Tavis smiley fires back at those allegations after being suspe suspended and losing sponsors. Hes here live speaking out for the first time only on gma. And the force is strong with this one. The last jedi soaring to an out of this galaxy opening. Now, the second largest of all time and its just getting started. And good morning, america. Welcome back from the weekend. Also a big welcome to our weekend anchor paula faris. Thanks, george. Its great to be here on a monday. Boy, it was not a happy weekend in atlantas airport. Not at all. So many people stranded. My brotherinlaw was one of the million that was stranded. My sisterinlaw said he had a hard time calling her. The communications were bad and he was literally and figuratively in the dark and they wouldnt let him leave the airport. Hes still there. 11 hours of chaos after the fire knocked out power. Lets see what its like there. You see the airport, cloudy and foggy. There you see it right there. That is correct cause even more trouble during the day today. The planes on the tarmac live. Adding insult to injury, thousands were stranded in darkness last night wandering through the airport and others stuck on planes on the tarmac for hours forced to walk back to the terminal in the cold and abcs marcus moore is right there in atlanta with the latest. Hi there, marcus. Reporter good morning the lights are back on. People are lined up at the ticketing counter. Many of the people weve seen slept at the airport overnight. Chaos and frustration as the worlds Busiest Airport goes dark. I just want to get home. Its a nightmare. We have to go through the tunnels that are pitch black. Reporter overnight, thousands trying to catch some sleep anywhere they can. Absurd. People are sleeping on the floor like homeless people. Ive never seen anything like this. Reporter hundreds of planes stuck on the tarmac sunday. They said we couldnt even flush the toilets because their water was below 20 . Reporter the emergency announcements had many fearing terrorism. The lights flickered once. That was really scary. A couple minutes later it went out again. Because we dont know the source of the fire we have no way of absolutely knowing that our system may have been tampered with in order to create this kind of chaos and confusion. Reporter people using flashlights to shine a path through those dark passageways. Frozen escalators and airport workers and volunteers trying to help. We were literally carrying old people down the escalators. Reporter finally after 11 hours, thunderous applause as Christmas Lights start to flicker. The power finally back. Its like there is an end to this hell. Reporter the cause determined to be a fire in the substation. Noxious fumes making it difficult to fight the fire. Everybody walk toward the center point. Reporter it took down the system and the power point. This morning lolo jones among those frustrated and stranded passengers trying to figure out what to do next. Not only are they not booking us on an early flight but it might be another day until were out of here. Reporter george, i met a woman this morning whose flight doesnt leave until 9 00 tonight. She has been here at the airport since noon on sunday, and this may not be over yet as flights can be impacted through the weekend, george. Okay, marcus, thanks very much. Brandnew photos coming in of what the underground tunnel looked like as the fire broke out. Thats what it looks like this morning. You see it there. We want to get more from the president and ceo of georgia power, paul bowers. Mr. Bowers, thanks for joining us this morning. Any indication now, any sense of how this all got started . George, right now were going through a process of investigating what exactly happened. But right now we do know there was a failure in the switch gear that caused the fire that absolutely created the issue for us from our feeds from this airport. Do we know if this was set deliberately . No, we do not know any of that right now. Thats what the investigation is going to go through. But there is dual feeds, two separate redundant feeds to this airport. When that switch gear actually ignited, it created the flames that you saw in the pictures that impacted our cables and the cables coming from two Different Directions and thats what ultimately caused the outage. At the airport. Thats what a lot of people are arounding about, is how is it both the main system and the backup system both failed . So, you have seven cables that come through this airport. In one tunnel, and this tunnel is the feed source, if you will, for both directions. That switch gear sits on the bottom of that tunnel, and when it ignited, it burned up that wall where you see the cables coming through. Theres, like i said, seven cables, four coming from one direction, three coming from a different direction. That is the safeguards that we have. I imagine this is a pretty intense investigation. How long will it take . Right now, were in we have our investigators in the tunnel this morning. It will take the remainder of this week. We will fix that cable this week and have all the service back to normal operations by the end of the week. Right now were feeding from two Different Directions. George, one of the things that we absolutely know is that, you know, this is an inconvenience. We are apologizing for this occurring and like the mayor said last night, you know, we wanted to make sure that everyone is safe before we entered into that tunnel. But right now our focus is reliability ensuring this doesnt happen again. Thats the final question i have. From what you know now, any steps you can take to prevent this from happening in the future . Yeah, thats one of the questions well have with the airport. What else can we do . Do we concrete encase the cable or separate the cable in different areas or not . Thats a question well have as we talk to the airport for the remainder of this week. Mr. Bowers, thanks for your time this morning. Okay, thank you, george. This power outage being felt across the country. Abcs gio benitez is tracking the impact on flights and holiday deliveries. Good morning, gio. Reporter hey, george. Good morning to you. Things are just starting to get going here at atl. We have heard just a few planes take off and land here at the airport this morning. As you said, you have been saying it all morning long. This is the Busiest Airport in the world. Thats why this is such a big deal. I want to show you these numbers right now because every single day, about 275,000 passengers fly through on 2,500 arriving and departing flights. And yesterday many were stuck and still may be unable to leave for days to come. Now, so far airlines have canceled nearly 1,600 flights between sunday and today and may continue to climb throughout the morning. To make things even worse, take a look at this, a dense fog has blanketed atlanta and the airport this morning, stretching all the way to there is a, so ev even if your flight hasnt been canceled, you may have trouble getting off the ground. That means the Ripple Effects will be felt all across the country and could affect holiday deliveries as well. Reporter so far its too early to know how big that will be but for delta passengers are going to have a real headache because delta has 60 of its flights traveling through here every day. They have already canceled 300 flights today, 900 were canceled yesterday. But for holiday deliveries, u. P. S. And fedex tell us their delivery schedules were not impacted. So thats good news. Thank goodness for that, gio benitez, thanks very much. A whole lot of inconvenience. Out west to our big story and the battle against that massive california wildfire. The thomas fire has been burning for two weeks now and its on track to become the worst wildfire in californias history. So far its already destroyed 270,000 acres and more than a thousand structures. This fire alone forced more than 1,000 people to evacuate. Our Senior National correspondent, matt gutman is in montecito, california for us where the flames are still raging. Good morning, matt. Reporter good morning. That fire just ripped through here. Gutting this multimillion dollar home, and you can see the firefighter over there still putting out all that smoldering debris behind me. Firefighters managed to save the majority of the debris here. This is one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the entire world, and celebrities are tweeting their firefighters. Rob lowe inviting firefighters over for dinner, and oprah voicing concern for fatigue. Many of them have been battling flames up and down california for the past two months. So many of them expect to be here through the holidays, missing their families. There are now 8,500 firefighters battling this blaze, and it looks like it could be the biggest in history. At least in the next two days or so, but scary moment. The other day, a firefighter taken down on a stretcher. He had to be medevaced, but we know he is okay. You mention the firefighter was injured, but one firefighter already lost his life battling the fires and we saw a great amount of support for him over the weekend. What can you tell us about that . Reporter such a moving tribute to cory iverson who was engulfed in the flames. Watching that procession through Southern California was so moving. All those firefighters and regular folks standing out on the freeways on those overpasses, paying their final respects, and i just want you to see whats happening here. This fire so hot and powerful, just consuming this home. Its the reason that the fire chief here has said this is the perfect storm. Low humidity, wind and relentless fire. It looks like it will go into the new year, which is not welcome news. Matt gutman reporting for us this morning. Thank you. George. We get the latest on the russia investigation amid new tensions between the trump team and Robert Mueller. The president was asked if he would fire mueller. Are you considering firing Robert Mueller . No, im not. No. What else . What, are you surprised . This comes after one of the president s lawyers claim mueller unlawfully obtained emails from the trump transition and mueller dismissing the charge and Pierre Thomas in washington has the story. Good morning, pierre. Reporter george, good morning. Youre right. Today more evidence of increasing tension between special counsel bob mueller and attorneys representing the president and his interests. Weve learned that muellers team has requested a series of emails sent by trump transition officials this morning, and attorneys for the transition are crying foul and have sent letters to congress alleging the emails were illegally provided to mueller. Muellers spokesperson said, quote, when we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owners consent or the appropriate criminal process. The debate comes after trump attorneys last week pushed for the appointment of a Second Special counsel to look at muellers team specifically whether theres bias. There could be a critical meeting this week in this investigation. Reporter thats right. They might be trying to meet to get an assessment of where things stand in regard to the completion of the investigation. Some at the white house have suggested that the investigation is nearing its end, especially given that many white house officials have already been interviewed, george. But with the recent guilty plea of former National Security adviser Michael Flynn we have no clear indication that this investigation is anywhere near over. Okay, pierre, thanks very much. Lets get more on this now from our chief legal analyst, dan abrams here with me. Lets start out with this letter from the Trump Lawyers complaining about muellers obtaining these emails. Well, it seems there are two arguments theyre making. First of all that the organization that oversees the transitions, the gsa never should have turned these over in the first place. That argument borders on frivolous because its from their server. Government documents. Government documents and clear when you begin the process there is no expectation of privacy and this is a federal criminal probe so i dont think thats a real serious argument. The number two argument is the documents that they did receive involve privileged documents. Then they cite all sorts of privileges, one of them which doesnt make any sense, that there was this idea that somehow there was a president ial communication privilege. Youre talking about the transition. He wasnt president. He wasnt president yet. The one thats potentially serious is Attorney Client and whats always very serious. Thats the idea that some of the documents they obtained should be protected by the Attorney Client privilege. They will have to be very specific about what documents those were. Very specific about who the lawyer was, et cetera, and well see. And well have to see, but even if Something Like that happens, the remedy is you cant use those documents. This first step was more a Public Relations maneuver. The idea of going to Congress First makes it feel like a stunt. Youre saying we want to make sure this doesnt happen again. Yeah, the next time there is a big issue about the president ial transition, we want to just make sure that, you know, that just doesnt make any sense. This was a statement from trumps team to the public saying, we want you to know we think this whole process has been unfair. I think one of the most significant things of this letter is the trump team only found out about these emails this week. Look, that does indicate that they are not doing a great job of staying in contact with people who they probably should be to determine exactly where the investigation is. Because were talking about something that happened months ago that theyre only finding out about in the last week. Final question, this meeting between the Trump Lawyers and muellers team if it happens this week, significant . I think the only thing that could make it really significant would be whether the discussion is, does donald trump come in and talk to muellers team . Otherwise its just a typical conversation between lawyers and i dont think its that significant. Dan abrams, thanks very much. Paula. Thanks, george. It is a busy day in washington. President trump is set to give a major speech on National Security. Congress meantime, is preparing for that big vote on the republican tax bill as early as tomorrow. So lets go to our senior White House Correspondent cecilia vega for more. Good morning to you, cecilia. Reporter hey, paula. Good morning to you. You know what, the president said he wanted that bill on his desk by christmas and it looks like hell get it. Lets look at what it would do for so many deductions so Many American families claim. It will reduce the amount you can claim on your mortgage up to 750,000. It also expands that child tax credit. Republicans really cant afford to lose many votes on this one. Senator john mccain is suffering and suffering from that rare form of brain cancer. He is back home in arizona in in the wake of treatment, so he is expected to miss this vote. Two key republican senators did end up flipping their votes from nos to yeses to it looks like its all but a done deal and calling it a gift for middle class families, but this nonpartisan congressional tax age analyst says that those who stand to benefit the most, paula, are the rich and big corporations. Moving on, cecilia, today in washington the president is also going to lay out a new u. S. National security policy. What can we expect . Reporter weve been talking to aides about this here. Two key headlines. He is expected to call china a strategic competitor and also going to take a break from the obamaera National Security plan and not name Climate Change a National Security threat. Every administration has to outline their plan by law to congress. President trump wants to make a big deal of it. Usually its not a ceremonial event. This will be a big speech for him. Cecilia reporting from the white house. Thank you, cecilia. George . Were getting tips for lastminute holiday shoppers. Christmas just a week away, and today may be your last chance to ship gifts without breaking the bank and Rebecca Jarvis here with details. What are the shipping deadlines . Christmas falls on a monday which means you have the full weekend to shop but deadlines come earlier for getting those shipments out. So if you look at things today is one of the last days to get things out. At the least expensive option with u. P. S. , for example, its three day select. Today is your deadline. Tomorrow, tuesday, december 19th is the deadline for Fedex Express saver and u. S. Postal first class. Those are your cheapest options. Wednesday, december 20th, fedex twoday, u. P. S. Twoday air and u. S. Postal priority mail. Those are the wednesday options. Theyll cost you more but still get there by christmas. Thursday, december 21st, fedex overnight, u. P. S. Next day air and the last option, really here is friday, december 22nd, u. S. Postal Service Priority mail express will guarantee it gets there by christmas day. You also have the fedex same day option on christmas day. The longer you wait the more you pay. Exactly, you really need to get it done earlier. Lastminute shoppers, what are the best options right now . Your very best bets are amazon, frankly, because if you are going to go online and make this happen online, your best option is there because if you are a prime member, and you can be a prime member, you can sign up for the motorbike. You have got twoday shipping on december 22nd, saturday, december 23rd, one day and can wait until the last minute christmas eve. Wow. If you need to. If you need to. Rebecca, thanks very much. Good thing santa is always on time. We want to go to ginger now with more on the fog this morning across the south. Hi, ginger. As if you hey there, paula. As if you needed more of a challenge in atlanta, the visibility still dropping less than a quarter mile now, and look at dallas, love field. Visibility there around a