Youll be all over it for us as always, thank you so much. Monu raju in washington. Thank you for being with us on this tuesday afternoon. Getting word from the police chief there in houston, texas, the first Police Officer fatality in the storm, sergeant perez, 34 years with houston pd. Im brooke baldwin. The lead starts now. Welcome to the lead. Im Brianna Keeler in for jake tapper. Were going to begin with Breaking News in the national lead. President trump arriving in texas. He is about to get a tour of the Operations Center there after stopping in Corpus Christi today. Today there are new warnings to residents. Get out now as a levee is pushed to its limit in houston and harvey continues to relentlessly pour down on the gulf coast. Just moments ago we learned that a houston Police Officer,
sergeant steve perez, was killed in this storm drowning on his way to work on sunday. His police chief overcome with emotion as he was explaining the decision to not go in after him. It was too t
evacuees shouldn t go home yet. he just said we have never seen a storm like this calling it epic, disastrous and widespread. florence blamed for at least 36 deaths. cnn s nick watt is live in wilmington, north carolina which is basically cut off and turned into an island. give us a sense of where will the president be going after this? what will he see today? well, we are not being told exactly where the president is going. perhaps some of the plans are still fluid. lots of roads are still closed here. this is still a fluid situation on the ground. some of the rivers are still cresting. we have been told by the white house that he does want to meet people who have survived and he does want to see some of the worst hit areas. the message we just heard there, he is in a hangar at a marine base up at cherry point. that base was hit hard. the message from the president was very clear.
buy just to move all of the epic amount of water sitting in the streets here. garrett, thank you very much. thank you. there are so many shots. that s an interstate. i saw this last night on twitter. here s a shot. oh, my gosh. that s it-10 with white caps. that should pretty much tell you. yeah. the amount of water is just it epic. it biblical. i think people are probably very happy that the president came to visit but as the days turn into weeks, it s the response and the governor and the first responders and then those in the weeks to come, how quickly they can respond to what is really impossible to even describe the devastation.
today when he was in south texas earlier this afternoon. he called it epic, he called it historic, he called the response terrific. so he is praising the local response here. this is what he had to say earlier this afternoon in corpus christi. you are special. we re here to take care. it s going well and i want to thank you for coming out. we re going to get you back and operating immediately. thank you, everybody. what a crowd, what a turnout. reporter: so brianna, at least that clip there in early remarks that he made almost sounds as though he was coming to a small campaign rally of sorts. and that, of course, is not what he is here in texas for. he has had a variety of serious meetings with the governor of texas. he ll be arriving here at the state emergency command center behind me within the next several minutes or so. he s also traveling with the two republican senators, a few members of his cabinet also on board. but brianna, one thing i am
in orlando. even for donald trump, this was intense. you called it epic. that s how you describe it. and there s three points to make here about how to follow of this. when ben carson starts slipping in the polls this is nothing unusual. this is out of character for even donald trump. but i should note that from our nbc polling, ben carson is one of two candidates who plays well among tea partiers, the libertarians and moderates. the second point to make is that donald trump, we haven t been talking about him over the last few days. we ve been talking about marco rubio and ted cruz and rand paul. this is a way for donald trump to steal back that spotlight. he s our big political story heading into the summit today. this is the first time we ve seen donald trump go after ben carson s redemption story.