same mistakes president bush did but you don t quite put it in that way. use your bully pulpit. it s very powerful. explain. who is a great guy, eye good guy. he used to work at the national hurricane center for me when i was the under secretary. you heard tom boss saturday who used to work for many when i was the fema director. they ve told the president what they re doing. the president has asked questions. hooer is what i ve not heard that kind of fits in what senator grassley said. has the president said to the cabinet, has he said to them, look, we have potentially and when i hear the national hurricane center use the word catastrophic my ears perk up and i pay attention. has the president of the united states said to his cabinet when brock long says i need x, whatever x might be, let s just
don t make the same mistake president bush made. the white house said the president expects to visit texas next week after the storm dissipates. his entire focus has been on making american great again. he is focused on the americans that voted him into office. he s focused on the americans that didn t vote him spew officials. he s focused on effecting positive change this this country and when we go in and brief him on the preparations for this hurricane, he is acutely focused which is the right thing, by the way, the americans in the path have what they need. the president tweeted a photo on the briefing this morning. have you heard from the white house? yes. just spoke with the president not even an hour ago. we have been fully engaged with the white house on multiple occasions. and when you spoke to the president, what did he say? he s given me full authority in conjunction with the department of homeland security
order. he doesn t need anything. what i would encourage the president to do. i think he s at camp david right now is he should call every cabinet security and get them on a secure conference call and he should read them the rye on the act and it should basically be brock long is my personal representative in this disaster. whatever he asks for, you give it to him. and if i hear any of you bickering about, well, is he really need this or that, no. he s the guy in charge. give him what he needs. that s what the president should do. it doesn t have to be public so is it fair to say the biggest lesson you take away from katrina is that president bush had been nor emphatic that with a with his cabinet, that would have saved lives? yes. well, yes, because i will tell you historically overtime what we see from intrepid reporters actually doing reporting on katrina, they find that things that i asked for, things that i actually signed we call them mission assignments, and i would sign th
party. if there is a serious fight between the two of them, more republican voters are going to side with trump than are going to side with mitch mcconnell and paul ryan. but trump can t get anything done in congress without the congressional republicans. so the question is at what point has trump just does trump just give up on getting anything done in congress and just decide he, a, enjoys and b, can have some political profit from having a constant fight with these guys. he s not even talking the democrats any more, which is really interesting. has he decided to run for re-election. i don t think he s decided that yet. he s an impulsive president, but if you look at picking this fight right now before he s headed into a fall where he has to do maybe he doesn t want to govern any more and do the big ticket items that he said he wanted to do. there are things they actually have to do and that fund the government and raise the debt limit and those sorts of things. and picking
requisition certain assets, those things got lost in a bureaucratic mooir that so this day 12 years later we don t know what the hell happened to them. all i m saying is use that bully pulpit. you and i both know president trump loves a bully pulpit. you don t have to do it publicly, but get the cabinet together on a conference call and tell them, look, we ve seen what hurricane andrew did to president bush 4 is. we saw what katrina did to bush 43. we see the criticisms of obama in super storm sandy. these kinds of disasters can make or break a presidency. they can establish the narrative. so get ahead of it now and, frankly, getting ahead of it is not just good politics. it s actually saving looifrsz and doing what you re supposed to do. interesting note to had end on there. michael brown, former fema director joining us this afternoon. i appreciate it. stay with misnin and nbc news.com into the night as