And well talk to a report wloer wreporter who was in the room this week with joe biden. All right. Lets start with President Trump who is in camp david this morning. He canceled his planned trip to poland he said in order to monitor Hurricane Dorian stateside. Hes opting to send Vice President mike pence to poland in his place. Were following the path and strength of the storm which overnight intensified to category 4 in magnitude. Heres a view of dorian from space. You can see the turning eyes with sustained winds of up to 140 Miles Per Hour. It is expected to make a devastating impact on the northern bahamas before hitting the east coast of florida late monday into tuesday. Last night President Trump spoke to reporters in part about the approaching storm. The hurricane is roaring, it could be a big one. Were hoping it maybe makes a right and goes up north, thats about a 5 chance. Its not looking good. Its one of the biggest hurricanes weve seen in a long time. Here with an update moments ago from the Hurricane Center is janessa webb. How is it looking . We had a tremendous shift in the past in the last 24 hours. We just got our latest update at 8 00 a. M. Now we have sustained winds of 145 Miles Per Hour. So gaining some strength overnight. We did have that rapid intensification phase that happened. So you can see the diameter, the eye of this storm is dramatically decreased what does that mean . Its slowing down dramatically. So what you can count on is that prolonged flooding event here along with taup cope usiocopeio rain. Lets talk about this cone of uncertainty here. We had a chance of it shifting to the north. Folks, thats exactly what has happened here. As it slows down, we still have that major hurricane for sunday with 145 Miles Per Hour, but by monday it calms down just a little bit, to 130 Miles Per Hour by tuesday. Look at this, by the coast area we are going to see potential landfall now georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, they are in the mix of this with a cat 2 potentially for Hilton Head Island. The cone of uncertainty still very wide here. The slowing down pace, jeff, of this system, well be talking about this until next thursday now. Wow. All right. Thanks for that. Well check back with you later in the show. Lets head to miami where julia ba bagg is standing by. Shes with nbc 6. Whats the scene there . A steady stream of people filling up, not only cars but also canisters like this one. We were just speaking to this gentleman about that. What are you expecting . [ speaking Foreign Language ] he says he doesnt want to be taken by surprise if it does come our way. Better news for miami, but we remember well the lessons of irma. [ speaking Foreign Language ] he says hes filling up his car and he will have an extra gallon in that container just to be ready. He doesnt have a generator at home but he wants extra to put in his car so he can go. Overnight people had trouble looking for gas. We saw plastic bags over lots of pumps. So this place really like an oasis. Yesterday there were much longer lines. Things are going very smoothly now. Yesterday my own mother spent nearly three hours in line waiting for gas. So people are trying to take advantage here, wake up early before everybody else does. This gas station has a 90,000 gallon capacity. They were waiting for another shipment. It has not arrived yet. Aaa says there is enough gas in florida, the thing is getting that gas to the gas stations to keep up with demand. Thank you for that. Lets bring in our panel here, back here in washington. Glenn, thanks to you for supplying the pastry plate here. D. C. Doughnuts. Shout out to them. Lets talk about the president s role in all this. Two things can be true. One, he can think it is prudent to stay stateside while a cat 4 storm approaches the u. S. , but he could be concerned about the optics being overseas as a storm hits the key swing state of florida where he also has two properties. Lets not always beat up on President Trump, unless he deserves it. He cancels a trip overseas when theres a serious storm sort of barrelling down on our country. I think thats a good thing. I think he should be focused on whats good for the nation right now. Is it a coincidence what hes maralago is where . Its in florida. Yep. That why hes so concerned about this . Thats my snark for the morning. I actually think its a good thing when we have a president who is more concerned about us than he is rushing overseas to try to curry favor with folks over there. Whats your take . Dhs and fema. He has acting directors. I think this is madness. This is really tremendous for our country. Hurricane andrew was so big. So catastrophic. Dorian, its just one category lower. The president doesnt seem to understand that. Hes comparing this to andrew already. He has some loose lips. He seems to want to talk, talk, talk but he doesnt understand how to lead in the face of disaster. He doesnt have the people in place to do that. There are people within the administration who understand how to pull the levers of government to serve the people affected by this storm. Until you confirm people and get people in positions of leadership that you trust and know the process to help fellow americans who will suffer from this, this is all ridiculous. I think were in a moment where theres no leadership. The president does have a mixed record when it comes to Natural Disasters. He sometimes shows more empathy to states that voted for him. This week, we saw how he preemptively attacked the leadership of puerto rico and then when the storm had florida in his eye, he was far more concerned. Yeah. Yeah. Look, this president , you know, you never know what he will tweet about the hurricane. I remember watching television and him saying its the wettest from the standpoint of water. I remember that. I think i was there for that. It was a great moment. Him canceling a trip to poland, its not that big of a deal. Hes very well liked in poland. He has an incredible relationship with the polish president , which, you know, the polish president deserves probably a lot of criticism for the way he leads in poland and treats reporters. I dont think this is a big loss for the president by not going over to poland. Its not really going to hurt him internationally. Hes weakest on the International Stage. It looks better for him to be here probably rather than there. I remember last week i was on msnbc last week when he was at g7, i said we do not want this to blow up. I dont think the polish im not going to poland, that wont hurt him. It wont hurt his base. Like glenn was saying, it looks good for a president to be in the United States when were expecting a Natural Disaster in the United States. Im worried about the aftermath. I dont know how theyll lead the way. Because the government doesnt have a full apparatus . Absolutely not. How can acting directors be wellequipped theyre acting. It seems like Vice President duda will forgive trump. I couldnt help but key in on one thing reported by the New York Times yesterday about the president canceling the trip. President duda said i find it very easy and good to cooperate with President Trump because he is very down to earth, very concrete, he tells me what he wants and he asks me what he can get from us. Its a purely transactional relationship. Its a onesided transaction. Yeah. Thats remarkable to have one world leader say about other. I know we dispensed with the snark as you put it, the president canceled his trip to denmark when the leader there said his bid to buy greenland was absurd. Here he is canceling poland. Do you think it serves his purposes coming off the g7 that he would prefer to stay put rather than going out on the International Stage . I think whatever donald trump does in his decisionmaking process is best for donald trump. Thats not even snark. How we are now in a time in our history when most people feel that way about an american president is troubling. I look forward talking about the 2020 elections coming up. Well do that in a bit. Well continue to bring you developments on Hurricane Dorian throughout the morning with floridas governor expecting to give an update at 9 00 a. M. Eastern. Up next, why one of the longest serving assistants to President Trump is now out of a job. The details of her sudden departure and what she reportedly said about the president s daughters. Stay with us. Ng the future. So, every day, we put our latest technology and unrivaled network to work. 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Only pay for what you need. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Some things are too important to do yourself. Get customized security with 24 7 monitoring from xfinity home. Awarded the best professionally installed system by cnet. Simple. Easy. Awesome. Call, click or visit a store today. Bennett. The president s inner circle continues to shrink. President trumps personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout. She has been viewed as the gatekeeper of the oval office. Her departure came after the president learned she shared int ma intimate details about the first family with reporters. She reportedly bragged she had a better relationship with trump than his own daughters and the president did not like being in pictures with tiffany because he perceived her as being overweight. Trump addressed the situation yesterday. I really think she had a bad night. I think it was unfortunate. She said she was drinking and the whole thing was unfortunate. The comments about you not wanting to be in pictures with tiffany s that true . No, tiffany is great. I love tiffany. I love tiffany. Joining us now is daniel litman. Congratulations on your scoop. Thank you. Help us understand the space that madeleine occupied in the west wing. Who was she to donald trump . She was his executive assistant but was recently promoted to the director of oval office operations. So basically anyone who kneed anything from trump went to her, that included journalists looking for interviews, woodward was castigated by trump because he didnt call madeline when seeking an interview with him. If you had a Good Relationship with madeleine, you could talk to the president pretty quickly. And her cardinal sin it appears was running her mouth to a group of my colleagues, white house reporters, when the president was in bedminsterment help us understand how that unfolded. She and hogan gidley, the White House Deputy press secretary, they had this off the record dinner two weeks ago with four white house reporters, gidley left to do a tv hit, and then she started kind of spilling the beans after one too many drinks. These dinners are a commonplace thing on trips that the president goes to because staffers and press people want to have kind of an off the record atmosphere, but she went too far and started criticizing the president s family, which is a nono in trumps mind. There had been some reporting that the president was ambivalent about firing her or forcing her to resign. Do you have a sense of how that unfolded at the white house . Yes. He to be persuaded over all of thursday it appears that she had to go. So the chief of staff and others around trump were telling him that this story was going to break, and this was an untenable situation for them. Trump does not like to fire people. Hes long had a Good Relationship with Madeleine Westerhout. On Election Night my colleague reported in american carnage, his book about the last few years in american politics, that Madeleine Westerhout cried on Election Night because she was not happy that trump won and she found her way then into this top job and seemed to enjoy the access and power that it held. She was always posting pictures on instagram of her life in the white house. It shows as a staffer you have to remember not to be breaking the bosss trust. Even though trump is not loyal to his aides, if you wanted to keep your job and have good employment prospects in the future, this is not the way to leave the white house. Daniel, you mentioned the tim alberta book. 25yearold Madeleine Westerhout broke down drying on Election Night inconsolable to trumps victory to the amusement of her rnc peers, she was chosen as the president s executive assistant and now just sits outside the oval office. She graduated from college in 2013. She worked as an intern on mitt romneys campaign. Before that she was a fitness instructor. What does it say about the Trump White House that someone with that background could be given that responsibility . I came across her name when she was an assistant at the rnc to katie walsh. She was one of many staffers at a lower level. She went on to be an elevator greeter girl. His piece is great, it sheds light on how many of trumps inner circle comes to get there. Its questionable. People who are generally inexperienced, unprofessional. Madeleine was no different. The loose lips she had, its no surprise. Shes around a boss that doesnt seem to have tact. Why should she, even in a semiprofessional situation ive been around reporters. I really subscribe to one thing. You can have great relationships with reporters. Reporters are friends to those of white house protect our principle, the candidate, the elected official. Its very important to not bad mouth your boss. That seemed to have been lost on her. Her quick ascent to someone who screens the president s official calls, doesnt understand that. This is indicative of who trump surrounds himself with. Regardless of the way one feels about the president , what madeleine appears to have done here, that is a cardinal sin. She deserved to be fire. Yeah. There doesnt to be Quality Control on the people trump pulls into his inner orbit. I think on one hand we like to see and historically we have seen keeping the president s children out of this kind of thing. Tiffany in particular doesnt seem to have done anything to warrant this. But, you know, i dont think trump inspires loyalty with those people that he brings in. So when they have an unguarded moment, theyre probably exploding with information that they have about just how erratic and unfit President Trump is when theyre dealing with him. This kind of explosion of information doesnt surprise me. I think everybody kind of loses in the end. Thats a great point. I covered the end of Barack Obamas presidency, you didnt see those leaks coming from his aides. You didnt see it in the george w. Bush white house, but yet in the Trump Administration you see this thing a lot. Yeah. You see this kind of thing all the time. You know, i get drinks with white house people off the record pretty frequently. Sometimes they have bad things to say about the president. I never encountered anybody bad mouthing the president s family. With madeleine, the more important thing, madeleine was there from the beginning. We talked we ironically talk about everything and how many scare moo scaramuccis it lasted. She was one of the last people there from the beginning, which is interesting to me. It shows me what has to happen what is the line that has to be crossed that you go all the way youre one of the last people with the president , you go all the way, so this is the line and now that this is crossed i think glenn is right. Quality control in this white house, her coming from, you know, her resume the rnc. Its not massive, but thats also not surprising. Lets talk about the white house pipeline. Usually you get people going from the hill to the white house, the rnc or the dnc to the white house. That pipeline in the Trump Administration, at least in the current day, doesnt seem to be as active as it was in previous administrations. One wonders where the white house is pulling some of these staffers from. Pulling them from loyalists, people who show up at the trump hotel sometimes to be honest. This is a real thing. Ive been in republican circles where theyre like lets have drinks. We dont know who well see tonight. You have to put yourself in the right place at the right time. What troubles me about this piece, one is that she was reprimanded earlier this year for violating the hatch act. So she was exhibiting this loyalty publicly where she was crossing the line. They dont care. They just want to be in good graces with the president. The people around