the headlines saying it all, heartbreak across the state as those fires continue to rage across maui chasing thousands from their homes. no power, no internet and next to no progress in beating back the flames that have already left dozens dead. fema directorwill join me live in a minute. donald trump launching a three-pronged attack using ads, speeches, and tv interviews to go after the men and women charging him with crimes. is there a point in which those criticisms themselves break the law? and a year and a half after russia invaded ukraine, it's a scenario that almost no one would have predicted at the start. moscow now under increasing threat, its airports scrambling planes, government buildings bombed, residents raing for cover. we'll have the latest there as well. but we begin with paradise ablaze. at this hour, at least 36 people are dead as three wildfires rage across maui. parts of the island looking like a bomb went off and evacuations are happening around the clock. the headline in the local paper has a haunting succinct description, truly apocalyptic. the seaside town of lahaina once the capital of the hawaiian kingdom is now largely burned to the ground. 217 buildings gone and with them irreplaceable pieces of personal lives and shared history. familiar landscapes incinerated, now they'll never be the same. thousands of residents had to run for their lives, one man telling nbc news he had just minutes to escape. >> two houses i grew up, my grandparents' home, my house where my brother lives, my mother, my father, every single person that i work with, the people i see at the bank, the grocery store, everyone i know is now homeless. >> and for thousands more, dream vacations turning into a hellish nightmare, with tourists chased to the airport for an escape, all of it most likely the latest heartbreaking and costly price being paid for chronic inaction on climate change. i want to bring in nbc's dana griffin from maui. dana, more than 2,000 people at evacuation centers across the island. i know you're at one of them right now. what are you seeing? what do people need? >> reporter: yeah, chris, it's around 7:00 local time. we're seeing people huddle underneath the awning because it is raining right now. not sure if this is going to help with the firefighting efforts today, but people here, they need shelter. they need somewhere to go. we've seen a lot of people sleeping in their cars. 3 to 400 people slept here inside maui high school. we spoke to someone with the red cross, and they tell us at this evacuation center which is the largest, they have pretty much everything they need. for the people who are still in lahaina, they need meals that they can readily eat and water. that is the big concern. they're actually preparing for a group to try to get to those people and see what they need. it's just very devastating to hear some of the people walking in telling us that they've lost their homes, others have slept in their car for several days. it is very concerning, chris. >> thank you so much for that. i know you'll keep us posted on the situation there. now for the two pieces of information on the fires we just got from the white house within the last 15 minutes. one, president biden will address the fires just moments from now from his trip to utah. we'll listen to that once it starts. also, he has really just within minutes approved a disaster declaration for hawaii. so let me bring in the fema director deeanne kriswell, you heard what's going on in hawaii. i know you have seen it, so let's talk about that disaster declaration. what resources does that open up for the people of hawaii? >> hi, chris, good afternoon. i just got off the phone with the governor just shortly before that was released to let him know that the president did approve his request for a major disaster declaration. at this stage, what that's going to do is allow us to really make sure we're bringing in the entire federal family to support the response needs right now and then begin the recovery process. you know, we are still very much supporting hawaii's life saving and life sustaining missions, and we want to make sure we have everything at our fingertips to be able to get out there to support them. we've already released enough meals and water to support 5,000 people for five days from our logistics center that's there on the island, and we'll send more as needed, and we're sending additional communications teams and communications equipment as well as teams that will go on the ground and talk to people and help them get registered for assistance. we're going to keep moving these resources in as we have a better understanding of what the actual impacts are. but today focused on saving lives and sustaining those that have been displaced. >> so how much can you do in terms of firefighting resources? because i was noticing when i was reading the maui times this morning that the hazardous conditions in hawaii sent some first responders to the hospital. this is a dangerous situation for them, tremendously dangerous. >> very much a dangerous situation, and i just really commend the first responders that have been working night and day since these fires start. many started on tuesday on the big island and in maui shortly after that. part of our resources and part of what this support will do is help reimburse for all of the overtime costs that they are incurring to help suppress these fires, but also it gives us the ability to bring in additional resources if they don't have what they need on the island. so we're going to work very closely with the governor and his team to know exactly what they need and get those resources moving to help them stop the spread of this fire. >> as you well know, thousands of people remain without power. there is very little internet access right now in the areas of the hardest hit fires. what's your team doing to get in contact with people who need help or how can they get in touch with you? >> there's a number of ways. we know that many people were evacuated, right, and so they are at shelters on oahu or maybe they're in shelters in maui. we will have teams that will go to them, get their information and start their process of recovery. if you have internet access, you can go to disasterassistance.gov. or you can call if you have phone access. that usually at this stage, long wait times and so i would strongly encourage people to either go to the internet or we will bring people into the shelters and into the communities that haven't been as significantly impacted as it's safe to do so. >> i don't need to tell you this, we are seeing not just in hawaii but across the country and really around the world, disaster after disaster, after billion dollar disaster that is tied to climate change. how has that changed the equation for you and what the organization needs to do? >> yeah, you're right, chris, look at just this event alone, you know, driven by winds from a hurricane that was several thousand miles offshore. this is an example of how all of these different climate events from decades of drought to dryness and then these types of wind events that are driving and coming together to create hazards that we haven't seen before at a level. we've seen wildfires, but we haven't seen the intensity that we're starting to see. this fire that's happening in hawaii right now really reminds me of a fire that we saw in colorado in december of 2021 where a community, brush fire driven by winds burned down the entire community. and this is unfortunately becoming a normal for us. we are continuing to bring in our personnel to support the response and recovery of these communities, but we are also investing a lot of time and funding to support reducing the impacts from these to our mitigation programs. we have to start looking at what these threats are going to look like as a result of climate change five or ten years from now, and putting money and investment into how we're going to reduce the impacts of the future threats that we're going to face. >> deanne criswell, i know you have your hands full not just with this. thank you for taking the time. we appreciate it. i want to bring in democratic congresswoman jill ta cue ta who represents most of the hawaiian islands, i can't imagine that you are anything but shocked and devastated. what can you tell us about what is happening at and to your home island? >> you know, as you've heard, it's absolutely just heartbreaking to see the videos and the pictures. these are places that we love. it's where we've had our own memories. i've talked to folks that have lost loved ones. they've lost homes. they've lost businesses that they've had for generations, and so when we really think about what happened here, this has changed the face of our community. i can assure you, we are resilient and strong. we're going to pull together and support every last person there to make sure we rebuild. really right now, it's a lot of shock. it's a lot of pain. and we've got to act urgently to provide the support our community needs. this disaster declaration from the president, we are just so absolutely grateful to him for doing this and for the fema director we have so many needs right now, pressing needs for our community that we need to quickly address. >> give us a little idea of what those most pressing needs are as you've been talking to people on the ground. i know you're going to be traveling back to the island later today. >> yeah, literally in a few hours, i've been rushing back to try to get home. people need the most basic things, food, water, a lot of individuals have been cut off from essential lifelines to even get food and water. cell service, connectivity, too many people right now still don't even know if their loved ones, friends and family are okay because they can't reach them on the phone. shelter, so many people have said i literally just have the clothes on many my back. i have never been homeless before, but i have no home to return to. looking to provide even temporary shelter for these individuals and looking at the long-term future helping them rebuild their homes. cars on the load, those cars are no longer operable, so transportation for so many individuals literally went up in flames. such basic things, food, shelter, water, more than just their clothes on their back. and what really we'll have to deal with is the emotional trauma that is not going to go away once you provide the food or even put the roof back over their head. we are talking about long-term generational trauma that will exist here that we will have to provide services and support for. >> it has been devastating just from afar to watch the pictures, especially from lahaina. "the new york times" reporting it's not just a popular beach town, but i want to read to you how they describe it. for residents of hawaii, it is trove of history. its heritage museum and a landmark courthouse houses artifacts from before the rest of the world knew hawaii existed. on wednesday that legacy and more appeared to be in ashes. you've talked about the short-term, and obviously there are immediate needs, but long-term what's your concern? what's your greatest concern here? >> you know, the big concern that we have to remember is while this for us just came completely unexpected, we thought we dodged the hurricane 800 miles away. those winds swept up coupled with dry conditions, red flag warnings resulted in these wildfires. but what we have to remember is this can happen again in hawaii. we have to be prepared so that this never happens again to another community. long-term we have to look at how we're going to be supporting our communities. they need to become more resilient. it's more than just shelter. we need to make sure we help our community embrace the memories they made right here in lahaina. it was like a bridge to our pest, a connection to the present, a way we could look forward to the future, based on the artifacts, the memories of history that was in our very first capital of our state. we can't let that go. it has been literally -- it's ashes right now, it has been burned down, but we have to make sure that we preserve that, that part of our past. this is now part of that story, more importantly how do we use this to be more resilient as we go forward. >> tragedies like these challenge us, and it is always remarkable to watch how people rise to the occasion. you talk about people pulling together and we've been hearing and watching as everyday citizens in lahaina are rescuing their neighbors, literally right now. and i want to play for you congresswoman, what one of them told us. >> that's what we do in lahaina, we don't leave people behind, you know. that's just how we roll. we've been pulling people out since last night, trying to save people's lives, and i feel like we're not getting the help we need. >> it's both inspirational and worrisome. are you confident moving forward that you will get the help you need, and what is your message to the people of hawaii? >> it's heartbreaking to hear those statements from our citizens, and quite frankly, when it comes to emergencies and disasters like this, we can never work fast enough. that is the harsh reality. we have to understand the absolute urgency, the aggressiveness in which we must pursue every last source of support and help. as we know, the u.s. coast guard was literally pulling people out of the water. we had, you know -- we had our military friends literally dropping buckets of water to put out fires. we have fire crews coming from every county. the reality is for those suffering and hurting right now, that's never going to be enough. we have to continue doing as much as we can, even more than we can, and this federal declaration by the president, that just, you know, flipped the switch for us to be able to get real support, on the ground support that we're going to need. but more importantly too, you know, how do we rebuild and come back to some kind of normalcy. it breaks my heart to see constituents, you know, feeling this way, and it just drives us even harder forward that we've got to understand the urgency. we've got to put ourselves in that position. and quite frankly, all of us have friends and family that are right there. this is painful. this is heartbreaking for all of us! representative jill tokuda of hawaii, safe travels. we send our thoughts and all of the good possible emotions that we can as you continue on this struggle. thank you so much for taking the time to be with us. >> thank you. we've also got breaking news from iran where five americans detained in tehran are potentially in the process of coming home. part of a prisoner exchange deal. nbc news chief foreign affairs correspondent andrea mitchell broke this story on her show in just the last hour. picks up the reporting with us now. what more can you tell us, andrea, how might this work? >> it's going to work slowly, and it's been a torturous negotiation, but they are, according to the source there, they are out of ebben prison which is a notorious horrible prison, one of the prisoners has been there almost eight years. over the years, we've tracked them, talked to their families, interviewed their daughters here in the u.s., and you know, one was a conservationist. some were dual citizens, had dual citizenship. they were on trumped up charges of espionage without a trial in one case, show trials held on espionage charges. and iran has done this, taken hostages for money, for trade, for diplomatic advantage. in this case, in a slow process once it has been cleared and through the swiss ambassador there and other representatives from oman that they are out in house arrest. they will stay in house arrest until money is transferred, $6 billion, which is money that iran earned from oil sales to south korea in this instance, money being held in south korea will be converted into qatar to a currency that iran can use. the u.s. treasury is going to take care of this, and this was all going to be spent, they say, on humanitarian nonsanctioned food, medicine, other kinds of aid. that taking place will take some time, and once this takes place, they will, of course, in this location now under house arrest, they can be checked by the swiss and the other representatives, the brits and others who are there in tehran representing u.s. interests to check for their health condition. reunited in some instances with family members who have also been in iran. in one case, the wife has not been able to get out. she has not been given an exit visa, so in essence she's been stuck in iran all of these years as well. so the daughters will be able to have their parents home in some time maybe mid-september, they think, and once that takes place, then there might be an unspecified prisoner exchange as well. that is what is very much under active discussion. this has all been very secretive. we were asked to hold back the details until they were safely out of prison. >> andrea mitchell, thank you so much, and i know you'll keep us posted as more information becomes available. the strategy donald trump will use to defend himself against a litany of legal issues has become increasingly clear. the new evidence that will not involve a courtroom. we're back in 60 seconds. we're back in 60 seconds way wey to sleep, so when our windshield cracked, we needed it fixed right. we went to safelite.com. there's no one else we'd trust. their experts replaced our windshield, and recalibrated our car's advanced safety system. they focus on our safety... so we can focus on this little guy. >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪ being middle class right now, it's tough making ends meet for sure. republicans in congress say if we just cut taxes even more for the biggest corporations the money will eventually someday trickle trickle down to you. right. joe biden would rather just stop those corporations from charging so damn much. capping the cost of drugs like insulin. cracking down on surprise medical bills and all those crazy junk fees. there's more work to do. tell the president to keep lowering costs for middle class families. today donald trump is stepping up his scorched earth media campaign to defend himself against state and federal charges slamming the federal and state prosecutors in an attempt to undermine the criminal cases against him when they've barely gotten underway. among those targeted in this new campaign ad, fulton county d.a. fani willis who hasn't even indicted trump yet, accusing her of misconduct and alleging she had an affair with the defendant. willis in an email to her staff called those allegations derogatory and false while insists that any charges that may be brought against trump will be based on the facts and the law. in her words, this is business. it will never be personal. trump, not surprisingly, took the opposite approach. >> this woman is not a capable woman. she's a woman that has -- i mean, and maybe she'll change her mind -- and i don't know what she's doing. i really don't know. all i know is she could have done it two and a half years ago if she was going to do something. >> there's also action inside the courtroom today in florida, one of trump's alleged co-conspirators walt nauta pleaded not guilty to new charges in the classified documents case. the other co-defendant to trump, carlos de oliveira was also supposed to be arraigned, but for a second time that didn't happen because of an issue with his attorney. trump previously pled not guilty and did not attend. all of this comes a day after the former president's attorneys asked judge aileen cannon to let them use a secure facility at or near mar-a-lago to view secret documents. their argument, that trump resides and works in a secure location that is protected at all times by members of the united states secret service. of course that is also what describes essentially the scene of the alleged crime, and prosecutors argue trump's personal residences and offices are not lawful locations for reviewing classified information. so we've got a lot to talk about. i want to bring in nbc justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian, carol leonnig is "the washington post" national report and msnbc contributor, and charles coleman, a civil rights attorney, former brooklyn prosecutor and an msnbc legal analyst. tim miller is writer at large for "the bulwark" and an msnbc political analyst. charles, let's start in the court of public opinion, if we might. where is the legal line when it comes to attacking prosecutors who have been investigating you? do you see any of this potentially as witness tampering? >> i think he is walking dangerously close to the line, chris. he has not gotten to the point that he will get to. i think we're going to see these attacks intensify because ultimately this reeks of desperation. >> what would be the line? >> the line would be when you get to a point where a witness does not want to necessarily testify because of what they believe are pressures from the court of public opinion or direct threats to themselves. there's going to be a threat assessment of everyone involved in this case, fani willis has had multiple threat assessments done not only for herself but also her assistants. if the threat level rises, if that threat assessment comes to a point where they say this is no longer safe for these people to participate in the trial, now donald trump could be looking at additional charges with respect to witness tampering. >> what about jury tampering? >> that's his goal, and i think that what we will see happen is by the time that we get to a place where a jury is going to be impanelled, a judge is going to set closer restrictions on what he can and cannot say. his ultimate goal is to taint the entire jury pool for the county of fulton in georgia. that's what he wants to do. i don't necessarily know that a judge can do anything about that right now, but as we get closer to any potential trial date, expect that a judge is going to put limitations on what he can say across social media. >> i want to play part of what trump's attorney recently said about his client. >> i think it's a little bit different than our standard case where we would pull out our hair out if a client commented on a prosecutor or a judge. he feels strongly that he needs to speak out, and he also in particular looks at this prosecution as a political prosecution. >> so carol, who do you think is calling the shots here? is it trump or his attorneys? has he ever listened to his attorneys? >> think of a time that donald trump didn't think whether he was president or not that he was being served better by his attorneys than by his own legal instincts. i covered donald trump when he was being investigated by robert mueller, another special counsel, and in that instance, donald trump routinely overruled his attorneys or ignored the advice they had given him 20 minutes before. i remember a time in june, july, i think, of 2020 -- forgive me. let me go back a few years. it was the summer of 2017, and donald trump essentially overruled his lawyers when they said he should never agree to speak with robert mueller, and he's told reporters that he was going to do it, and he was looking forward to it after agreeing that he would never -- never actually sit for such an interview. his strategy is a public one. let me go hard. let me go heavy against these prosecutors. let me go to the public, the court of public opinion. that is where i can win the argument rather than in court or rather than with lawyers. he also has a game plan that he's used numerous times of attacking his investigators and his prosecutors in public. i remember when he summarized essentially that everybody investigating him on the mueller team was a democratic sympathizer, a pro-hillary donor. that wasn't entirely true, but that was his strategy of undermining the integrity of their work and essentially saying that they were politically biased, and you have seen already, chris, donald trump sort of rip into jack smith as someone who doesn't look stable, rip into fani willis now, and i'm sure has already ripped into alvin bragg as having a flawed and politically motivated case. >> so charles, carol has very, very well with dates and an amazing memory, laid out this history. how does it play into judge chutkan's decision-making? tomorrow trump's lawyers are going to go to her and say he can be trusted with these secrets, with these classified documents to do these conversations, and he won't leak them publicly. now, that's not really the question, the question is where, right? but does it play into it? >> i think it does. i also think that the history that donald trump has displayed publicly allows judge chutkan to take that into account as she creates this sort of balancing of the scales of the first amendment interests that donald trump has, just like any other person would, as well as the government in terms of not damaging the integrity of their prosecution. those are all things that they're going to be thinking about, discussing and debating. i think the one thing in this case that makes it unique is that the very place that we are talking about, donald trump wanting to be able to review documents, is the very place that these documents were found unsecured, and so i think that that's part of the argument that the government is going to make in terms of why that should not be allowed. ultimately, i do think it's going to aid them, but it's very important to understand that judge chutkan has to be careful about how tight of a noose or a rein she places over donald trump right now because going forward it makes it more challenging to discipline him if he continues to press the line. >> so tim, for anybody who wants to dismiss trump's attacks as just being political speech, i want to remind folks that back in 2020 after trump amplified claims that georgia poll workers ruby freeman and shay moss were involved in election fraud, a lie, here's what the atlanta journal constitution said happened, both were threatened with lynching and other racist violence. on two occasions, groups of people tried to push their way into freeman's house where moss once lived to make a citizens arrest. critics picketed moss outside her office and bombarded her 14-year-old with threatening phone calls. both quit their jobs because of the threat and freeman at the suggestion of the fbi fled her home for two months beginning in january of 2021. this is even more than we heard during the january 6th hearings, but does it matter? especially if trump supporters still believe what has been disproved that freeman and moss or any other election worker for that matter ever did anything wrong? >> yes, i mean, i think maybe it doesn't matter as much as we all wish it would, but it matters. i think it will be interesting. he's already been reprimanded by judges. and i do think this hurts him among a certain category of voters. not maybe republican primary voters, or not maybe the majority. he's in the lead right now assuming that this whole gambit is a big bet that he'll be president again and be able to pardon himself. it does hurt himself when he makes these racist attacks on the shay moss of the world, on the fani willis. all the stuff carol laid out is true, but we remember judge cure yell from the 2016 campaign that he issued those racist attacks. this is his playbook. it's not one that's proven to work for the republican since 2016, the election he lost the popular vote in, but i do think in the court of public opinion, this is maybe helping him in his narrow term goal of keeping his control on the republican party. he's got a lot of road bumps ahead of him legally and politically once he gets past the republican primary. >> so ken, let's get some news from inside the courtroom. take me to force pierce florida and what happened there today. >> as you know, this was an arraignment in these extraordinary new charges in the classified documents case accusing donald trump and two others of conspiring to destroy evidence that was under a grand jury subpoena. donald trump's lawyer todd blanche entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf. his co-defendant walt nauta was there. he pled not guilty, and the third co-defendant carlos de oliveira was not able to enter a plea for the second time in this case because while he has a lawyer that's paid for by essentially a donald trump political action committee, he doesn't -- he says he doesn't have a local florida lawyer, and you need that down there to go forward with the arraignment. they say they're going to have one soon and the judge scheduled another date for next week on tuesday. but it's got a lot of people wondering whether this is a delay tactic. often in these kinds of cases the court will appoint a public defender if someone doesn't come up with a lawyer. in this case the court is giving great deference to these defendants. >> ken dilanian, carol leonnig and charles coleman, thank you all very much. tim miller, we're going to see you again in just a bit. president biden is wrapping up his time out west set to speak in salt lake city in just a few minutes to mark the one-year anniversary of legislation that extends benefits to military veterans harmed by exposure to burn pits. we'll have those remarks for you live. plus, less than two weeks to go, if you can believe it, until the first republican primary debate. how donald trump's refusal to sign his party's loyalty pledge will affect that debate and the race for the white house potentially. you're watching "chris jansing reports." only on msnbc. msnbc that starts working in 30 minutes, while other allergy sprays take hours. with astepro's unbeatably fast allergy relief you can astepro and go! i remember when i first started flying, and we would experience turbulence. i would watch the flight attendants. if they're not nervous, then i'm not going to be nervous. financially, i'm the flight attendant in that situation. the relief that comes over people once they know they've got a guide to help them through, i definitely feel privileged to be in that position. ♪♪ when nature and science get together... pretty sweet things can happen. like our senokot laxative gummies. to relieve occasional constipation, senokot starts with the natural senna plant that science transforms into a yummy gummy! sweet! senokot laxative gummies. the first time you made a sale online with godaddy was also the first time you heard of a town named dinosaur, colorado. we just got an 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( ♪♪ ) ( ♪♪ ) can't stop adding stuff to your cart? get the bank of america customized cash rewards card, choose the online shopping category and earn 3% cash back. a man, his family, and his tractor, penny. these are the upshaws. and this is their playground. there's a story in every piece of land, run with us on a john deere tractor and start telling yours. okay everyone, our mission is complete balanced nutrition. together we provide nutrients to support immune, muscle, bone, and heart health. yaaay! woo hoo! ensure with 25 vitamins and minerals and ensure complete with 30 grams of protein. ♪ - this is my coffee shop. and that's me and my custom shirt from custom ink. this week we moved into a new, bigger space, and brought on another employee. to celebrate, i ordered new branded gear for the whole team. everything was so easy to make with custom ink's design lab. i just chose my products, added our logo, and placed my order. our new gear really helps us look and feel like a team. bring your own team together with custom gear. get started today at customink.com. president biden now at the podium in salt lake city. he is at a v.a. medical center on the one-year anniversary of the pact act. let's listen to president biden. >> i have been in and out of iraq and afghanistan over 38 times, and i don't think most people know -- this audience may know -- how many women we have in combat, how many women are not only doing their part but doing jobs that most people didn't think women would do or could do. blackhawk helicopter -- anyway, i won't go into the whole -- the point is, you know, sarge what happened to you has happened to thousands of people. we the governor and i talked about it that, the governor and i about what we're doing here. you know, you and your fellow veterans are the heart, the soul, and the spine and sinew of this generation. i mean, that's a fact. you know, only 1% of you volunteer to protect all of us. that's what it is. that's all volunteer. and i want to thank dr. angela williams and the great team here at salt lake city v.a. for hosting us, for taking care of -- [ applause ] >> thank you for the passporting of the city, i appreciate that opportunity, and governor spencer cox, thank you for your hospitality, but much more importantly, thank you for taking care of our veterans and for bringing along your beautiful family. [ applause ] and by the way, years ago, ad lib here, years ago when john kerry was the nominee for the -- for president of the democratic party, he talked with me about the possibility of being vice president on his ticket. we're old friends, i said, no, i didn't want to be vice president, but had i known that as vice president i get secret service and had i known that meant my daughters had secret service and my granddaughters, i would have fought even harder for him at the time. and now i have a bunch of grandchildren, they all have secret service, and my daughter has secret service, and you know, it's just wonderful. [ laughter ] i'm not sure what they think about it, but it's just wonderful. at any rate, thank you very, very much. and look, before i begin, i want to say a word about the devastating wildfires that have claimed at least 36 lives in maui and hawaii. we have just approved a major disaster declaration for hawaii, which will get aid to the hands of the people desperately needing help now. they've lost -- anyone who's lost a loved one whose home has been damaged or destroyed is going to get help immediately, and i've directed that we surge support to these great firefighters and first responders and emergency personnel working around the clock there risking their lives. i just got off the phone before i got here for a long conversation with governor josh green this morning, let him know i'm going to make sure the state has everything it needs from the federal government to recover. a fema administrator griswell will be in maui tomorrow, and i've directed her to streamline any process, request for help and survivors registered for immediate federal assistance without delay. fema is surging disaster assistance personnel on the island, and they're going to help survivors get access to federal assistance, and you know, anybody that wants to know out there where to go if this is televised, they can go to disasterassistance.gov. disasterassistance.gov. to learn if you're eligible for assistance. i've ordered all available federal assets on the island, including the u.s. coast guard, the navy third fleet and the u.s. army to assist local emergency response crews along with the hawaiian national forward. we're working as quickly as possible to fight these fires and evacuate residents and tourists. in the meantime, our prayers are with the people of hawaii, but not just our prayers. every asset we have will be available to them, and we've seen their homes, their businesses destroyed, and some have lost loved ones. it's not over yet, but now for the reason i'm here today, i've said it many times before, i started saying it 30 years ago i got criticized occasionally for saying it. i said we have many obligations as a nation. we only have one truly sacred obligation, and that's to equip those with send into harm's way and care for them and their families when they come home, and when they don't. one year ago today we met that sacred obligation when i signed after fighting so damn hard for the pact act, to sign it into law. i want to thank all the veterans' organizations for helping make that happen because it matters. pact act is one of the most significant laws ever signed to help veterans exposed to toxic materials and to help their families recover as well as receive compensation. you remember what we mean by burn pits. you know, when we first started using the phrase burn pits, people kind of looked at us. a burn pit is what you saw basically the giant burn pit, the first one everyone was aware of was 9/11 when the buildings came down. remember all those firemen who died of cancer and how they got recovered, now the burn pits in iraq where we're talking about and in other countries, afghanistan, even in parts of -- throughout the middle east, they're the size of football fields. up to 100 yards long, 20 yards to 30 yards wide. and 8 to 10 feet deep, and everything you can imagine is thrown into these pits to incinerate them, the waste of war, tires, poisonous chemicals, jet fuel, and so much more. toxic smoke thick with poison spreads through the air and into the lungs of our troops and their hoochs where they live nearby these facilities. i know, i've been there in iraq and afghanistan, i've seen them, and you can smell it in the air. you can sometimes see it, and when these troops came home, many of them the fittest and best-trained warriors that we ever sent anywhere, were exposed to these burn pits, they weren't the same. thousands of troops had to live not far in proximity from these burn pits. the one in iraq, my son was about 400 yards from one of the burn pits living there for a they breathed that toxic material sometimes for months at a time, and the case of my son and his buddies for an entire year causing headaches, numbness, dizziness, cancer, this is not about my son but an example of how close it was. my son beau was one of those. the fittest guy in his unit and came home -- and he came home, but died of glioblastoma. it's personal for my family, but it's also personal for so many of you. under secretary of the va, mcdonough and i had a long talk. he couldn't be here today. we're compelled to address this problem, come hell or high water and compensate the veterans and their families from this tragedy. part of my unity agenda when i did my last state of the union. to try to bring the country together on things i thought we all could agree on. first was beating the opioid epidemic. we're working like hell on that. tackling the mental health crisis, there is a mental health crisis in america. supporting our veterans. look, i delivered that speech in march of last year, and a few months later in august, with veterans groups making the case, never giving up, the bipartisan pact act was on my desk to sign into law. don't tell me we can't get things done when we work together. democrats and republicans work together to get that done. in particular, i want to thank senator jon tester, the chair of the senate veterans affairs committee who represented mark tacano as well, the ranking member of the house veterans affairs committee. we learned a horrible lesson after vietnam how harmful effects of expo sure of agent orange took years to manifest themselves, leaving too many veterans to access care when they needed and deserved it. they had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that that was the cause of their problem, which was difficult to prove in the long term. that's why i supported the agent orange act of 1991, supporting veterans exposed to the harmful substances in vietnam. i don't want to see that again. the pact act means today's veterans and their families won't suffer the same painful frustrating delays and denials. here's what the law does, it empowers the veterans administration, the v.a., to move quicker to determine if a veteran qualifies for the benefits of the law. benefits like monthly disability compensation and regular toxic exposure screenings. it also means new facilities, new research, and more health care workers at v.a. hospitals. it includes nearly, and one of the veterans raised this with me today, $30 million for new outpatient clinics right here in salt lake city, right here. [ applause ] and for families who have suffered the ultimate loss it means potential access to life insurance, tuition benefits for surviving family members, home loan assistance, stipends, which cannot replace the breadwinners of the home, but it can help. the surviving spouse of a veteran who died from a toxic illness with two children could be eligible for roughly $2,300 a month for the rest of his or her life. i'm proud to announce that over 340,000 veteran survivors are already benefitting from the law just one year after it was signed, including over 2,000 veterans here in utah. veterans are getting -- [ applause ]. veterans are getting the care they deserve in every corner of the country. for example, there's an army veteran served in iraq, now receiving care for prostate cancer via the v.a. in seattle. you heard about the pact act and applied for benefits, the day i signed the law, because he's already a v.a. patient who didn't need to submit medical records or get separate exams. his application was approved, he's now received retroactive payments on the date the law was signed. another army veteran now in new hampshire national guard, with multiple deployments to iraq and kuwait learned that a friend and a soldier she deployed with were diagnosed with breast cancer. just in case, she decided to get toxic exposure screening free at all veterans enrolled in the v.a. health care, she too was diagnosed with breast cancer. they caught the cancer early, and she's currently being treated for it, and she's being granted 100% service connected eligibility under the pact act, tripling her monthly payment benefits. for folks, it matters. this matters. folks, we have a moral obligation. this goes beyond financial. we have a moral obligation to respond to this, and i'm here today to spread the word so every veteran or surviving family members knows how to access benefits of this law. because these conditions have already taken such a toll on so many veterans and their families, i directed the department of veterans affairs to treat all 23 presumptive conditions in this law as applicable immediately. like chronic bronchitis. >> applause for president biden on the one-career anniversary of the pact act. we'll continue to listen in as he talks about the needs of veterans who have returned from war who have been exposed to toxic chemicals in particularly to burn pits. he also brought up the surge of help going to hawaii and straight ahead, we're going to go back to maui for the latest on the intense efforts to fight the deadly wildfires there. you're watching "chris jansing reports" only on msnbc. you're watching "chris jansing reports" only on msnbc more shopping? you should watch your spending honey. i'm saving with liberty mutual, mom. they customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. check it out, you could save $700 dollars just by switching. ooooh, i'll look into that. let me put a reminder on my phone. save $700 dollars. pick up dad from airport? ohhhhhh. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ sometimes jonah wrestles with falling asleep... ...so he takes zzzquil. the world's #1 sleep aid brand for a better night sleep. 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[voice vibrating] age is just a number, and mine's unlisted. try boost® high protein with 20 grams of protein for muscle health versus 16 grams in ensure® high protein. boost® high protein. now available in cinnabon® bakery-inspired flavor. learn more at boost.com/tv a lot more to cover on this second hour of "chris jansing reports," including thousands of residents and tourists still being evacuated and 36 lives at least now lost because there are fears the death toll could climb higher. wildfires continuing to race through hawaii's maui island. homes and businesses burned to ashes. also ahead, donald trump's