things he wants to send around. his staff takes an iphone picture of it and sends it. a new way of sending that document on axios on hbo show. >> here's the next investigative piece to launch, was that the sharpie that was used? >> live in washington, thank you, mike allen. of course we'll be reading axios a.m. in a bit. you can sign up for that newsletter at signup.axios.com. >> that does it for us this friday morning. i'm yasmin vossoughian with ayman mohyeldin. "morning joe" starts right now. where were you? >> i was by my cousin's house and that was the only roof in the neighborhood that stayed on. it was like 80 people there. and then my grandma we had to get her out of the house because her roof came off. it was just -- the pressure, the tornados, it was awful.

everything is just -- everything's destroyed. everything is flattened. if it was not flattened it's just structure. people don't have homes, people don't have food. i never experienced anything like that in my life. i pray nobody ever has to again. >> a look at the aftermath of hurricane dorian in the bahamas. the death toll there is now at 30 and officials stress the number is likely to rise dramatically. "morning joe's" medical contributor dr. dave campbell will have a report straight ahead. meanwhile, the storm is lashing north carolina. and the number one concern at the moment is flash flooding. more than 6 million people are under flood watches and it's still pouring in many areas. more than 290,000 homes are currently without power in north

and south carolina. earlier in the day, hurricane dorian spun a series of tornados. this video is is from a mobile home park in emerald isle, north carolina. let's go straight to bill karins for the very latest. >> good morning to you. we have seen is the difference between a category 5 and a category 1. it's exponentially worse. 1,400 times worse than a category 1. we can get tornados, 90 miles per hour on the estimated top winds, we haven't seen anything close to that on land and that's good. we're watching the eye moving right along the outer banks. here's the current wind gusts. it's still not exactly what you call safe out there. we have winds in the 50s, occasionally 60s from wilmington, kingston, out to the outer banks so we can get only trees coming down and some scattered power outages as the storm exits today.

here's where the center of the eye is. not far from the atlantic here, we may get a warning over oco coke or cape hatteras. maybe some minor surge problems, we could get some isolated tornados. we have to watch out around the virginia beach/norfolk area. numerous areas, everyone in maroon is under a flash flood warning and we'll take the storm out in the open atlantic and eventually it will head towards nova scotia. likely as a category 1 hurricane and just enough of the storm is going to clip southern portions of new england. cape cod is under a tropical storm warning. you will get some rain and gusty winds but i don't think expect -- we won't have a lot of damage, but a minor inconvenience. the storm for the u.s., dorian has been what we'd say underachieving and now we can focus on the recovery efforts in

the bahamas. >> thank you, bill karins, very much. along with joe, willie and me, we have sam stein from the daily beast. republican strategist and political analyst susan del percio. associate editor for the "washington post" david ignatius and associated editor for "the washington post" and msnbc political analyst eugene robinson. >> yeah. so willie, this storm has -- it seems like it's been around forever. but finally, making contact with land in the united states. of course, we're going to be talking about the misery that the residents of the bahamas have been enduring. just awful. but south carolina, north carolina and virginia look like the only states directly impacted by this terrible storm. >> yeah. never like to use the term dodge the bullet because it doesn't feel that way to the people on the outer banks of north

carolina where the big wind is hitting, but thank god we didn't have more drastic and deadly storm in the united states so far. i'm glad dr. dave is in the bahamas, because man, it has been devastated down there. we'll continue to talk about the storm while it continues to batter the east coast. president trump though not backing down from his claim that alabama faces serious threats from hurricane florian. he tweeted nine times about alabama. even a white house released a statement defending the president's claim. yesterday afternoon, the president tweeted maps from august 29th and all 30th writing just as i said, alabama was originally projected to be hit. the fake news denies it, he writes. he went on to say, i was with you all the way, alabama. the fake news media was not. here is what shep smith of fox news had to say about that yesterday. >> why would the president of the united states do this?

he decries fake news that isn't and disseminates fake news that is. this is one where he can apologize and just move on. that map was from the day hurricane became a hurricane. eight days ago. august the 28th. it was four days old at the precise time he said alabama would likely be hit harder than anticipated and by then it was fake news defined on a very serious subject. this morning another statement, what i said was accurate. it wasn't and it isn't. >> and according to cnn's jake tapper, president trump called the fox news correspondent into the oval office yesterday to argue that he was not wrong about alabama. according to jake tapper, fox news senior white house correspondent john roberts was beckoned to the oval office yesterday afternoon. in an internal fox news email, roberts wrote that trump quote, stressed to me that forecasts for dorian last week had alabama in the warning cone.

he insisted that his -- it's unfair to say that alabama was never threatened by the storm. according to tapper, his analysis was that the president was looking for acknowledgment that he was not wrong for saying that at some point alabama was at risk. even if the situation had changed by the time he issued the tweet. sunday morning, that was. roberts did not immediately respond to cnn's request for a comment. joe, i have to say i have been away for a little bit on vacation, blissfully unplugged and to see that the president of the united states is still talking about a map and a doodle he drew about a hurricane not coming to alabama that the forecast was changed, that he still is insisting upon being right about something he was so clearly wrong about is stunning and a little bit baffling. >> well, it is. it's also of course disturbing. there are so many things that happened, i think a lot of us, willie, you and i have gotten to the point where we roll our eyes on most of these tweets. >> yeah.

>> but here you're actually talking about a hurricane. the president tweeted out that residents of alabama needed to be worried at a point when they didn't. so of course that causes a lot of concerns, so much so that the government has to send out a clarifying statement. it's -- what was more disturbing was last night was a night that people in south carolina and north carolina and now virginia were either getting hit by the hurricane or having to prepare for the hurricane is. those states south carolina, north carolina and virginia. i have been inside my house with the windows and doors boarded up and hunkering down. and it's really frightening. you don't know what tornados are going to spin off. you don't know where they're going to go. you don't know how your community is going to be ripped apart. and while at that precise moment the president of the united states wasn't talking about

south carolina or north carolina or virginia. he was talking about alabama, a state that was never in any danger and certainly was at least as shep smith and fox news said four days removed from any danger by the time he tweeted his tweet. you know, david ignatius, again, so much of this is just farce and i have gotten to the point -- i pull my hair out at the ignorance and the nonsense. but in a case like this, he panicked people in alabama. now he's lying about it. and he's doing that instead of doing what every president i ever dealt with during these storms whether it was bill clinton or george w. bush or governors like lawton chiles or jeb bush, i mean, when those storms are about to hit shore, all of their attention and focus

was on protecting the people that were in the path of the storm. donald trump bizarrely enough was focused on a sharpie doodle that he had done several days before. and there are of course the whole world is watching. there are consequences in russia and china and saudi arabia and across the world that our leader seems this detached and this unstable emotionally. >> you know, joe the thing about the sharpie gate as we have been calling it is that it offers a remarkable psychological insight into the president and what makes him tick. anybody makes a mistake he got it wrong the first time around about alabama. it's understandable apparently and we had seen some earlier reporting and apparently

confused it in his mind that happens to people, even presidents but then you move on. this obsessive attempt to keep relitigating to the point of summoning a reporter, john roberts, to the white house to make his case taking this and making it the only story that today we're focusing on illustrates the self-destructive way this president operates. it's mystifying to me. this was one where you just -- you know, you make a mistake, you move on. our colleague john meachem made that comment in comments over the last 24 hours. donald trump is different, he's got to be right about everything. if he feels like he's humiliated by being caught in a lie it's the fault of the fake news, et cetera. et cetera. you have to watch it and shake your head. >> it's incredible. it is self-destructive. you see him, joe, talking about, for example, when you get into

his head you know that he sees the value of even negative coverage of talking about pence staying at a trump property not doral, bedbugs, but the other one in ireland. you know that every time that story is covered trump is happy because it's at least press coverage for a brand of his. but with this, you just -- i have no idea what his end game could be when he continues to prove that he was completely wrong. >> well, it's not an end game. sam stein, i always said that because donald trump surprised the mainstream media in 2016 with his unorthodox campaign it's -- his terrible campaign in many ways there's always this assumption that he's got -- he's got this magic. this voodoo. that we just don't understand the strange ways of donald trump and that he's playing three

dimensional chess. no, these are the moments you realize he stares at the board, picks up a pawn and puts it in his mouth and starts eating it that's where we are. all of this does not accrue to his benefit. as he digests all of the chess pieces, you realize when it hits his stomach -- it's bad news. it's bad news for him. this is more bad news for donald trump in a terrible summer. >> i'm trying to go along with this imaginary. but i don't know how to advance it. but i do agree with you. i was talking to susan before we started this show. about whether there was something he was trying to distract from. maybe it's, you know, transferring money to his border wall from the military bases. something that is more politically problematic. and my position is if he's trying to distract, if he's

trying to deflect, this is the worst job at deflection or distraction you could possibly do because he looks pathological. he looks like someone who if your uncle were doing this, you would say, oh, my god, he has a real problem. nine tweets, five different maps, an inability to just let something so minor go. and to do so at a time, when one, the hurricane is hitting the u.s. main land which is obviously something that the president should be attentive to, but two, i don't want this to get lost a generational storm has just completely obliterated and wiped away the bahamas and caused a massive amount of human suffering including a death count that's likely to shock us. for a president to not show a modicum of empathy or attention to that because he's obsessively drawing sharpies on old maps is a bizarre thing to witness and it's a bad political development for him too. i don't think he's distracting

because if he was trying to distract he would be doing something else other than this. >> i think there's tendency to overthink what president trump is doing or saying. he can't be wrong. we have known this about him for so how long. he was embarrassed he was very wrong and now he's the president of the united states so when he's wrong it has real impact. as you know for the people of alabama who may have thought they were going to be getting a storm their way. the national weather service in birmingham came out 20 minutes after first tweet on sunday and said no, the storm is not coming here. he has to dig in deeper and create this chasm between two sides. those who were with him and those who were against him even son a tweet where he was demonstrably, he has to dig in. he can't be wrong but everyone knows he is because it's sitting in plain sight in this case. >> you know, mika, in most cases -- well, in every case except for donald trump, the strange case of donald j. trump,

if the national weather service comes out 20 minutes later and corrects what you said, then you don't fight it for another week. you go, oh, you know what, i was looking at old maps. old maps, sorry about that. just can't do it. it's something that he told us from the very beginning that he just can't say he's sorry. he's too insecure to do it. >> well, now to more details on where the money is coming from for president trump's border wall. we're learning that schools and day-care centers for military families are losing millions of dollars in order to fund the wall. schools for the children of u.s. military members from kentucky to germany to japan will be affected. according to the pentagon, a day-care center at joint base andrews in maryland will also have its funds diverted. the move comes as the pentagon announced earlier this week it will be pulling $3.6 billion in

funding from 127 defense department projects. i wonder, willie, how mitch mcconnell will handle that information that impacts his state. >> one school serving military families along the kentucky/tennessee border will lose funding to president trump's border wall, "the new york times" reports this morning that the pentagon's decision to divert $62.6 million in funding from building ft. campbell's new school will mean the school students will continue to use the old school. teachers are forced to use mobile carts to store their lesson plans and since is the cafeteria isn't big enough, they have to eat in the school library. according to "the times," students are stuffed within classrooms and classrooms will struggle to strain which lesson to listen to and which to filter out.

campbell is home to the 101st air borne division and deployed to afghanistan and to iraq. this move to divert funding from the school comes after senate majority leader mitch mcconnell who of course represents kentucky touted his commitment to helping the base's families writing in an op-ed at the beginning of the year, our commonwealth is home that's critical to our national defense. i helped the men and the women serving there to keep america safe. the question mika posed is a good one, what will mitch mcconnell say, well, his office is saying we wouldn't be in this position if democrats would work with republicans on border security. we wouldn't have to be in a place that the president is transferring from the middle school on a military base to get it build. >> i wonder if he's talking about a deal that would have secured the border funding and then walking away from it and that's why mitch mcconnell

doesn't want to do anything on the gun legislation or anything else because he knows he can't trust the president. so do i expect the president to be -- i'm sorry, do i expect mitch mcconnell to try to twafl his way out of this? absolutely. what he can't waffle his way out of is the senator said it may hurt, whether it be in colorado, re-elections up there. in maine. the trump campaign has cited that they wanted to try to flip new mexico and taking away money from military institutions is not a good way to do that. i think donald trump will find it very hard to pass these chess pieces. as the campaign continues if he continues doing things like this. >> too early. >> sorry. >> way too early. >> i was thinking about going there, i was like no. >> let's move beyond that. so you have mitch mcconnell -- think about this. mitch mcconnell talked about, gene, getting that money for those bases to quote, keep

america safe. donald trump has raided that money now and he's diverting it to a vanity project that john kelly, that lindsey graham that john cornyn, that so many republicans said will not help. will not help keep the border secure. but he's actually taking real money away from real military construction issues and readiness issues and you look at thom tillis was it $80 million he stole from north carolina, he is talk about alabama? donald trump doesn't give a damn about north carolina and apparently thom tillis can't do anything to stop that. martha mcsally didn't have what it took to protect arizona from

being looted. you look at the rest of the people on the list, lindsey graham. all the golfing in the world couldn't stop the president from looting $11 million from the good people of south carolina. $8 million from cory gardner in colorado. i mean, if -- if they're golfing with president trump around the clock and he steals money for a project that was already funded to the tune of $21 billion in a bill that stephen miller nixed. donald trump's problem shouldn't be with democrats. it should be with stephen mil r miller. they would have already had the wall built by now if it weren't for stephen miller. >> yeah. absolutely there were deals to be made on immigration that's been clear from the start. and donald trump won't make those deals. you know, $3.6 billion is a

small part of the defense department budget but it's a lot of money and it's a lot of money as we see today that affects the states of republican senators who were up for re-election. so you know, martha mcsally is not going to be happy about this. it puts her in a bad position, puts all of them in bad positions. puts cory gardner in a bad position and mitch mcconnell, yet, i predict you're going to hear nothing honest coming from these senators about this because they're all scared of donald trump and, you know, what these first two stories we have done this morning have in common, the sharpie gate and the money that's been taken for the wall is that everything is always all about donald trump. and if we haven't learned that about him, total disregard for

the political position or feelings or whatever of anybody else, if we haven't learned that by now then when are we going to learn it? it's been clear from the beginning and it's clear right now. it's all about him. how many does he have to act pathological or i think the term of art is crazy before we say, gee, he's crazy. >> he's eating one chess piece after another. going for the rook next. talking about real-life consequences -- it's just numbers on a screen. you know, in congress i represented pensacola, whiting, egg land, tyndall, i represented all of these bases where men and women would be deployed. of course the deployments have become more rapid. they have become more numerous.

they have been more crushing on families. so when our men and women go off to war, go off to defend this nation, they want to know that the families that they're leaving behind are being taken care of. so this is -- this is not just political theater by donald trump. there are real-life consequences and the armed services commit e committee, we put -- we put this under readiness. are the troops going to be ready? is military construction such that they're being taken care of? that they can go on one deployment after another and they don't get to a breaking point. this actually where you're gutting money from facilities that children and spouses and family members use, that goes right to the heart of readiness

and how these troops are doing. >> joe, what military families are i think close to sacrosanct in our country, there's a national feeling of obligation, some ways of guilt to the families whose families who have suffered in the difficult wars. ft. campbell i know from my experience of traveling is a place where a lot of warriors who serve in special units, task forces who are doing the hardest part of this fighting often you'll ask where you're from, they say ft. campbell. we need to see exactly what's being cut here, what affects it will have on the families of these soldiers who have been deployed and the community. but i was with a group of senior military families last night and they talked -- must have been 45 minutes about the ethic of service that is part of their

culture. it's absolute, uncompromising service to their country going and doing what their country asks, hoping, expecting that their families will be taken care of. so i think something like this, robbing money from one account intended for these people that the country as a whole feels a great debt toward and putting it instead in what seems like a vanity project, trump's wall, it just isn't going to sit right. so we need to do more reporting but it's -- it sticks in the craw. >> it does stick in the craw, and it can be called a vanity project because everybody, republicans, democrats, independents, experts all said while republicans were in control of congress that the wall actually doesn't make america safer. that it was in fact a vanity

project. just go back and look at the quotes of the republicans during that time. willie, i need to go to you here because obviously i saw it when i served in congress and after. but you see it every day. this commitment that these warriors make, the sacrifices that their families make. that their spouses and children make. we would hope that the united states government would take care of those who take care of us every day. it's not happening in these cases. certainly not in north carolina. not in south carolina. not in arizona. not in colorado. not in texas. not in all these states where donald trump gutted money from these facilities to take care of their children. >> yeah. and the sad and painful truth in this country is that we don't take care of the people who go fight the wars for us. we say we will it's part of the contract we sign with them

implicitly they go fight the wars for us, we'll take care of them at home. on so many fronts we don't do a good job and this is imminently preventible and to take money from those back on the base who need this school. this is something that's been boiling and festering for years. the idea that this school needs to be built, this overcrowded school. this is sick and just to give you one idea i want to point out how the rest of the senate feels about this. republicans in particular. "the new york times" points to an interview that lindsey graham gave to cbs back in february, this topic was out there. he was asked about this and he said, quote, it's better for middle school kids in kentucky to have a secure border. we'll get them the school they need but right now we have a national emergency on our hands. so if you're looking for republicans in the senate and congress to stop this move by the president, you're on probably looking for something that's not going to happen. >> well, one more shameful moment for lindsey graham, mika. because lindsey was one of those

republicans when the gop controlled washington who -- you can go back and look at the quote just like you can look at his quotes about donald trump saying that he would destroy the republican party and it would deserve to be destroyed if he ever got their nomination and he would be a terrible president. but look at lindsey's quote i think from 2017 where he said building a wall didn't seem to be a good use of money. now, he's talking about national emergencies and actually gutting facilities for our men and women in uniform and their children. >> it's crazy. so we're going to get back to all of this. but joe and willie, do you guys -- do you feel a break from trump, a break from this for a second? >> yeah. some good news. >> really good news. like news we have been waiting for for a long time. yes, we have what we had on "morning joe" wonderful news. kasie hunt, she's been waiting

longer than us for her baby to come. >> oh. >> and he did on wednesday night, late wednesday night. it's a boy. >> hold on. we need a lightning bolt here. >> holy cow. >> oh, my gosh. this is mars hunt rivera. >> yes. >> born late wednesday night after an all-day labor. she was so scared. she did a great job. he clearly has big things planned for his life. mars, guys, weighed in at 9 1/2 pounds. >> whoa. >> ow. 9 1/2 pounds. yeah. and 21 1/2 inches. he's a big baby. look at the feet. >> awesome. >> they waited to find out if they were having a boy or a girl. it's a boy. i'm so proud of you. >> kasie said we love him so much, i can't wait to see what joy he brings to our family of three. >> i'm so happy this -- we have been waiting a long time.

kasie, you have been a friend, a confidant, a colleague and now a fellow mom. so congratulations and we're going to support you and mars all the way through all of this. al welcome to the -- welcome to the world, mars hunt. >> what a cool name. mars rivera. can't help be but a star like that how great is kasie, reporting up to the very end. anybody who knows her, running around capitol hill, nine months pregnant. now we know to be a 9 pound 5 ounce baby, awesome reporter and awesome friend and we hope she enjoys the time off with mars. >> going to be an awesome mom. still ahead, we have an exclusive first look at some of the aftermath from hurricane dorian from the bahamas. we'll have a report straight ahead. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ful 5g experience for america. that's why the nfl chose verizon. because they need the massive capacity of 5g with ultra wideband, so more screaming, streaming, posting fans... can experience 5g all at once.

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and one of the first things on the time line was russia hacks estonia. i'm really interested in this estonia story. it has a feeling of a missed warning sign and i'm wrestling with whether it was a one off, whether it was a cyber attack or whether it was the precursor to what got launched in 2016. >> the proverbial canary in the coal mine. >> that was a clip from "the weekly" down in partnership with "the new york times." this sunday's episode traces the origins of russia's 2016 interference in the united states election back nearly a decade as we saw there to almost identical events which took place in the tiny nation of estonia. joining us now from brussels, belgium, "the new york times'" matt apuzzo.

great to have you on. we have talked so much over the last three years now about russia. about what happened. the aftermath, the mueller report, mueller's testimony. we feel like we know so much and yet you peeled us back to 2007 in estonia before donald trump, before barack obama, this is during the bush administration. what did you find about that moment that was significant? >> well, it really just starts to feel like a missed warning sign. what happened in 2007 was there was what seemed like a domestic dispute in this tiny country of estonia over an old soviet war memorial and then it turned into the mass protest and vie is lens in the streets and then the government of estonia gets hacked for weeks on end. and what we in the united states looked at, we said, well, you know, it seems like it's a former soviet state, fighting with russia. and it looks like maybe a cyber attack. and the government completely missed what was going on here

which was the origins of a sophisticated cyber influence campaign. it really was the -- it was the origin story, the blueprint for what we saw in 2016. >> so that leads to the question, matt, that's a dozen years ago. was the cia, were intelligence services here in the united states and around the world aware that russia was doing this, it had the capability and then presumably if so would have been following that up through the 2016 election? >> i think there were people who were aware of it but i mean, you have to remember 2007 we're talking about the aftermath of the cia black sites and we're talking about what are we going to do with guantanamo bay and russia was seen as an important ally in that regards. there was the sense of well, the cold war is over. and again, we really looked at it like it was a cyber attack. and so if there was a response, it was really, well, we better

harden infrastructure, we better protect our systems from getting hacked but we really paid zero attention at all to the fact that the russians were figuring out a way to tear at the fiber of a divided country and that's exactly what they did here. >> matt, david ignatius has a question for you. >> matt, great reporting putting the recent events in context. i want to ask you what your sense is of what's been done in response? when you listen to commanders of u.s. cyber command they talk about all of the proactive steps that are being taken now to protect 2018, 2020 elections much more aggressive operations inside russian networks do you get that same feeling that something has changed, that they have learned a lesson from the kind of reporting that you have presented in your new piece? >> i do think so, but i mean, david you know this better than anybody. hardening infrastructure is really important and when you talk about cyber command and homeland security that's what

we're talking about. i don't think the united states has a real hold on how are we going to address influence operations in a country that is probably more divided than ever. if democrats don't want to talk to republicans and republicans are immediately suspicious of anything that comes from democrats, you know, that is just fertile ground for an influence operation. this goes all the way back to the cold war. that part is not new. it's just -- it's propaganda on steroids. i think that is the hardest part and that's not easily solved. >> hey, matt, sam stein here. i want to push something by seeing if you agree with it. but i want to use the word sophisticated cyber operations. one of the things that struck me about 2016 at least was how unsophisticated the operations were. pretty basic disinformation campaigns, email hacking. obviously they tried to gain access to some voter databases but the real disinformation stuff was not all that real

sophisticated if you think about it and that makes it difficult for governments including the national government to actually counteract them. is that a problem that people in the intel community feel or the governments feel? you can't compel a john podesta to have a two-step email verification or take down the bot accounts. because they're so unsophisticated they can't compel a government response. >> yeah. i think that's a great point. you know when you talk about two step verification, the basic things, if you think of your cyber defense as a chain, you're only as strong as your weakest link. i think human networks are always going to be vulnerable to that sort of thing. going back to the estonia case, that was a d-dos attack. it wasn't sophisticated but that you saw was a really novel for

the moment effort to use the comment sections. this is before social media, but the comment sections on news websites as sort of like a fake news petri dish and that's a whole new -- a whole new problem. >> it's so interesting. "the new york times" matt apuzzo, thank you so much. we'll be checking out the new episode of "the weekly" on fx and on hulu. so joe, obviously this is not a new problem, but more sophisticated perhaps in 2016. >> more sophisticated and again we're getting warnings, you know, it seems every week from the people that are running our intel community and our military that the russians are coming at us and we have to protect and defend our democracy for whatever reason republicans don't want to do that. david, let's take a look at russia 30,000 feet. if you look at this month's copy of foreign affairs they of

course look at the autocrats rising in power and an interesting take on vladimir putin. he seems himself as peter the great and his foreign affairs say those in the capitals see him as a tyrannical genius and yet people in russia who don't give him high marks right now see him as the second coming of brezhnev which is not meant as a compliment at all. and so here we are all these years later after misjudging vladimir putin, wondering whether we underestimated him before and whether we're actually overestimating him now. and if you spoke to most russians they would probably conclude, would they not, we may be overestimating his reach. >> putin we haven't misjudged him in both directions. he's getting a little long in

the tooth as they say as an autocratic dictator. there are some ragged edges to his apparatus in moscow. he still seems to take risks boldly and generally to do better with them than i would have expected. he's got a real problem now in syria that's hard to solve. there's still a ragged, bloody war that's being fought in syria. they're killing a lot of syrian rebels in the province of idlib. it's on russia and they're not doing very well with it. they have problems that they're struggling to work out with turkey. you know, on one level they're much closer to turkey than they were before. but they also have some complicated problems. i think the real issue is is whether the voters of europe who have seen russian influence campaigns see this weak putin

trying to flex his muscles are going to push back. whether we're going to see stronger center right, sen isser the left governments resisting the kind of pressure that overwhelm the number of european countries. and i think that's really the most important battle ground and then obviously we'll see what happens in our elections next year. but putin has been at this a long time. he's cagey. cagey and kgb both, but i do think he's -- he's running out of cards to play. somebody was describing a fighter jet the russians were trying to sell turkey. it's just a lousy jet. it's not clear that it's stealthy. that it can hide in space. got an engine that keeps breaking. anybody who would buy it is making an unwise decision. that's their problem. they're selling a product that isn't very good. >> yeah. and he's -- mika, he's been

holding the weak hand since 1999 and has done an extraordinary job with that weak hand. but the question is is he the feature or is he the past? and really the biggest question has to do with he's still relatively certain if you compare him to american politicians running for president, he's a young man. but still that question of succession is haunting. russia was in a chaotic state before he came in and regardless of what you think of him, he brought order and the question is what's after putin? that remains the most troubling question. >> well, coming up, the death toll is rising in the bahamas after hurricane dorian left the island devastated. "morning joe" medical contributor dr. dave campbell is is there with project hope and has an exclusive look at relief efforts just getting under way. that is next on "morning joe."

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what did you live through? >> a nightmare. that's all i can tell people. i have lived in abacos all my

life. i have through hurricane floyd who was a 5 also. but i tell people this was like a 10. i mean, everything is gone. there's nothing left. what are standing -- there's not much left to it. i mean, the structures are some standing, some are completely done. in the mainland, marsh harbour, i understand there are hundreds and hundreds of people that are dead. i still don't have family members that i have accounted for yet. >> nbc's mariana atencio spoking with a survivor of hurricane dorian and the death toll is sitting at 30 and it is likely to rise. the health minister said that the number of people killed in the category 5 hurricane could be quote, staggering. the crews are going house to house inspecting structures, many many cases just piles of rubble where they once stood as

they search for any survivors and also recover bodies. "morning joe" medical contributor dr. dave campbell was embedded in the bahamas with project hope as the group races to provide badly needed supplies to those affected by the storm. here is dr. dave with tom kotter, followed by dr. dave speaking with some of the victims of the hurricane. >> abaco is an island that got hit the worst from this hurricane. i was actually there today doing an assessment at one of the clinics to see exactly what the needs are. one of the challenges of this response is that because communications are down, we had to do this stuff in person. but in the meantime, we can anticipate what their needs are. so right now we're standing in front of a barge that's loaded with health and hygiene products that we're able to procure.

palletize and then get it sent to abaco and then the hygiene products will get them into the next few weeks, before they're into the more permanent even if it's temporary housing. even you approach the airport the runway is surrounded like a moat by all floodwaters by water. we had to take a pickup truck to get from the actual runway to the airport itself. which is not operating normally. so there's a lot of flooding. in terms of injuries and things that the clinic is seeing it's mostly trauma right now. the flooding was obviously very bad, but the illnesses that we usually see with the flooding haven't surfaced yet in terms of a health priority. what we are seeing are the injuries from the wind and the debris in the wind. >> everybody at home is asking and everybody across the world is asking what they can do to help the bahamians in their recovery efforts from hurricane dorian. >> i really want people to visit

project hope.org and do hit that donate button where we're well set up here, we're starting our work. we're already distributing and we're not going anywhere. we'll be here for some time. >> can you tell us about us? i know it's hard. >> everything is just ruined. >> where were you? >> i was by my cousin's house and that was the only roof in the neighborhood that stayed on. everyone came to the house, it was like 80 people there. and then my grandma, we had to get her out of the house because her roof came off. it was just -- the pressure, the tornados, it was awful. everything is just destroyed. everything is flattened. if it was not flattened it's just a structure, people don't have homes, people don't have food. i have never experienced anything like that in my life. i pray nobody ever has to again.

>> what can we do today? what can we do today and help? >> just try to get people out because there's bodies and it's just going to get really bad. going to get really bad and i feel like people are going to get desperate and panic and they just need to get out. >> so getting out is the main number one thing? both of you have said that. >> nothing to go back over -- >> there's nothing there. >> just flights and boats. >> flights and boats, anything to get people out, just get them to safety. because over there it's not safe and as time passes and it gets worse and people start to panic and get -- it's going to get really bad. >> this is a mess and this is a mess that we shouldn't have to clean up. i shouldn't have to get here myself. i shouldn't have to ensure that she's secure. i'm 25, she's 26. this isn't my job. we don't have kids, but if i have to do this for as many

people as i have to, if we have to rally, we will rally. >> it's devastating. anything anyone can do to help and donate, project hope, americares, the red cross. up next t latest on the storm's current path from bill karins. back in two minutes. ( ♪ ) only tylenol® rapid release gels have laser drilled holes. they release medicine fast,

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welcome back to "morning joe." it is friday, september 6th along with joe, willie and me, we have politics editor for the daily beast sam stein. republican strategist and msnbc political analyst susan del percio. columnist and associated editor for "the washington post," david ignatius. joining the conversation, chief white house correspond end for "the new york times," peter baker. white house correspondent for pbs news hour yamiche alcindor. and a former director of strategic communication for

hillary clinton's presidential campaign, adrienne elrod. she's an msnbc contributor and she and susan have a great piece on knowyourvalue.com right now which we'll talk about later. residents on the north carolina coast are being told to shelter in place. the top concerns at the moment are isolated tornadoes and flash flooding. right now, 3 million people remain under flood watches and it's still pouring in many areas. we saw a series of tornados yesterday. this video is is from a mobile home park in emerald isle, north carolina. let's go right to meteorologist bill karins for the very latest. bill? >> good morning, mika. we're still watching the center of the storm pretty much over the outer banks of eastern north carolina. the windy conditions and the heavy rain has arrived in southeastern virginia and we have the threat of additional tornados today. the winds have not been that strong for a lot of significant wind damage. yes, 90s, the maximum sustained

winds is mostly over the water. looks like cape hatteras should go through the center of the eye through the next hour or so. then head out to sea. these are the wind gusts even far away from the center. we had a wind gust of 62 in emerald isle. there's a lot of tropical storm force winds in the area and we can get downed tree limbs. they'll say, stay inside today and later on today when the rain stops and the wind comes down, go outside and do the clean-up. there's the center, only ten miles off the coast right now. very close to ococoke and it should be should be going through the eye. a flash flood watch continues for 3 million people from newville, greenville, all of eastern north carolina and looks like additional three to five

inches throughout the day. storm surge i'm not concerned is then we'll get clipped by areas of cape cod and nova scotia into saturday afternoon. not quite done with the storm yet. so far, it's known as a minor hurricane event for those in the southeast, but in the bahamas one of the historic and one of the worst we'll see in our live times and theirs. back to you. >> thank you. president trump is not backing down from this false claim that alabama faced a serious threat from hurricane dorian. he has tweeted nine times about alabama including seven maps. even the white house released a statement defending his claim. yesterday afternoon, the president tweeted maps from august 29th and 30th writing, just as i said, alabama was originally projected to be hit. the fake news denies it.

he went on to say i was with you all the way, alabama. the fake news media was not. >> let's see what fox news says. >> yeah. >> here's shep smith. >> yeah. >> and what shep and fox news and their news department had to say about whether the president was telling the truth or lying to the good people of alabama. >> why would the president of the united states do this? he decries fake news that isn't. and disseminates fake news that is. this is one where he could apologize and move on. that map was from the day hurricane became a hurricane, eight days ago. august the 28th. it was four days old, at the precise time he said that alabama would be likely hit harder than anticipated and it was fake news defined on a very serious subject. yet, he forged on. this morning another statement, what i said was accurate. it wasn't and it isn't.

>> the a.p.'s jonathan lemire quotes historian jon meacham on the dangers of trump never admitting he made a mistake. quote, great presidents admit when they screwed up, they nix it and they move on. right now it's a mistake about a hurricane hitting a state. but it also can be is a far bigger deal and cost people lives. and help create a climate where people can't trust the government. the constitution with its checks and balances was drafted on the intellectual foundation that we all make mistakes all the time. a president does, congress does. the courts do. the people do. it's remarkable that more harm hasn't come of it. it would be funny if it weren't so serious. >> peter baker, this is actually a serious matter as shep smith said on fox news. the topic couldn't be more serious for a lot of people. the president's tweet had to be corrected by the weather service

in alabama and birmingham, 30 minutes after he made it. and here we are with the president obsessing about this last night while south carolina, north carolina and virginia were all targeted by this hurricane. bill karins said over 3 million people in north carolina and virginia are in danger of flooding. and forget about -- that doesn't even talk about all of the tornados that can spin off from this hurricane into those affected areas. and yet, last night when any other president, any other chief executive would be focused on the people of south carolina, north carolina and virginia, donald trump was sending out tweet after tweet after tweet about a mistake he made in alabama and even getting rear-admirals the right statements from the white house trying to cover up a mistake

that the weather service in birmingham said in realtime was a mistake. >> yeah. well, it's an unvirtuous cycle in politics you know as well as anybody that if you do make a mistake, you admit, you move on. moreover, even when you have an issue like this even is if you're not willing to make the admission that you made a mistake you don't keep dwelling on it. you make it go away. it keeps -- the more he tweets about it, the more he decides to be defensive about it, the more he gets mad all over again. it makes -- he feels like he's under siege from you know the chattering class and from washington and he lashes out. he can't let anything go. he can't sort of say, guys, this is -- we should move on. he wants to prove he's right or at least, you know, indicate again to his base over and over again he's under siege from the swamp as it's defined in his politics.

>> yamiche, i'm trying to remember a time when this president has apologized. i was looking back he did apologize during the campaign for the "access hollywood" tape for a minute and then he mused later on that he thought the audio might have been doctored. but it's just not in his dna as we were discussing earlier. president trump and donald trump, he does not apologize. he digs in deeper. he knows the people who are with him are going to stay with him even when he's wrong as he so clearly is in this case. as you talked to people in and around the white house, we have seen the usual anonymous sources say, well, yes, it was him who put the sharpie on the map, but those publicly, the press shop specifically out defending the president when they know what he said is wrong and there's no upside, no benefit to declaring you're right when you were wrong. >> well, this fits a pattern of president trump over and over again, doubling down on misinformation. doubling down on what a lot of people see as lies. i think what the president does

here is he tries to in some ways tire out the people who are saying, mr. president, you're wrong. so he's doubling down on alabama even as north carolina and other states are dealing with the effects of the hurricane. essentially, the president has not really had any bad political consequences from doubling down and sticking to what he thinks is right. we'll see in 2020 how that works out. but overall the president thinks that this works for him. i mean, i talked to people inside the white house, they say the way to survive the trump administration even if it's for a couple of months or a couple of years is to adjust to the president's messaging. it's not to -- at all to challenge him. it's to say, hey if the president is going to do this we're going to double down and do this. we have seen people do that on the economy, on immigration, on a number of other issues. and this president has really been able to do this because i think as reporters we point out when something is wrong. but eventually you have to move on because there's so many other

things to be talking about. >> yeah. there is. and of course adrienne elrod, again, we talked about this the last hour. he's not playing three dimensional chess. he is actually eating the chess pieces and susan del percio was talking about him passing on and we had to move on, but yeah, come on. but adrienne, you know, it's -- it's so fascinating that -- because people get surprised by donald trump one time. i think they overestimate his ability to surprise them the next time where here's a guy again, let's just -- let's look at what happened when people got a chance to vote 2018. the largest electoral landslide in the history of the united states when it came to vote totals. republicans, donald trump's republican party got absolutely destroyed in a way no political party in the history of this

republic has ever gotten destroyed if you just look at raw vote totals. and you look at what's happened with his polling. he's getting -- after this summer it's been a cruel, cruel summer for donald trump. he's getting crushed by joe biden and bernie sanders and elizabeth warren so do you see any evidence that this actually works for donald trump? unless you're somebody inside is the white house that's just desperately clinging to any government job that you can get. >> no, i don't, joe. i see no evidence that this strategy that i guess if you want to call it a strategy that donald trump employs works. i mean, we saw this in 2016 as willie mentioned the only time i can ever recall him apologizing was when the "access hollywood" tape came out and then he back tracked and said, oh, never mind, this was some sort of a doctored audio. this was not really me. he cannot handle it when he's

criticized. it's literally -- it reminds me of the third grade child who is still trying to figure out how do i handle criticism? i'm maturing, how -- i'm trying to mature and how do i grow up here? it's so petulant behavior and it's ridiculous for any person including the president of the united states. the democrats you know had historic wins in the 2018 midterms up and down the ballot. but a lot of that also had to do with the fact that despite donald trump's petulant, childish behavior, he hasn't done anything. and that's really what drove voters to the polls in record numbers for democrats in 2018. and if this trend continues, i think that's one of the reasons why when're seeing in tracking polls democrats beating trump significantly. including the top tier in the primaries as you mentioned, they're beating him hand and fist that will change because right now a lot of paid media has not been spent against some of the democratic candidates. so that will change.

i don't want democratic voters out there, independent voters who plan to vote for democrats to rest on their laurels oh we have this in the bag, because we don't. but at the same time, things are looking really bad for trump and this childish behavior does not help him at all. in this situation. >> peter baker, you look at the promises that have been made and all of the promises that have been broken by donald trump. i mean, we don't have -- i mean, three hours is not enough time to talk about the promises even on the health care where he promised everybody we'd get health care. he promised that they would have more expansive health care, it would be cheaper. the deductibles would be lower. the premiums would be lower. but the lie that right now seems to be haunting him the most is the lie about the wall. he said mexico would pay for the wall. ends up it's actually thom tillis' constituents paying for the wall and lindsey graham's constituents that are paying for the wall. i mean, just curious what your take is about the president

looting military construction project, and military readiness projects for the children of our war heroes to fund a wall that republicans could have funded when they were in power for two years but decided not to. or that the democrats could have helped fund with the $21 billion deal that they offered the president and he was going to take until stephen miller told him not to take that deal. what does it say about the desperation that the president is feeling about all of these promises that he hasn't kept? >> well, you know, you're right. the wall is the signature promise, the one that matters the most to him, that he can feel and touch, it's visceral. he's a real estate guy, a wall is something you can literally, you know, look at in a very direct way. unlike a health care plan,

right? so he'll do everything he can do to make sure that wall is build in some fashion so he can point that to that the next year. but the question is what are we going to do for the next year and a half in this presidency? what would he do in a second term? he hasn't really outlined what kind of an agenda he wants to pursue. what is he looking for a second term to do? and, you know, he has talked in the past about coming one a health care plan. well, we haven't seen one. he talked last year before the midterm election about another tax cut and that went away. he has in the past at various points talked about deals with the democrats on infrastructure, immigration. those have gone nowhere. his big agenda item for the fall would seem to be the u.s./mexico/canada agreement the replacement for nafta. that may be the most important priority for him but we haven't seen a concerted push yet to get that through. and just yesterday, the chief, you know, crafter of his middle east peace plan which we have yet to see said he's going to step down. before it's been unveiled.

so it raises the question of what he wants to do beyond building that wall. what he thinks he can do and given that we have a divided government what the possibilities really are. >> peter, thank you very much. now, the administration's plan to divert military funds to pay for president trump's border wall is again raising questions about the reach of presidential power. fox news analyst judge andrew napolitano is accusing congress of enabling trump to act as a tyrant. >> when donald trump imposes a sales tax on the items from china, when he builds a wall at the mexico/texas border using funds that the congress denied him but he takes the funds anyway, he is merely using the power that the congress has given to him and former presidents in violation of the constitution. when that happens, when congress

throws up its hands and says let the president do it, that's dangerous to our liberty. because the beauty of our liberty is the division, the separation of powers. the congress writes the laws, the courts interpret them. but when congress lets presidents write their own laws, then he's not a president he's a prince. >> so there you go, susan del percio -- >> by the way, that's how real conservatives still talk. >> yeah. he's dead right. and that's on fox news. and susan, at some point you wonder if members of congress might actually hear this, let alone think for it themselves. >> you're right, mika. because when president trump started out, he had a complacent majority with the senate and the house. now he's lost the house so it's really one of the reasons why i was happy to see nancy pelosi become speaker because i know she understands the process and

understands leadership. she's got to force the president's hand on this one. unfortunately we cannot rely on the senate. we can't even rely on some voices in the senate to be responsible. so this is going to fall on her and i hope she's able to do something. i think the nafta 2.0 deal is a very good thing to hold over the president's head because that is literally the only thing that he's almost negotiated i believe to completion. so there's a lot of opportunity for there. but the other thing we have to be careful about is, you know, talking about the president as a prince is -- this summer he said don't believe what you read or see, believe what i tell you. this is what he does. he overtalks an issue. so as if he says it enough, we will believe alabama was in that path. it does not make it truth. when the stock market fell 800 points in one day and it was all talking about a global slowdown his strategy was to overtalk the

issue. so donald trump, you know, i don't know if we can wait until 2020 to put him into the place. but hopefully nancy pelosi can. >> talk about where donald trump has taken us on the journey, fulfilling a chant from the 2016 campaign, a chant that he still hears at his rallies. we had a government shutdown, 35-day government shutdown. he thought he could get money for the wall by closing the federal government partially. and now diverting $3.6 billion, 127 projects across 23 states and puerto rico, so that he can get at least -- at least say, i took all of this money to get the wall i promised you and the money is coming from middle schools and from bases in kentucky. >> when he was making the campaign promise, it was obviously ridiculous. mexico would never pay for the wall so a good chunk of the population never thought this

would happen, but of course some people did. and i can't help but think about in this moment about barack obama and the promise if you like your plan you can keep it. that was a central promise to the health care agenda and when it turned out not to be true it was a huge scandal. something that had dogged him, it was labeled the lie of the year. it was an election rallying cry and it really hampered his presidency. with trump, this is that moment. this is his central campaign promise. this is the agenda item on his docket and he lied about it repeatedly. i don't know if he'll suffer the same consequences in part because the promise was so ridiculous to begin with. that's the type of presidency we're dealing with which is how much seriousness do you give his proposals and how much punishment when he breaks the promise he has to break? >> and he lies repeatedly every night at his campaign rallies,

throughout 2015 and 2016 saying we're going to build the wall and mexico's going to pay for that wall. who's going to pay for that wall? mexico's going to pay for that wall. that's what he promised repeatedly. now we find out three years later it's little children. in fact, it's the little children of our american heroes who go and fight wars for us. who are paying for that wall. so people in thom tillis' state are paying for that wall. and david ignatius, it's, again, you go through any of these articles in foreign affairs about the autocrats that are rising. and donald trump for his sake is unfortunately, you know, he picked the strongest democracy,

the strongest constitutional republic, but you look. i think judge napolitano had a great point that we have article 1 of the constitution. we have separations of power. donald trump didn't get the money from the republican house, the republican senate. they didn't give it to him for two years. speaker ryan, majority leader mcconnell didn't give him the money and he can't get it now so he's actually seized the money from military projects and it's every bit as jarring by ordering all businesses out of china or donald trump questioning the legitimacy of federal judges to actually limit him. questioning the legitimacy of the media to actually hold him to account for his lies. he's even doing it -- i mean,

the biggest tirades have been against fox news over the last month because they're starting to call him out for his lies. >> you know, the majesty of our country is we are a democracy and if something is going wrong if people are lying from the highest positions in our coun y country, if our congress isn't doing its job of supervising funding of drawing clear lines we can vote them out. and i think that's really why the 2020 election we talk about it as a test for donald trump. it's really a test for the united states of america. what kind of country we? everybody sees this stuff every day. i'm sure you and mika endlessly are talking about the latest trump gaffe or idiotic statement. you know, you would want to move on to the larger questions around the world, but you can't. he won't let you. so the voters are going to get a

chance to decide. we'll learn a lot about what kind of country we are. i really hope the democrats can come one a candidate who will compellingly make the case for bringing a country back to some kind of sanity. and i think this daily carnival that trump runs is exhausting for people. people are just kind of sick of it but they got into the spirit of politics. they think all politics is like this and someone needs to show it isn't. >> joe, i think david ignatius is tired of hearing us talk. just endlessly talking, he's getting a little -- must be exhausting. still ahead on "morning joe," a follow-up to one of our most discussed -- >> by the way, i do have to comment really quickly just on the exhaustion factor. >> it is exhausting, it is. >> here's why it matters, adrienne elrod, i'll go to you.

hillary clinton's problem in 2016 really wasn't that the people that went out to go to vote for trump. it was people who stayed home and you wouldn't vote for hillary clinton and normally would. black voting numbers, down the most -- down for the first time in 20 years. >> yeah. >> and you could talk about other people that just stayed at home. i have been saying it, i will say it still, david brings up a great point. that exhaustion, that keeps republicans at home that would always go out and vote. for a republican presidential candidate. the exhaustion of donald trump makes some evangelicals say, listen, i'm not voting for a pro choice candidate, but i'm not voting for donald trump. or makes fiscal conservatives say, i'm not voting for somebody who may be a socialist, but i'm not voting for donald trump. you watch the undervotes in 2020 and i have been wrong many times before. but man, if i'm a republican, i

am horrified by the prospect that sheer exhaustion keeps republicans at home and donald trump loses for the same reasons that hillary clinton lost four years ago. >> well, yeah, i mean, you can call it trump fatigue, right? people are sick and tired of this, sick and tired of his tweets, his banter, his lies and disinformation but they're also tired of the fact that he's not getting anything done. the tax bill is a sham. he's failed american farmers they're suffering. he didn't repeal health care which he promised he would do and the majority of americans don't want a repeal, they want it fixed. i hope the democrats will heed to this and not go do far to the left because we have a good opportunity here to take back our country but we need to make sure that we don't get too far to the left on some of these key issues that matter to americans. >> one quick point on the exhaustion factor is -- it's not me. one quick point on the exhaustion factor, joe.

there was a survey done and this was a fascinating survey. color of change did it. they interviewed african-american voters and what they discovered was that the more you mention trump, the less likely they were to vote. they simply just wanted to tune it all out. now, this was a year or so ago. so maybe things have changed. but that exhaustion factor is real. people are just so tired of hearing about trump. and they don't think anything will change from voting and the response to it is not to engage more, but to engage less. so both parties have to factor this in and this is a debate currently happening among democrats. how much should they focus on trump heading into 2020 and how much do they have to actually put trump aside and focus on a forward leaning vision is to inspire people to go vote. still ahead on "morning joe" a follow-up to one of the most discussed segments from yesterday. a renewed push from conservative voices to cleanse the republican party of quote, alt-right virus

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yesterday the washington examiner's tim carnie joined us to discuss his new piece entitled it's time to create a conservative ecosystem that doesn't welcome racists. it was a great conversation and this morning there are two new columns that build on that argument. david french writes for "time" magazine my fellow republicans must stand against the alt-right virus infecting america which reads in part our political world's obsessive focus on trump can blind our nation to a larger problem. radicals of all kinds don't just seek to kill, threaten or harass. they also seek to influence and the measure of their influence is the measure of their success. to be clear, the vast majority of conservative or right-leaning

americans are not racists. hate racism and utterly reject the ideology of white nationalism. still the alt-right has achieved remarkable success in influences the national debate and they do it in part by casting themselves as fearless warriors telling the truths that only the left won't like. this perception of influence gives radicals a sense of momentum and energy. and strange as it may sound the focus on the president is to think too small. the old virus of white nationalism has been injected into our culture in a new way and it's imperative that we recognize that symptoms including the language and ideas and react with the energy and commitment to banish it back into the irrelevant margins of american life. really well put and in "the new york times" a column entitled

four things that are not white nationalism in which it is argued that quote, conservatism's racism problem is real. so is a pattern of media smears against nonracist conservatives. ross writes in part, the american right in the trump era has a racism problem. it's fed by a republican president who race baits, a media ecosystem whose guardrails have collapsed. the lure of far right ideas after various center right failures and the influence of toxic forms of internet community on impressionable minds. at the same time, the american right in the trump era faces a liberalism that's eager to discover and condemn racism where it does not exist. positions that any detrump if ied conservatism would hold with figures that opposed donald trump are hammered as enablers of racism and progressives

indulge in political fantasy in which the racist infiltration of the mainstream right is an opportunity to delegitimize conservatism entirely. a lot there, joe. >> a lot there, but, you know -- >> really good. >> susan del percio, what tim and ross and david all say here, three life long conservatives who have probably never voted for a democratic presidential candidate in their adult life, i think that's probably a safe assumption, is they have a theme here. which it's kind of like put on your blinders, all right? don't focus on the insults from the left. don't focus on quote, owning the libs. don't be so reactive to everything they do. focus instead on what's best for conservatism. focus instead on what's best for the movement that you believe in and instead of reacting and

constantly reacting which you just keep reacting and you go down this -- you just go down a slippery slope we'll say it that has gotten one conservative in trouble after another. just focus on yourself and focus on being as repugnant to the alt-right as humanly positive to cleanse the conservative movement of the racist elements. >> that's right. i find going after the comments that donald trump makes when they're racist and xenophobic and everything else because i feel like we have to make sure that all conservatives and all republicans are not from donald trump's ilk. i have lots of problems with the left, but they're that least of my problems right now because right now donald trump is the president of our country.

what's also really hard to make this happen is that the lack of a backbone from so many elected officials, republicans, who refuse to call this president out for what he is. and what he says. and it could be on budget matters, it could be on race matters. they just won't go there. so when you have to -- i think those ideas are right. we have to say who we are, what our values are. and that the alt-right is an ugliness that we disclaim and it's more important to disclaim and move ourselves away from them than worry about what liberals are saying because again that's the least of our problems. >> and yamiche, you hear the frustrations in all of the writers and those who held their ground is that donald trump has become the vessel for conservatism. and they want to separate trumpism from conservatism because there's nothing conservative about the way president trump has spent money for example on the debts and the deficits he has run up. but this man, donald trump, a

life long democrat who gave money to hillary clinton and all of the rest of the story we know and we have heard for years suddenly became a republican to run for president and became a bastion of conservatism which he is not. >> i can understand your frustration if you look at president trump and you say, he doesn't represent it, except that the republicans in congress has given the american people nothing else but a loyalty to this president. as he's tweeted racist things and pursued policies to demonize immigrants and talked about voter suppression and talked about the voter fraud and made up things, the republican party has stuck by him. so he's of course the face of the republican party. but even more i think there's this idea that this is bigger than donald trump. i mean, the history of this country is marred by slavery, marred by the aftermath of the people thinking that african-americans did not deserve the civil rights that all other americans deserve. there's so much history there that it's something to look

something bigger and larger than just president trump. but there's this idea that you're seeing a political party back a president that for many people see as racist. i think when you look at ncaap calling him racist and hemming and hawing, like is it okay to tell four americans to go back to their country, he's shifted the party's direction in ways that people find problematic and scary. >> and by the way, this is a long time coming. when donald trump of course before he ran, there was of course the birther controversy but when he started running his first day he was bashing mexicans and then of course i think the -- one of the most horrifying moments of the campaign was in early december of 2015 when he talked about banning every single muslim from entering the united states of america. so yes, this is bigger than

donald trump. but donald trump certainly gave all the warnings that needed to be given. but david ignatius, i do think it is -- i love david french's urging of conservatives to not think small. that this is a problem that's bigger than donald trump. it's a problem that has infected conservatism. either on the fringes or now in the mainstream. and yamiche has said unlike the brave conservatives in britain that just said no to boris johnson, 24 and, by the way they were kicked out of the party. former defense ministers. former chancellors of the exchecker. margaret thatcher's top lieutenant. i mean, they were kicked out of the party and they knew they would be kicked out of the party

and they still voted against johnson because they put country first. i can find no clear examples of that happening. i must say right now where are people like ben sasse? where are people like mitt romney? what do they have to lose? >> not a lot of profiles in courage these days on the republican side of the senate. in recent days, it has been encouraging to watch the revolt of tories as they look at boris johnson and just say, no, i'm not going to do it. i'm not going to go over this water fall. i care too much about my country. i think the point you made, joe, about quoting david french about this need to have a larger vision. we're caught in a small ball

politics. selfish, self-interested president who seems to pull everything back to his own particular sometimes petty needs and interests and i think the country is hungry for an animating vision about what the country stands for. what the path out of this difficult period that we're in is. trump has an ability to exploit every division in america and heaven knows we're a divided country. every time he finds a scab that's healing, he just goes and rips the band aid off. he has a real instinct for that exploiting division. on both the right and the left, there's such an opening for people who will figure out how to speak to the country and its breath again. whoever really finds that language is going to get a tremendous after burner because people are waiting for it. >> all right.

as we go to break, we want to highlight what's really a timely actually new piece at knowyourvalue.c knowyourvalue.com, it's co-authored by adrienne elrod and susan del percio talking about how political networking can take your career to the next level. and i love the piece for a number of reasons. we love different points of view at know your value, but adrienne and susan real quickly, you really do come from different points of view to make the same point about the effectiveness of networking. adrienne? >> yeah. mika, that's right. that's why we wanted to write this piece together. even though we're on different sides of political aisles, we have been working on campaigns for a long time and we thought we had the same similar experiences that we could share with other women who are looking to get involved in their own local communities. >> susan, we need to do this more. we find out we have much more in common even on opposite sides of the acele.

>> that's right. we started off with a piece about what one of us experienced it? and we both did. going forward you can take what we learned in politics and apply it to advancing your career because too often we found that women are not involved in politics at the office and using that networking to advance their careers as men. they really need to get more involved. >> i love it. check out knowyourvalue.com for this incredible piece. thank you so much, and many, many more. "morning joe" is back in a moment. "morning joe" is sponsored by land rover. above and beyond. hmm. exactly.

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jason greenblatt, the trump administration's envoy for brokering a middle east peace deal is stepping down. greenblatt is president trump's former business attorney and had no previous diplomatic experience. the move is being viewed as the latest sign is that the administration's long awaited and much delayed peace plan may be in trouble. much more trouble than publicly nope. the plan has two distinct parts an economic plan which was

released in july to almost no fanfare in either the u.s. or the middle east and the more vital political plan which remains unreleased. avi berke awich is set to replace greenblatt. hook, the representative for iran, is also expected to take a larger role in the peace plan and expected to work more closely with kushner as the administration's iran policy increasingly merges with kushner's peace plan. hook has been in the news this week after "the financial times" revealed his attempts on behalf of the administration to pay several million dollars to the captain of an iranian oil tanker to pilot the vessel to a country that would impound the ship on behalf of the u.s. and that reads what he wrote there, david ignatius, like a "sopranos"

attempt to do anything. this is incredible on so many levels. your take on these staffing changes, so to speak. >> jason greenblatt has worked hard for two years. you can't talk to him and not see is that he make a difference in the region, improve the lives as he often says of palestinians and israelis alike. the problem is that from the beginning this peace plan, the deal of the century, as donald trump liked to call it, seemed so tilted toward israel on some of the basics. initially the u.s. moved its embassy to jerusalem, a symbolic move toward a long standing israeli position that palestinians just weren't willing to play. it's awfully tough to be an honest broker of peace if you only really are talking to one side. jason greenblatt and kushner put

together some interesting ideas. people just didn't show up, and it was a sign of the fundamental problem. the political side of this as i understand it has largely been based on the idea that saudi arabia, the uae from the outside in would support change, would support a movement toward peace, and the problems that saudi arabia, mohammed bin salmon, that also weakened this project. we'll see where it goes in the future. greenblatt tried hard. it's strange to see him leave before the plan is even announced. still ahead, heavy rain, wind and flash flooding. we continue to track hurricane dorian's path up the east coast, slamming parts of north carolina, and now virginia is starting to feel it. it's been a long slog. plus, we're awaiting the august jobs report which could give a clearer picture of whether the u.s. economy is

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a new samsung note. click, call or visit a store today. welcome back, yamiche, what are you looking at today? >> the president has no public events on his schedule. i'm looking at whether the president will double down on this issue of alabama and the hurricane, and the real effects of him taking away money from different places to build the border wall. we're hearing stories about day cares in maryland, elementary schools in kentucky. i'm looking at whether or not we're going to hear human interest stories on the border wall funding being taken away from real americans lives. >> thank you very much, have a great weekend. we'll be right back with bill karins still tracking hurricane dorian as it scrapes the carolinas.

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it was like 80 people there. and then my grandma had to go get out because her roof came off. it was just, the pressure of the tornadoes, it was awful. everything just, everything's destroyed. everything's flattened. it was not flattened. it's just a structure. people don't have homes. people don't have food. i've never experienced anything like that in my life. i pray nobody ever has to again. >> a look at the after math of hurricane dorian in the bahamas. the death toll there is now at 30, and officials stress the number is likely to rise dramatically. "morning joe's" medical contributor, dr. dave campbell is on the front lines there, and we'll have a report straight ahead. meanwhile, the storm is now lashing the carolinas with triple digit winds and heavy rains. residents on the north carolina coast are being told to shelter

in place. the number one concern at the moment is flash flooding. more than 6 million people are under flood watches and it's still pouring in many areas. more than 290,000 homes are currently without power in north and south carolina. earlier in the day, hurricane dorian spawned a series of tornadoes. this video is from a mobile home park in emerald aislisle, north carolina. let's go to straight to bill karins. you can see the difference between category 1 hurricane damage and a category 5. there's no comparison at all. we still center to get through this event. we still could have minor problems, downed trees, isolated tornadoes, we could have problems with flash flooding with the heavy rains. the threats are not completely gone yet. dorian is heading in the right direction, 10 miles from landfall over the top of cape hatteras. this is the first time the center has gone right over land after since leaving grand bahama

island. the winds have been manageable, downed trees and branches here and there, minor power outages, not widespread. hatteras, you're about to go through the eye, you justed befo -- gusted about 59. the black line is the center line, right over cape hatteras shortly. as far as the forecast goes, things of concern, we have areas of flash flood warnings. these should be expiring shortly. extreme eastern north carolina is most at risk for additional heavy rainfall, especially in virginia beach, southwards, north of the sound there, and the other areas of concern that we're going to deal with, maybe cape cod. we could get clipped by high winds barely as the storm brushes you as we go throughout early saturday morning. could see winds about 40 to 50 miles per hour, and a little bit of rain, and then the storm goes into nova scotia still possibly as a hurricane.

dorian is not quite done yet. as far as eastern north carolina goes, the storm will be leaving as we go throughout the next couple of hours. back to you. >> bill karins, thank you very much. along with joe, willie, and me, we have politics senator for the daily beast, sam stein, republican strategist and msnbc political analyst, susan del percio, columnist and associate editor for the "washington post," david ignatius and associated editor for the "washington post" and msnbc political analyst, eugene robinson. >> so willie, this storm has, it seems like it's been around forever. but finally making contact with land in the united states, of course, we're going to be talking about the misery that the residents of the bahamas have been enduring, absolutely awful, but south carolina, north carolina, and virginia look like the only states directly impacted by this terrible storm.

>> i never like to use the term dodged a bullet because i'm sure it does feel that way to the people in the outer banks of north carolina where the big wind is hitting. thank god we didn't have a more drastic and dramatic and deadly storm in the united states so far. i'm glad dr. dave is in the bahamas because that's where a lot of the attention is going to fit because man, it has been devastated down there. we're going to continue to talk about the storm while it continues to batter the east coast. president trump, though, not backing down from his claim that alabama faces serious threat from hurricane dorian. he's tweeted nine times about alabama, including several maps, even the white house released a statement defending the president's claim. yesterday afternoon, the president tweeted maps from august 29th and august 30th writing just as i said, alabama was originally projected to be hit. the fake news denies it, he writes. he went on to say, i was with you all the way, alabama, the fake news media was not. here is what shep smith of fox

news had to say about that yesterday. >> why would the president of the united states do this. he decries fake news that isn't and disseminates fake news that is. this is one where he can apologize and move on. that map was from the day the hurricane became a hurricane, eight days ago, august 28th. it was four days old at the precise time he said alabama would likely be hit harder than anticipated, and by then, it was fake news defined on a very serious subject, yet he foraged on. this morning, another statement, what i said was accurate. it wasn't and it isn't. >> and according to cnn's jake tapper, president trump called the fox news correspondent into the oval office yesterday to argue that he was not wrong about alabama. according to jake tapper, fox news senior white house correspondent john roberts was beckoned to the oval office yesterday afternoon.

roberts wrote that trump stressed to me that forecasts for dorian last week had alabama in the warning cone. he insisted it's unfair to say alabama was never threatened by the storm. according to tapper, the presidential was looking for acknowledgment he was not wrong for saying at some point alabama was at risk even if the situation had changed by the time he issued the tweet. roberts did not immediately respond to cnn's request for a comment. joe, i have to say i have been away for a little bit on vacation, blissfully unplugged and to come back yesterday to see that the president of the united states is still talking about a map and a doodle he drew about a hurricane that was coming, not to alabama, that the forecast was changed, that he still is insisting upon being write about something he was so clearly wrong about is stunning and a little bit baffling. >> it is. it's also of course disturbing. there's so many things that happened, and i think a lot of

us, you and i have gotten to the point where we roll our eyes on most of these tweets. but here, you're actually talking about a hurricane, the president tweeted out the residents of alabama needed to be worried at a point when they didn't so of course that causes a lot of concern, so much so that the government has to spend out a clarifying statement. i thought more disturbing was that last night was the night when people in south carolina and north carolina and now virginia were either getting hit by the hurricane or having to prepare for the hurricane. those states, south carolina, north carolina, and virginia, and i have been inside my house with the windows and doors boarded up, and hunkering down. it's really frightening. you don't know what tornadoes are going to spin off. you don't know where they're going to go. you don't know how your

community is going to be ripped apart. and while that, at that precise moment, the president of the united states wasn't talking about south carolina or north carolina or virginia. >> it's incredible. >> he was talking about alabama, a state that was never in any danger, and certainly was at least as shep smith and fox news said four days removed from any danger by the time he tweeted his tweet, and you know, david ignatius, again, so much of this is just farce, and i've gotten to the point, i don't pull my hair out at the ignorance and the nonsense, but in a case like this, he panicked people in alabama, now he's lying about it, and he's doing that instead of doing what every president that i ever dealt with during these storms, whether it was bill clinton or george w. bush or governors like lawton childs or jeb bush, i mean, when those

storms are about to hit shore, all of their attention and focus was on protecting the people that were in the path of the storm. donald trump bizarrely enough was focused on a sharpie doodle that he had done several days before. and there are, of course, the whole world is watching, there are consequences in russia, and china, and saudi arabia, and across the world, that our leader seems this detached and this unstable emotionally. >> joe, the thing about the sharpie gate as we have been calling it, is that it offers remarkable psychological insight into the president and what makes him tick. if anybody makes a mistake, he got it wrong the first time around about alabama, it's understandable apparently, and it seems some earlier reporting

and apparently confused him in th his mind, that happens to people, even presidents. but then you move on. this obsessive attempt to keep relitigating to the point of a reporter, john roberts to make his case, taking this and making it the only story that today we're focussing on, illustrates the self-destructive way this president operates. this was one where you make a mistake. donald trump is different. he's got to be right about everything. if he feels like he's been humiliated by being caught in a lie, it's the fault of fake news media, et cetera, et cetera, in this case, you just got to watch it and shake your head.

still ahead on "morning joe," it's debatable whether a border wall actually makes the nation safer, however, it's indisputable that america's service members make the nations safer, so why is the white house, donald trump, taking money from the latter to pay for the former. that discussion is next on "morning joe." aveeno® with prebiotic oat. it hydrates and softens skin. so it looks like this... and you feel like this. aveeno® daily moisturizer get skin happy™ so, every day, we put our latest technology and unrivaled network to work. the united states postal service makes more e-commerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country. and now for their servicees to the community, we present limu emu & doug with this key to the city. [ applause ]

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in funding from 127 defense department projects. i wonder, willie, how mitch mcconnell will handle that information, that impacts his state. >> one school serving military families along the kentucky/tennessee border will lose fund to go president trump's border wall. "the new york times" reports this morning the pentagon's decision to divert $62.6 billion for funding for building campbell's new school will mean 556, 7th and 8th graders will use classrooms at the military base's ages middle school. teachers have been forced to use mobile carts to store their books and lesson plans, and since the cafeteria isn't big enough, students have had to eat in the school library. according to the times, students stuffed into makeshift classrooms within classrooms will continue to strain to figure out which lesson to listen to and which one to filter out, as a reminder fort campbell is home to the 101st

airborne division and special operations units deployed to afghanistan and iraq. this move to divert funding to its school comes after senate majority leader mitch mcconnell who of course represents kentucky, touted his commitment to help his families, writing in an op-ed at beginning of the year. mcconnell wrote our commonwealth is the proud home of military installations critical to our national defense ich. i secured much needed assistance, and the bluegrass army depot, helping the men and women serving there to keep america safe. the question mika posed is a good one, what will mitch mcconnell say, his office is saying, we wouldn't be in this position if democrats would work on republicans in border security. we wouldn't be in a place where the president is transferring funds from a military base for his border wall. >> he's talking about perhaps coming up with a deal of $21 billion that would have secured border funding and then walking away from it. and that's why mitch mcconnell doesn't want to even do anything

on gun legislation or anything else because he knows he can't trust the president. do i expect the president to be, i'm sorry, do i expect mitch mcconnell to try and waffle his way out of this, absolutely, but what we can't waffle out of is the senators said it may hurt, whether it be in colorado, if reelections up there, in maine, the trump campaign has cited that they want to try and flip new mexico, while taking away money from military installations and mexico is not a impo good way to do that. i think going back to joe's point about the chess pieces, donald trump will find it very had to pass the chess pieces as the campaign continues if he keeps doing things like this. >> too early. way too early. >> i was like, no, no, let's move beyond that. think about this, mitch mcconnell talked about getting

that money to quote keep america safe. donald trump has raided that money now, and he's diverting it to a vanity project that john kelly, that lindsey graham, that john cornyn, that so many republicans said will not help. will not help keep the border secure. but he's actually taking real money away from real military construction issues and readiness issues and you look at top tillis, what was it $80 million that he stole from north carolina, and while a hurricane is smashing in to north carolina, thom tillis's state, he's talking about alabama. donald trump doesn't give a damn about north carolina, and apparently thom tillis can't do anything to stop that, and you go down that list, martha mcsally didn't have what it took

to protect arizona from being looted. look at the rest of the people on the list, lindsey graham, all the golfing in the world couldn't stop the president from looting $11 million from the good people of south carolina or $8 million from cory gardner in colorado. i mean, if they're kissing up to donald trump around the clock and he still goes to their military bases and steals money for a project that was already funded, $21 billion in a bill that steven miller mixed. donald trump's problem shouldn't be with democrats. it should be with steven miller. they would have already had the wall built now if it weren't for stephen miller. >> absolutely. there were deals to be made on immigration, and that's been clear from the start, and donald trump won't make those deals. you know, $3.6 billion is a

small part of the defense department budget, but it's a lot of money, and it's a lot of money as we see today that affects the states of republican senators who are up for reelection. so, you know, martha mcsally is not going to be happy about this. it puts her in a bad position. it puts all of them in bad positions. it puts cory gardner in a bad position, and mitch mcconnell, yet, i predict you're going to hear nothing honest coming from these senators about this, because they're all scared of donald trump, and, you know, what these first two stories we've done this morning have in common, the sharpie gate and the money that's been taken for the wall is that everything is all about donald trump. and if we haven't learned that about him, total disregard for

the political position or feelings or whatever of anybody else, if we haven't learned that by now, then when are we going to learn it. it's been clear from the beginning, and it's clear right now, it's just all about him. how many times does he have to act pathological or i think the term of art is crazy before we say, gee, he's crazy. coming up on "morning joe," we'll circle back to hurricane dorian with a first look from the center of the storm, with brand new footage from the bahamas, next on "morning joe." a lot will happen in your life. wrinkles just won't. neutrogena® rapid wrinkle repair's derm-proven retinol works so fast, it takes only one week

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what did you live through? >> a nightmare, that's all i can tell people. i have lived in abaco all my life. i have been through hurricane floyd which was a 5 also. i tell people this was like a 10. i mean, everything is gone. and there's nothing left. we are standing. there's not much left. the structures are some standing, some are completely gone. in the mainland, marsh harbor, i understand there's hundreds and hundreds of people that are dead. i still don't have family members that i have accounted

for yet. >> nbc's mariana atencio speaking with a survivor of hurricane dorian in the bahamas. the death toll now sits at 30, and officials stress that that number is likely to rise dramatically. the country's health minister said the number of people killed in that category 5 hurricane could be quote staggering. crews are now in the process of going house to house, inspecting structures, in many cases just piles of rubble, where they once stood, as they search for any survivors and also recover bodies. "morning joe" medical contributor, dr. dave campbell was in the bahamas with project hope as the group races to provide badly needed supplies to those affected by the storm. here first is dr. dave with tom cotter, project hope's director of emergency response and preparedness, followed by dr. dave speaking with some of the victims of the hurricane.

abaco is an island that got hit the worst from this hurricane. i was actually there today doing an assessment at one of the clinics there to see exactly what the needs are. one of the challenges of this response is because communications are down, we had to do this stuff in person. in the meantime, we can anticipate what their needs are. right now, we're standing in front of a barge that's loaded with health and hygiene products that we were able to procure, paltize, and then give this barge donated to send right to abaco. a lot of hygiene products will help get them through the coming weeks until they're into more permanent, even if it's temporary permanent housing. even as you approach the airport in abaco, the runway is actually surrounded like a mope on all sides by flood water. we had to take a pickup truck just to be able to get from the actual runway to the airport itself which of course is not operating normally. so there's a lot of flooding in

terms of injuries and things the clinic is seeing. it's mostly trauma right now. the flooding was obviously very bad, but the illnesses that we usually see associated with the flooding having really surfaced yet in terms of a health priority. what we're seeing is the injuries from the wind and debris in the wind. >> reporter: everybody at home is asking and everybody across the world is asking what they can do to help the bahamians in their recovery effort. >> i want people to visit projecthope.org, and do hit the donate button. we're well set up here. we're already starting our work, already distributing and meeting the immediate needs and we're not going anywhere. we're going to be here for some time. >> can you tell us about it. i know it's hard. >> everything's just ruined. >> reporter: where were you? >> i was at my cousin's house. that was the only roof in the neighborhood that stayed on.

there was 80 people there. my grandmother had to get her out of the house because her roof came off. it was just the pressure of the tornadoes, it was awful. everything's destroyed. everything's flattened. if it's not flattened, it's just a structure, and people don't have homes. people don't have food. people have never experienced anything like that many my life. i pray nobody ever has to again. >> what can we do today? >> just trying to get people out, because it's bodies and it's just going to get really bad. it's going to get really bad, and i feel like people are going to get desperate and panic. they just need to get out. >> reporter: so getting out is the main number one thing. both of you have said that. >> nothing to go back over there.

nothing there. >> reporter: just flights and boats. >> anything you can get people out, just get them to safety, because over there is not safe and as time passes and it gets worse, and people start to panic, it's going it get really bad. >> this is a mess, and this is a mess that we shouldn't have to clean up. i shouldn't have to get her here myself. i shouldn't have to ensure that she's secure. i'm 25, she's 26. this isn't my job. we don't have kids. but if i have to do this for as many people as i have to, if we have to rally, we will rally. >> it's devastating. anything anyone can do to help and donate, project hope, americare, the red cross. amid the big political and weather stories unfolding, there's also the economy and this morning's all important jobs report, will the president's trade war impact the numbers, we'll check in request

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we have breaking economic news now with the august jobs report released moments ago. cnbc's sara eisen at the new york stock exchange has the numbers. what are they? >> there's been a bit of a slow down in hiring in the month of august. 130,000 jobs created. economists were looking for a number more around 150,000 jobs. also want to break apart business and government because it's important. government contributed 25,000 of those jobs, temporary hiring due to the 2020 census. so if you strip it out, you want to get a sense of where business is going right now, business added 96,000 jobs in the month of august. that's actually the fewest number since may. but it's not like it points to an imminent recession or anything. there's still finds of a healthy labor market here, for instance, the unemployment rate still at

3.7%. that's near a 50-year low. wages are rising slowly in this country, and in fact they came in better than expected. 3.2% higher in august than they were last year, about .4% higher than they were last month, so that's good. the labor force participation rate is growing. more people are entering into the labor force, but all in all, this does mark a bit of a slow down from recent months and from last year where we have seen 200,000 jobs average per month last year. we're back in the 100,000 range for this year. and the question right now on wall street, which has been pretty jittery lately is how much of the president's trade fight with china, the increased tariffs, are affecting business spending and business confidence, and you can look at these numbers and you see, for instance, factory jobs, only added 3,000. that's been a part of the economy that's really felt the trade war the hardest. 8,000 jobs were expected to be

added there. retail actually subtracted jobs. the retailers are bracing for a new round of tariffs, started in september, more will kick in in december. you can see in pockets of industries and parts of our economy, that there is a lot of nervousness, and that's why businesses aren't hiring as much. we have seen that in economic data. all in all, we're not talking about a recession. we're still talking about an economy that's on track for 2% or so growth. but that is the debate on wall street. how much is that slowing, and how much is it being affected by the trade policy. >> cnbc's sara eisen, thank you so much. and joe, just a bit of a slow down. politically everybody is watching that. >> it's a bit of a slow down. and nobody knows what's going to happen over the next year. we have been predicting for some time that the economy is going to explode and slows down, slow down and explode. we'll see what happens. you know, willie, earlier this week, steve rattner came on with some charts, one of the most tell things is that business

investment is down. confidence, ceo confidence is down right now. they're concerned and not feeling like now is the time to really invest in new businesses, new acquisitions, but also another sort of strange tick from the with the who yesterday was talking about getting a sneak peek for this month's jobs numbers and talking about the great numbers, this actually was flat even a little more disappointing than what wall street expected. >> yeah, and this is the president's theory of the case for reelection is that we have a strong economy and he would push all of that out despite all of these indicators we're seeing that there may be some new weakness in the economy. if he doesn't have a strong economy to run on, he's in more trouble than he may even appear to be now, so he's looking at these numbers. we know he is. he will undoubtedly in the next few minutes probably tweet some counter evidence that reminds us

how strong the economy is, and in some ways it is, the unemployment level, consumer confidence, but i think the uncertainty you see, especially on wall street, adrian, is the uncertainty that comes out of the oval office every single day, which is, i'm talking to china now, we're going to have the trade deal. at some point, wall street stops believing and stops listening to the president because he's trying to manipulate what's happening down there, by his words, but not in his actions. >> exactly. he creates market instability because you never know where he's going. you never quite understand and know where his policies are going, and what he's trying to achieve. we saw this during the health care fight, we're seeing it play out now with the china tariff war that he has created, the self-manufactured crisis, and to your point, how does this actually translate to the ballot box in 2020. we all know though the economy looks strong, numbers look good, not every single american has been feeling the strong economy. as we start looking into the future, do we go into a

recession, do we not. it's just going to make it worse. >> what's interesting, sam, for the second time over the week, the president has been caught trying to play the markets, again, for a short-term game. the couple, i guess last week he lied and said he spoke to a couple of leaders if china -- from china regarding trade talks. it's obvious he was lying at the time to many people, the markets actually, some people in the markets believed what we later found out from the white house, they admitted that he was lying to try to manipulate the markets. we saw it again yesterday when he talked about strong jobs numbers. nobody would say these were strong jobs numbers. i go to the shortsightedness of this all, he's not playing three dimensional chess. i mean, he's proven to the markets he will lie to try to manipulate the markets. they're smart now, and they're going to be increasingly skeptical moving forward. >> i totally agree. it also leads you to believe that at some point prior to the

2020 elections, he will cut some sort of deal with china, whet w it's on the merits a good one or not. the only thing, and i'm sure a lot of people are worried about this, the thing that seems deeply worrisome is just how much of a house of cards he's building here, which is he's taken the tools that a president does have to help juice the economy, lower interest rates, st stimulating policies and he pushed for them during times of good economic expansion. what happens if things go haywire, those tools will not be there for him. the badgering of the fed will not be as, you know, radical. the flirtation with china will not grease the markets as it has in the past. so at some point, there is a cost to pay here, and i wonder when that will come due. >> well, unlike germany, that only has about a 60% gdp to debt

ratio, the united states has been spending money, been cutting taxes. the economy with the fiscal policy, monetary policy, money is practically free now as far as borrowing goes, so those are your two major tools, monetary policy and fiscal policy. they're exhausted so when the economy goes down, which it does. there are cycles, regardless of this president of the united states, he's exhausted the fiscal policy, and, you know, called the fed chair enemy of the state because he wants interest rates to be cut even more, and there's just not that much room to play with, and mika, sam brings up a great point. donald trump's going to try to do a deal with china before the election china knows it. they know he's desperate and so if he strikes a deal, it's most likely going to be a very bad deal because president xi can wait. donald trump can't. >> coming up, iran tests donald

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morning in el paso that will examine the trump administration's border policies and the relationship between the anti-immigrant rhetoric and domestic terrorism. you are weaving it all together, and rightfully, what are you hoping to accomplish? >> thank you so much for having me on this morning. we are performing our very critical oversight function as members of congress, and what we have seen happening in this country as it relates to immigration policies and as it relates to domestic terrorism, there is a real human cost, and a real human toll that we have to assess, we have to talk about, we have to bring to light, to the american public. that's part of our job. the next part of our job will be legislating and appropriating based on what we know. we are about to begin debate over the department of homeland security budget, we know that's

the department that oversees much of trump's anti-immigrant cruel philosophy, and we need to know the impact that's having on communities like mine on domestic terrorism, the impact that anti-immigrant rhetoric has on communities of color and immigrant communities as well. >> nobody better than congress to lead that conversation given your district. congresswoman, i would ask you, as well, we've talked to you over the last couple years about issues ranging from the kind of rhetoric you're talking about to guns to immigrant conditions of migrants and these detention facilities but also about the wall. i want to get your reaction to news that the president and the government is diverting funds, billions of dollars, from military facilities to pay for this border wall so that the president can fulfill a campaign promise to a chant he led during his campaign. i looked down the list of some of these deferments. they are calling them moving money away.

there are a couple on bases in the state of texas. what is your reaction to this proposal from the department of defense? >> this is a very dangerous and destructive approach by the president. unfortunately, he's been given carte blanche by our republican colleagues to do this. when they supported his emergency declaration. i serve on the house armed services committee and we are very deliberative about the way we appropriate funding. we go through innumerable committee hearings, we go through debate, then it goes to conference. there is a process here for how we control the purse. but we have a president who is absolutely obsessed on feeding red meat to his supporters. that's all this is about, because we all know that a wall, which is incredibly fiscally irresponsible does not stop

asylum seekers. it does not make our country any safer. in fact, the words of this president are what makes our country unsafe. the rhetoric, the policies, and diverting money away from national defense. it makes us less ready. it makes us less safe. and you all were just talking about jobs in the prior segment. it essentially stops job creating projects all over the country. here in my district, we're going to lose $20 million, but we are part of a region, a national defense region, white sands and holliman airforce base and fort bliss together losing $145 million. it is absolutely incredible and it shouldn't be a partisan issue. we should have republican colleagues standing with us to stop this. >> congresswoman veronica escobar, obviously there is a

delay here but certainly appreciate what you're doing, especially the effort to really engage your constituents with these issues in an in depth way. love to have you back to hear how it went. and to discuss a lot more based on the president's policies and the impact it's having on your constituents. thank you so much. now to the latest repercussions from president trump's decision to withdraw the united states from the 2015 iran nuclear deal and reimpose and add new, hard-hitting sanctions. tehran has announced it is now ceasing all its commitments in the deal, in the field of nuclear research and development. one of the most important aspects of the accord. iranian president says they will develop centrifuges and do, quote, whatever is needed for enriching uraniuim in an accelerated way. that didn't end very well. the cover story in the upcoming issue of the "new york times"

magazine suggests that trump's withdrawal from the iran nuclear deal has revived the fear that the united states could take military action against iran and stems from the complexity of israel's relationship with the u.s. the feature in the magazine is entitled the secret history of the push to strike iran. joining us now from tel aviv is the piece's co-author, also the author of the book "rise and kill first." the secret history of israel's targeted assassinations. david ignatious will have the first question. >> from what i've seen this is a remarkable piece of reporting. i want to ask you about the current situation. >> thank you. >> there was a very interesting statement yesterday from prime minister netanyahu saying that he accepted that donald trump might end up negotiating with iranians in some effort to create a new nuclear deal.

i wondered whether your reporting in israel suggests the israeli government is now expecting there may be some kind of u.s./iranian negotiation in the future. >> you are exactly right, david. you quoted what prime minister netanyahu told us in an interview on august 12th but then he said he accepts the idea that maybe president trump will negotiate a new jcpoa but he says unlike with obama this time i will have by far more influence on the president. there is fear in israel from breaking the lines in that front against iran because after trump withdrew from his decision to strike iran, israeli intelligence spotted some softening as they see it in the positioning of saubt and the united arab emirates toward iran

and israel does fear that maybe president trump will go and negotiate a deal that would take maybe less consideration of israel or what israel sees as its vital interests. and then we go back to square one. we go back to 2012. we go back to that moment when israel was just about to strike. a moment my dear colleague and myself described in that story where israel was just about to strike and i think today will renegotiate and reconsider the possibility of striking iran. unlike 2012, this time in the oval office there is someone very different, who unlike president obama, might endorse, maybe quietly endorse the idea if he doesn't do it, israel will do it. >> let me ask you the thing that i think viewers would most want to hear from you. as of today, do you think there is a significant possibility that israel, seeing iran moving

toward abandoning the jcpoa worried about the possibility that trump might do a deal that would not be in israel's interest might take action? we've seen israeli strikes in iraq, syria, lebanon over the last week. how do you add all of that up in terms of a risk of a wider war? >> i think that all the ingredients in that recipe for war are there. either between israel and iran forces and iranian proxies in lebanon, syria, iraq, places where israel just hit the recent few weeks as you said in order to stop the convoys of sophisticated arms being maneuvered from iran to north of syria or on the nuclear issue when israel believed iran crosses some sort of red lines and start to, again, it's a clandestine effort against the iranian nuclear -- or an over the one. the recipe is there. i don't think the prime minister

netanyahu would do at the present time anything that is not fully coordinated with president trump. we saw a clear sort of order or very strong request from the president to forbid the entry of these two congresswomen to israel and of course benjamin netanyahu immediately obeyed. i don't think israel would call a strike that would surprise the united states. however, even as the united states allowed israel or endorsed israel striking in syria, iraq, lebanon, and other places it might do the same with striking iran. >> all right. the piece is the cover story in the upcoming issue of the "new york times" magazine. thank you very much. joe, not sure it's possible to put into words. maybe you can gauge the effectiveness of the president's iran policy. >> well, it's a big question mark right now. we find ourselves in an extremely difficult position

where we're once again separated from our allies in europe. >> and with iran building weapons. >> we not only have to worry about the iranians but how we interact with our allies and trying to stop iran from building a nuclear weapon. final thoughts? >> well, my final thoughts right now are with our friends down in north carolina/south carolina with the map you see on the corner of your screen down there and all our friends down in the bahamas wh who are waking up as the sun rises. just complete and utter devastation and praying and sending our best to all our friends that way, sam. >> and with the people of alabama. >> sam. you and your sharpy. >> quickly i just want to say happy ten-year anniversary to my wife. >> oh, good for you. >> ten years today. >> my final thought is i just want to applaud walmart for taking a major step this week in banning short rifle barrel

ammunition from its stores. i am from arkansas, it is the world's largest retailer. this is a significant move for walmart. >> david? >> you know, i just want to say a word for military families in kentucky here's what's happening now. hurricane dorian brings its fury to the carolinas. hundreds of thousands of people without power. with life threatening storm surges pounding the coast line as 90-mile-per-hour winds are whipping up dozens of tornadoes. all of this as the full scope of devastation in the bahamas comes into focus. the death toll now rising to 30 with it expected to soar as bahamaians dig through the rubble that was once their