Hurricane florence. Willie, theres a United States senator that is saying to the good people of South Carolina and North Carolina right now that if that is the president of the United States idea of how you respond to a hurricane, get in your cars and leave. I mean this seriously not as a political dig. If youre in florence and considering riding it out, your president just said that a hurricane response where 3,000 died is his measure of get success. Get out of there. Of course, there are those that die in natural disasters that, of course, die because of nature, because of the storms themselves. But in puerto rico, so, so much negligence. Such a delayed response and, again, such an unpresident ial response from a man picking fights with leaders in communities there that were struggling just to get power and water back. Yeah. Obviously, were going to be focused on whats happening or whats about to happen with Hurricane Florence. Weve got the forecast in just a second. But this is the context for the comment the president made yesterday and it dovetails with bob woodward and a president who is not able to admit defeat, but to concede something didnt go well. You dont have to say this is terrible for you, but you can say this was a great tragedy. Unsung success is not a term everybody should use when it comes to what happened in puerto rico. Given the study we got from George Washington university that showed nearly 3,000 people died in puerto rico. Mika, half the island for so long didnt have electricity, didnt have clean water, and we still have found over all of these months that we havent even been able to get accurate numbers for casualties in puerto rico. So its, again, an absolute mess. And you just wonder why the president of the United States is calling that a success. Ill just never forget the visual images of him throwing the paper towels out at people as if that was some symbolic way of showing support. Along with willie, joe and me, we have msnbc contributor mike barnacle. In just a moment, well be speaking with bob woodward. You may have heard, he has a new book out and well be get to go all of that. But first, we want to update you on Hurricane Florence which is inching closer to the United States as more than 1 million americans rush to evacuate along the southeastern coastline. Fema is warning that Hurricane Florence could be the strongest storm to target the carolinas and virginia region in decades. More than 1. 5 Million People are under mandatory evacuation orders, meaning get out. Outside of charleston, South Carolina, state Highway Patrol reversed lanes along a busy interstate to help residents move inland as fast as possible. At ft. Bragg, more than 80 military helicopters were moved inland and fema started setting up a staging area. Tractortrailers began arriving on monday. Bill karins, you and i have been through quite a few of these together, i know, my gosh, going back to 2003, 2004. Where does this one stack with all of those . This one is unique, joe. I dont think its going to have the intensity of some weve seen in the past, but the fact that we could have a major hurricane stall, and it looks like it will, over the top of wilmington, North Carolina, a city of 117,000 people, thats only under a voluntary evacuation is a scary thought. I was just looking up the numbers. New hannover county has a voluntary evacuation for the county. You could have the equivalent of a landfalling hurricane over the top of you. If youre planning on holding out the storm in that area, you wont have power, youll be stuck in your safe room and your pets and your family for 60 hours. Keep that in mind. Today is your decision day in that area. 135mileperhour winds, roughly 550 miles away from the coast right now. Here is the stall. Category 4 into thursday, friday, category 3. So it weakens as we stall. The storm surge will pile up at multiple high tide cycles and the rainfall will be incredible with this stall. And what has changed is that some of our computer models, a lot of them now are taking the storm, not making landfall and kind of drifting down the coast. So myrtle beach youre in play, georgetown youre in play. The forecast is dramatically improved for raleigh, richmond, norfolk, virginia beach. But our american model just off the coast, joe, friday evening, the european model still off the coast without a landfall until saturday. The european model does this, joe. This is our most reliability model towards wilmington, stalls down the South Carolina coast and coming into georgia. By this time, it would be much weaker but this is a big change in the forecast from what we had last night especially for people from savannah to charleston, hilton head, georgetown and myrtle beach. Much worse for you and still just as bad for our friends from jacksonville to North Carolina so wilmington. And, again, bill, scraping down a complete change. Its going to scrape and bounce along the border of the carolinas and into georgia. As you said, can stall out. And when that happens, when it gets over land, thats when tornados starts spinning off, thats when flooding starts. Oh, the rainfall, joe, the rainfall from this is going to be incredible. Someone is going to get four feet of rain from this if it stalls out the way it will. So youre talking about a storm that has the surge of a major hurricane, the winds of a major hurricane, and then the possible flooding of a harvey. Youre talking about if you can get out of the way safely and you have the means to do it, i would. Yeah, no doubt about it. Bill karins, thank you so much. As always, we appreciate it. Well be going back to you for updates throughout the show. As somebody thats been going through this since 1978, 1979, if you can leave the area, please leave the area. Dont stick around. Lets go now, weve got bob woodward with us, mika, today. Bob has done it again. Fear. Seriously, bob, you seem to outdo the yourself every time with this time you tell the inside story of the Trump Administration in the book fear. We knew you were working on it. We knew you were working on something. And you disappear and when you come out, theres an explosion, a political explosion. Theres been one here, as well, bob. I want to ask you, though, what is your biggest take away . Lets just look at this entire project from 30,000 feet. If you were trying to describe to somebody 30 years from now a historian, what was the big idea with the Trump Administration in its first 18 months . What would you say . One way to connect the dots on this, theres a war on truth that the president launches and he just will not accept its not a matter of alternative data, but the information and the data and the conclusions of particularly National Security experts in his own government and economic and financial experts. So in the course of this, people closest to him do not trust him. And the impulsedriven presidency is something that the more people know, the more they realize were at risk. You cut your journal cystic investigative teeth, obviously, on the nixon administration. Compare Richard Millhouse nixons relationship with the truth to donald j. Trumps. Well, there was nixon was not a big believer in the truth, but as the tapes and the testimony and that investigation in the 70s established, he was a criminal president. Breaking the law all the time, using the power of the presidency as an instrument of personal revenge to settle scores with enemies real and perceive. In the case of trump, there is the Mueller Investigation which clearly is important, but its not ended and we dont know whether theyre going to come up with information that establishes criminality. But what i thought the vacuum here in the coverage of trump was, first of all, excellent reporting by my newspaper, the Washington Post, the New York Times, wall street journal. But the focus was not so much on the Mueller Investigation. The question really is how does trump perform as president. And in the Foreign Policy areas, the handling of north korea, afghanistan, the middle east, all of the immigration issues, all of the trade issues, i was able to excavate and find out actually what happened. And, again, this is the pattern he wont face whats real. Right. So before we get into the specifics of that, i still want to talk about trump the man because so many people have differing opinions on his fitness to be president , mental fitness, his physical fitness. Let me start, though, by, again, lets focus on the truth. Lets focus on donald trump the person. How is donald trump like Richard Nixon . How is donald trump different than Richard Nixon . Each president ive done books now on nine president s from nixon to trump. Thats 20 of the president s weve had in this country. Each one is different and unique. Some similarities, some differences. I think the key in examining trump is actually what will he do when people present him with facts . For instance, it sounds a little esoteric, but the World Trade Organization, which the United States is a member of, very important, allows us to file complaints of unfair trade practices. And theres a meeting in the oval office and the president says, well, the World Trade Organization is the Worst Organization ever. We lose all of our cases. And they present data pardon . I didnt know we actually whip most of our cases there. Yeah. Like 85. 7 of them. Not just 85 , but 85. 7 . And he says, no, thats not true. And the people are saying, look, call the u. S. Trade representative, your guy, and you will confirm this. I dont want to hear. I dont want to call him. I dont want to deal with it. And at some point, he gets literally where the aides ask him, where did you get these ideas . And he will say, well, ive had them for 30 years. Theyre right and if you disagree, youre wrong. So have you do you hear from when you interviewed all of the people that, the Staff Members and acquaintanceships and people close to his orbit any concern about Donald Trumps well being mentally or did they just believe that he just hes got an efficient personality that cant handle the truth . Happily, im not a psychiatrist and i dont dig into that. What matters to people is the performance as president. And when you dig into this and excavate it, again, you find people are worried about the performance, the inability to grow, the inability to listen, the inability to change his mind. And so you have a situation i make this point, but i think a real ardent trump supporter would go through this and say, gee, maybe i like trump and some of the things, but this is not the way to manage the government. I know youre not a psychiatrist, im just curious if anybody expressed concern to you while you were entrying them that he may not have the mental capabilities to be president of the United States. Well, demonstrate scene after scene how he deals with reality and data. And in the course of it, i mean, in one National Security counsel meeting, he is so worked up about how much money we are spending with troops, american troops abroad or in south korea or in europe and he thinks were being cheated. Finally secretary of defense mattis, when trump is, you know, why are we doing this . What do we get out of it . Mattis says, were trying to prevent world war three. Mattis at this point is so frustrated, he has the to communicate and tell the president and this is a year into office. This is not the first week. Literally has to tell him were trying to prevent world war three. Can you imagine this secretaries of defense weve had, say bob gates, having to tell george w. Bush or barack obama that actually our job is to prevent world war three. They knew that. Thats the core probably the number one responsibility of the president. Bob, youve heard all the denials from the people, from the president all the way down. The president effectively calling this book a work of fiction, defense second mattis, chief of staff kelly, gary cohen, although his was full throated perhaps more than the other ones. There is no throat at all. He said this book doesnt portray my experience at the white house, but didnt deny what you lay out in detail with some quotes. The latest is former governor of new jersey Chris Christie. He ran the transition and. Chris christie said this just didnt the happen, these are leaks from steve bannon. I reached out to absolutely everyone. This is at a time when they were putting the word out in the white house dont talk to anybody for a book, dont talk to woodward. I did my Due Diligence on this. And you would call people and they would say, oh, is this for a book . Cabinet officers, well, yes, it is for a book. Well, im sorry, we cant talk to you or somebody would say, yeah, ill talk to you in a clandestine way. So what these are and this goes way back to the nixon era. I call them politically calculated survival denials. They are not real. They are a form of the nondenial denial or people say this didnt happen, this is untrue, that is fine. And then when the truth comes out, often years later in the investigations or in memoirs, you see thats precisely what happened. So is it as specific as people talking to you . Perhaps some of the people i just mentioned, and then saying if this ever goes public, im going to have to deny it, bob . Well, they dont tell me that, but i understand the context. This mike is laughing. This is one reporter actually got hives yesterday because there were denials about things that this reporter had heard from the person. People told me, oh, yeah, i heard soandso say that. But off the record. Well, when i did this, i was able to not take anything off the record. People would, you know, in the eighth hour of a series of interviews, hey, id like to do this off the record. Id say no. It was on the record, just anonymous. Its not anonymous. I know who it is. Anonymous to the reader, though. Well, the source, but not the information. At 2 00 on tuesday, july 17th, these people gathered in the white house and this happened. The real portrait of Something Like this, it is specifically what happened at what time and whats going on in the white house. But people can say what they want. Thank god for the first amendment. Im able to say what i found out. Bob, youve covered nine president s. Youve written about all nine president s, some of them in books, most of them in the daily newspaper, the Washington Post. Have you ever heard of, been around, according to your reporting, someone so ill equipped to hold the job of president as donald trump . Well, that is the judgment of people who work for him, who are the most the economic discussions, for instance, on at one point, trump said, well, lets print more money. Well run the Printing Presses and then well borrow money and well make money as the federal government. No, no. That is not the way it works because you increase the deficit, Interest Rates go up, you could have a calamity. But he does not understand that. He thinks that at one point i have this in the book where he actually writes in his own hand, trade is bad. That he thinks somehow were losing our nationalism, that we need to be isolated. He was elected as a disrupter. Fine. Thats exactly the you know, he won. And you can disrupt things, but you inherit a framework. And practices and, you know, when people say this is not normal, i think, you know, we know his approach is not normal. So given that, who is there in the white house to control or monitor the daily dangers that any president and this president , obviously, is confronted with . Who is there . The chief of staff kelly. I talked at some length about and he literally put out memos telling people we have to have a process. General kelly didnt even know there was a meeting on steel tariffs. So were going to have much more with bob woodward straight ahead. Were going to bring in kasie hunt and the president of the council on Foreign Relations richard haas. Youre watching morning joe. Well be right back. So, i have this recurring dream. 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