house. secretariville tack has denied that but cheryl cook hasn t come forward to answer one single question on this matter. we spent the day trying to track her down atat. dan lothian pressed robert gibbs on whether the white house would make cheryl cook available. i would point you to usda. i don t know if you talked to usda. the person who supposedly said that the white house wanted her to step down. again, call the department of agriculture. you hear on the overhead intercom robert gibbs just told cheryl cook, call the press office. we ll try to track her down. hey there, ed henry at cnn. we re working on a story about cheryl cook. i want to see if we can get an interview with her. robert gibbs just said in the briefing for the second day in a row that if any reporters want to talk to her, we should call over to the press office. can you help us? let me see. let me take your information down. reporter: later in the afternoon i got a call back from another press person
he s saying i m sorry. he didn t have to do it. sherrod told us she would love to have the president come to south georgia to show him how race issues are playing out on the frontlines. as it is every morning, the a.m. fix blog is up and running. join the live conversation going on now. just go to cnn.com/amfix. first, though, as we speak, tropical storm bonnie is close in on south florida. the greater threat, though, is in the gulf where this morning the government is evacuating workers and also ordering cleanup vessels and drilling rigs to get out harm s way. one piece of good news, though, the containment cap on the damaged oil well will stay in place. louisiana s governor also declaring a state of emergency fairing the winds and form surge will drive the oil into the coastline and deep into the marshes. reynolds wolf is tracking tropical storm bonnie for us. let s go to vanessa in miami.
shorelines. forecast is for it to make landfall probably saturday night, into sunday morning. we ll be here covering that as well. strange coincidence. rob marciano for us this morning, great to see that and looking forward this weekend to seeing rob s speg report rescue saving the gulf. he s on the front lines, what could be the largest clean-up effort ever. join him saturday and sunday night, 8:00 eastern right here on cnn. race and politics. now that president obama has spoken with shirley sherrod, some are asking is it even his job to lead the discussion about race in america? some are expecting that of him and others are saying, he has enough problems to worry about. we ll speak with two guests who have some differing opinions on that coming up.
get into saturday, saturday evening and into sunday. there is a chance it may intensify possibly moving closer towards pensacola, perhaps going farther to the west towards houston or even galveston. lot of uncertainty long term. we ll watch it for you very carefully. at this hour we are already seeing scattered showers miami, miami heights, key west. farther to the north across parts of the midwest, not related to that storm but a stationary front brought some heavy weather to parts of madison, wisconsin, back towards milwaukee where two people were struck by lightning yesterday. there were reports of tornadoes in milwaukee and flooding. could see more rainfall there today, possibly more issues with the heavy rainfall. that s the very latest on your forecast. more coming up straight ahead on cnn american morning. the most news in the morning. people say i m forgetful.
maybe they will dodge a bullet this time. thanks so much. our reynolds wolf in the cnn hurricane headquarters. he is tracking the storm where it is going. what s the best guess, best estimate, we should say at this point, reynolds? still more to the northwest. looks like it will be moving into the gulf of mexico. the question is it going to be able to retain a little bit of the intensity? i m telling you, it is very disorganized. winds are currently at 40 miles per hour sustained. gusts have been up to 50. if we can hold together once it moves into the gulf of mexico, it doesn t say downgrade to a depression or even just a trough. it may actually strengthen and a bit more. now when we are talking about strengthening, latest forecast we have at the national hurricane center brings it with winds of 345 into 50 as we get into saturday afternoon at 2:00 p.m. gusts may be stronger up to 65. the reason why it may weaken before it gets stronger, it will run into a bit of shear, derek strong