeley school of law. thank you very much for joining us tonight. you've worked in a presidential administration. you know the way the thinking works. you know the way persuasion works. what would you suggest as a approach to try to persuade the trump administration to pull back on what is a death sentence? >> i think the first thing to the focus on is to understand what is motivating this

administration. to try to figure out how to persuade them. and unfortunately every step that this administration has taken on immigration is really rooted in what i believe is an effort to take discretion out of the system because that's what this new rule is to just summarily say you've been here, we're no longer accepting as a reason for you to be able to stay here that you are having critical, essential medical treatment. it is to take that discretion and to basically lose the humanity, hide the humanity of immigrants. so i'm sort of at a loss, frankly, lawrence, to say how would i persuade this administration to -- to withdraw this draconian view of immigrants as sort of not human, that they don't have stories and

they're individuals and that immigration authorities ought to be able to look at the context of each particular case and determine in this case of isabelle, this is case of life and death as you heard for the doctor. to deport her from the country is frankly an act of murder because she can't get this treatment in guatemala. so how would i persuade this administration, somewhere we've got to find a way to appeal -- there must be some humanity in them somewhere, don't you think, lawrence? >> i do. and that's exactly the perspective from which i'm covering this story and i hope that can reach people who have access to the president whether they're in government or out of government to make this case. this is a president who reportedly at the time -- reportedly at the time was moved by photographs of a child in syria who was a victim of what

was happening there. he was moved to missile strikes, according to the white house reports on this. his daughter presented him with these photographs. and so if there's any truth to that, if there's just a sliver of truth to that, it seems somewhere in that area is a space where something like this could break through. i want to read you from the letter, basically the deportation letter that was sent to isabelle because we now have a copy of it and it says it was dated august 13th and giving her 33 days from august 13th. and it says if you fail to depart the united states within 33 days from the date of this letter we may issue you a notice to appear and commence removal proceedings against you with the immigration court. so 33 days from august 13th is september 15th. so on september 15th they may commence, send her a notice to appear to commence removal

proceedings. do you have any estimate of if she gets one of those notices to appear, will it be appear within a week, appear within two weeks? what kind of timetable? >> no, they will set a date and she will need to appear. and let's be clear, there will be some time, but we also know from other efforts within the administration to speed up those processes, right? to not get people the time to really prepare their case. but i want to say in a case like this where your health and mental well-being is part of your ability to survive, imagine the stress and the downers that can happen to this young woman? so it is very likely that it'll be several weeks, perhaps a month -- but the important thing is no one should with this kind of condition where leaving the country would be a death sentence, why does she have to go through this?

and why should others not be able to present their case in a way that doesn't make them feel like their life is on the line, which is literally what is going on in this case. i do want to say one thing. maybe when you think about persuasion, you know, stephen miller is as we all know the aide if not the architect of this president's immigration policy, pretty close to it. what would it take to persuade him to think of human beings when he's coming up with these policies? that these are lives and families and individuals, human beings with as much right to dignity as he has himself? >> well, you know, i think the way a lot of these policies have been developed, it's entirely possible that the president himself knew nothing about this decision when it was made, knew nothing about these letters going out. and i actually in this case hope that is true so that the knowledge of it might be something that he can choose to

reverse, the more we get attention to this. maria, thank you very much for joining us on this subject tonight. we really appreciate it. thank you. and after this break that's coming up, we just had a week of terrible polls from donald trump's re-election prospects. political scientist rachel b bitcoffer is back with us tonight after these polls added even more support to her electoral college model, winning the electoral college with at least 278 electoral college votes. [farmers bell]

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and now for the return of our second favorite rachel. this week delivered another round of very bad polls for donald trump's re-election prospects. especially the quinnipiac poll that showed donald trump losing in one-on-one match ups with the top five presidential candidates and losing to the top four of those candidates by double digit margins. joe biden at 54% against donald trump's 38%. bernie sanders ahead of trump 53%, 39%. pete buttigieg is ahead of trump 49%, 40% in the quinnipiac poll. showing that whoever the democrats nominate for president will beat donald trump in the electoral college. she's using the same election

modeling that allowed her to predict the big blue wave of 2018 long before most people saw that coming. joining us now is political science professor rachel bitecofer with the lawson center for public policy in new port, virginia. this is your third round here on the "last word." and i actually want to once again start from the beginning and step through this analysis. and, you know, there's a lot of emotional reaction to this kind of talk now because i think there's such a shocked electorate especially on the democratic side that donald trump won before. and i believe that there is an exaggerated notion of donald trump as some kind of super man politically including in the media, which overreacted to donald trump squeaking out the electoral college. >> right. >> and i have not given up on looking at polling information in the traditional way.

and all of the polling information on donald trump is disastrous and always has been in terms of re-election since inauguration day. you look at that but you go way beyond that. and so talk us through how you get to the point where tonight you can say you're sure that you can either say the democrat will get to 78 or possibly put a better way, donald trump will lose 278 electoral votes to the democrat whoever that is. >> and it really is important to go back to that night in november 2016 and think about how the mood of the electorate was and there was such a sense -- right now we have this invincibility complex for trump. he's basically the terminator. you can't kill him, nothing will stick to him. and back then everybody believed the opposite. there was no way he was going to

be president. no one entertained seriously they were going to wake up wednesday morning to president trump. and that attitude really set the tone i think for the entire debate between trump and clinton. it really fired up a lot of the division within the democratic caucus between bernie democrats and hillary supporters. and this assumption, you know, certainly bioed by the forecasting models and the polling particularly in those crucial swing states, wisconsin and michigan, that just never showed him in contention. that gave people a sense of security that they did not need to show up with vuerosity, and we are talking about a whole different ball game now. >> stage one is move the electorate. totally different, there was a certainly confidence that hillary clinton would win. which meant low democratic turn out. there were voters you are sure which if they were told you

don't vote tomorrow, donald trump will win, they would have gone to the polls but didn't. so that turn out will show up in 2020. the other thing in your analysis that's relevant to that especially in those swing states you just mentioned is the third party vote for jill stein, for example, in some of those states made the difference in the electoral college for those states. and you insist that won't happen again, that vote will not go to the third party. >> we'll see some third party balloting and i think the arizona senate race last year was a great example where even after the green party candidate withdrew 2% did go there, and it ended up being decisive, still pulled out of it during there. so i'm thinking probably around 2% of the national vote. >> it'll be down. >> but we're talking about in 2016 i don't understand -- extraordinarily high. i mean the story in 2016 is not about the white working class who had been involved in a

long-term realignment away from the democrats and really last time they got excited about a democrat was bill clinton, a white southern gentleman from arkansas. you know, the story of 2016 is much more about who did not vote and who showed up and voted a protest ballot than it is about white working class voters who really just did what they have been doing for a long time and that's trending republican. >> the simple stage for this analysis simply and there's more to it -- all you have to do is reduce the third party voting from 2016 on the green party side of third party voting and trump loses. that's all you have to do. >> yeah, you could do just that one tweak in those critical states. keep in mind, florida has the same problem. we don't talk about it a lot, but the same problem down there occurred. i mean, we're talking about all of these states being decided by less than 1%. donald trump did not win a

majority in any of those states. he carried them with a plurality of the vote because of the 5%, 6% syphoned off to third party voters. when we factor in the turn out among of concern american voters and latinos, i guess you would call that quadruple factor of democratic malaise that we are not going to see 100% no matter how bad democrats might be at turning out voters. there's this natural passion now it's like kerosene on this demographic tsunami that's been laying there just waiting to vote. >> you first saw this new turn out phenomenon developing in the state of virginia in their stiet wi statewide elections in 2017. you learning from that applied it to the house races and that's what gave you the essence of your predictions is that there's going to be a turn out in these 2018 house races that will

deliver these seats to democrats. it's going to be extremely energized and all of orange county congressional seats can flip from republican to democrat because of this energy. and you're using that model now of the presidential election and you're saying in addition to this third party vote which will be different in this next election, there will be this energized turn out on the democratic side. but you also say there'll be an energized turn out for donald trump. so these are going to compete. >> that's exactly right and that was the one surprising feature of 2018, and i'll come back to that in a second, but i really want to hammer a point home. the democratic enthusiasm has to have the conditions for it. so when we look at these 40 districts that i identified with my model, they all share certain factors. they're suburban. there's a high rate of college education in them. a decent rate of diversity in terms of the racial and ethnic

diversity of the district. those were places where i could look at and say this is going to see a huge turn out surge, and that's why even the polling hadn't caught up in orange county on july 1st and the house ratings were lean republican or toss up republican i knew for sure they were going to flip. and even after election night when, you know, if you'll remember those districts, they took a long time to flip, i was not in panic at all. i sat there for five days. i just listened for a podcast with katie porter where she was worried she might not win ultimately. i wish she'd seen my analysis and she would have felt so much better. oats just a mathematical certainty if you have a passionate turn out, a catalyst, you're going to see that. but, you know, with the republicans i expected, you know, republicans vote. they're easier to vote in terms of their demographics and also the republican party is just

strategically superior to the democrats on how to get people to vote. but i didn't expect to see them maintain their turn out advantage. and in every district i analyze in a firth coming analysis i'll show even the democratic turn outs are bigger and it was a massive surge, they still underperformed the turn out of republicans. >> so you've now applied this to the electoral college map and looking at districts, basically areas within the electoral college map that say there's a lot of college educated voters, there's the kind of voter profile that you say will turn out in surprisingly big numbers. and in shorthand that's how you're getting to 278. >> that's exactly right. so i'm looking -- instead of a district i'm looking at statewide factors. i'm looking at, you know, urban populations because that's one advantage democrats have and there are des advantages to the electoral college system certainly, but every state has urban centers. some states have more than others.

and every urban center has suburban populations. so case in point, texas. texas is ground zero for the 2020 cycle. democrats left seats in 2018 because they're not thinking about them in terms of my model, the way i identify competition. and now i think they're starting to recognize, oh, the suburbs of dallas, i mean not only are they potential pickups for the house, those are the places if the democrats want to make a serious play at the texas senate or a serious play at flipping that in the electoral college which by the way would knock the presidency for a long-term off the republicans agenda, then that's where it would happen, in the suburbs of dallas and houston and major urban areas. >> professor rachelb bitecofer, our second favorite rachel, thank you very much for being with us tonight. coming up joy reid will join

us, and we'll see what joy thinks of rachel bitecofer's election prediction. that's next. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need. i wish i could shake your hand. granted. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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here's joe biden on jonathan capeheart's podcast in effect echoing rachel bitecofer's modeling for the presidential election. >> when an assertion is made, well, the reason the only person that can beat trump is quote an old white guy, i think there's other people in the race who can beat trump. >> who? >> well, i -- i think almost anybody. they'd all make a better president than trump no matter who's left in the race. >> joy reid is generously doing double duty tonight for hosting rachel maddow's show and then joining us here. she's the host of "am joy" on

msnbc and an author. and it says right here on the back of your book it delivers a compelling account of how we got to trumpism and what will happen next. so with that authority -- >> and it is great authority. >> invested in me by this book, what's your take on what you're hearing from rachel bitecofer? she says she can count tonight 278 electoral votes for the democratic presidential nominee whoever it is. >> yeah, and i'm going to bring our conversation video off air on-air that i did say to you when she tweeted -- someone tweeted to me her analysis that i read the say day you first had her on this show and i walked on this show and it was sort of a wake up call for me as well. i, you know, i've been on both sides of this business covering it and also working on campaigns. and i can tell you in the last month of the 2004 election, which is the first presidential campaign i worked on, in my deep

insight i knew that the democrat was going to lose. there were things about the race you knew, and she wrote down, ms. bitecofer wrote down the four things i think are the key. the mood of the electorate. the hungrier constituency always wins. a lot of that analysis was around that overconfidence. the fact it's not the white working class that's the pivot. i think democrats obsess with them too much. and the fact it is diverse suburban college educated districts that are the ones that deliver the angry result in 2018 that could again. and i think she's right in a sense that first thing, the mood. the hungry constituency after eight years of barack obama were white americans angry about racial change. they were enraged, they were motivated. hillary clinton's voters were not motivated. of concern american turn out fell under 60%. that is sure loser for democrats. i think since the democrats are

angryier and hungrier i think she's right. >> the third party voting gave donald trump the election, and people vote third party when they think they can and you think it's not going to tilt it. and she doesn't believe you're going to see a third party vote that gives wisconsin to donald trump. >> right, and if you think about the way the democrats and democratic leaning independents were thinking about 2016, the assumption was hillary was going to win anyway. so if you had some objection to her, whatever your objection was, that she spoke at a corporate function at some point, you could say you know what, i'm going to vote for jill stein. no one things that now. everyone who in any way is disturbed by donald trump, and that is most of the country, is shocked, appalled and terrified and wants him gone.

on the other hand, though, you think about the way his base is. they're either loving donald trump and think he's great but they are sated. they don't need to come out as much as the other side does or they're wondering what the heck, my farm is going down the tubes. so i do think the anger and outrage is on the side of democrats and the idea people are going to willy-nilly vote third party, i don't see that happening. >> i'm glad we discovered a new source of analysis about this. she changed my thinking, she's expanded your thinking. joy reid, thank you very much for doing overtime tonight. >> listen, this is fun for me. this is actually fun. i love this stuff. >> thank you very much. when we come back, on monday the world was shocked once again when donald trump blamed russia's illegal annexation of crimea from ukraine on president obama instead of vladimir putin. tonight russian forces are once again acting aggressively toward a neighboring country, towards

georgia. who will donald trump blame now? that's next.

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near the administrative boundary line of the russian occupied georgian region. georgian officials are now warning about the risk of a new serious confrontation in that region. military forces in the russian backed region are lining up along that region's border to demand georgian forces remove a checkpoint that separates the region from the rest of georgia. the move comes just days after president trump absolved russian president vladimir putin for the shocking acts of russian aggression that took place when russia invaded and annexed crimea in 2014. donald trump blamed that not on vladimir putin but on president obama. so who is to blame for russia's aggression tonight in georgia? and what should the president of the united states be doing about it? russia expert evelyn farkas is back with us and will join us after this break. is just a button.

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ya i don't even know your phone anymore... excuse me?! what? i don't know your phone number. aw well. he doesn't know our phone number! you have our fax number, obviously... today's xfinity service. simple. easy. awesome. i'll pass. tonight as we approach yet another international craze created by vladimir putin, we are joined by evelyn farkas, senior fellow at the marshall fund. she is an msnbc national security analyst. evelyn, troops forming on the russian border area with georgia. we've seen this before.

>> right. this is vladimir putin showing the world and his neighbors in particular that he's still the man, if you will, that russia is still a great power and that russia has a lot of cards. it's also a little bit a finger in the face to the west. so, western europe, the g7, our president, saying, hey, i can still cause a lot of trouble, don't think about expanding nato, georgia is still on the list, they still want to become a nato member. the original invasion of georgia, if you remember, in 2008, came about because the georgians were offered a conditional membership in nato and george bush, our president at the time, was pushing it really hard. it didn't come to pass because the russians invaded and continue to occupy 20% of georgia's territory. this is a very dangerous situation. and unfortunately, it's yet again, i would say, a g7 failure, because they should have been talking about ukraine and georgia and all of the things that russia is doing

wrong, rather than even having to discuss the possibility of reallowing, reinviting russia into the g7. >> president trump had them basically wasting their time on a discussion, then vladimir putin, to show his gratitude for how hard donald trump worked for him at the g7, to get him back in the group, he does this. you mentioned the first incursion into georgia. let's listen to what republican presidential candidate john mccain had to say about that then and just imagine what has happened to republicanism since john mccain said this and where donald trump is now. let's listen to this. >> i know from speaking this morning to the president of georgia, shack ashvilashvili, h

that americans are with that little nation as they struggle for freedom and independence. i know i speak to every american when i say to him today, we are all georgians. >> it's so hard to watch that with john mccain gone, and donald trump now in the place where john mccain wanted to be. that didn't have to be written for him, not one word of that had to be put in his mind for that. he was ready for that kind of -- how to deal with that kind of crisis. what should this president be doing now? >> he should ideally be doing what john mccain did which is recognizing what russia is doing. this is not a democracy. this is a country that's trying to reestablish a sphere of influence. it's trying to bully georgia, of course. there's also the situation in ukraine which we need to keep a very close eye on. now, maybe they've made some progress. but nevertheless, vladimir putin's agenda is all about creating a sphere of influence, getting his way with the neighboring countries, weakening

them politically. so this is -- again, unfortunately john mccain understood, we have to fight against the bullies, we have to fight against autocracy. the georgians established a democracy. john mccain was heavily involved when most people didn't even know there was a republic of georgia, they just thought there was the state of georgia. he understood clearly what happened. in 2008, when we said, georgia, come into nato, we didn't realize the russians would have the reaction they had. now we know they'll use military force to prevent sovereign countries from joining associations that their people want them to join. that should be unacceptable. the west needs to jump in, lawrence. our government should be leading the way to put an end to this aggression. >> we'll be watching over the weekend and we'll probably have to hear from you next week about this. evelyn farkas, thank you for joining us tonight. when we come back, breaking news, the newest forecast from the national hurricane center has just been released.

bill karins has it, he'll be ready, next.

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our breaking news, the national hurricane center has just released its latest update on hurricane dorian. let's go right to nbc meteorologist bill karins. bill, what's the latest? >> lawrence, it's a coin flip, it's 50-50 right now whether we'll get a florida landfall. yesterday i would have said there's 75% chance this is heading into florida, possibly as a major hurricane. so this is a great trend. we still have two to three days tomorrow, we could trend worse tomorrow. but we like the trend we've seen in the last 12 to 18 hours. you like behind me, you see this beast of a storm. you see the huge eye, the rapid intensification today. we knew this had perfect conditions to become a major hurricane, maybe a 4, maybe a 5, it's a 4 right now. what we didn't know is where it would head. a huge category 4, a 5, it stays

out in the ocean. it's bad for the cruise lines and whatever else but it spares us a billion-dollar weather disaster. that's what we're hoping for and we still have a chance of that happening. the latest from the weather center, category 4, looks extremely impressive on satellite imagery. we have a lot of opportunity for changes with the path. let's get you to the latest path from the hurricane center. yesterday at this time we had the storm coming in just north of west palm beach, up through central florida. so we have slowed it down and shifted towards the coast. we tell you not to stare at the red line, of course it's bright red, it's kind of hard not to. the cone of uncertainty is this area in white. we're starting to take out extreme south florida and the keys from that. as we go closer to the storm, getting towards florida or the

bahamas, we'll narrow the cone down and start to eliminate some people from it. the florida trend today was fantastic for miami and the tampa/ft. myers/naples area. still, jupiter, the melbourne area, space coast through flagler county, volusia county, we have to closely watch those areas. the hurricane center has it as a category 2 up towards georgia and south carolina, lawrence. so we're not done with this yet by far. it's going to be a nervous weekend. we'll still have mass evacuations. we have to prepare for the worst but we still hope this trend offshore continues. >> we'll be watching. bill karins, thank you very much, appreciate it. that is tonight's "last word." "the 11th hour" with brian williams starts now. tonight, a new update posting this very minute on the path of hurricane dorian, as residents in the bahamas and florida go into emergency mode. could georgia and the carolinas be next?