Deal, but he wont reveal his decision, apparently fought even to his own secretary of state and this morning, there are some major developments in this russia probe from both the New York Times and the Washington Post. Is the investigation getting closer and closer to the white house . Weve got the reportert from both those papers who broke those stories and President Trump has continually said hes done more in the first months of his presidency than practically any president in history. But a new poll out this morning shows people dont quite agree with that. I guess it depends on what you mean. We begin with the latest on Hurricane Maria, though, now, lashing the eastern Dominican Republic with its destructive category 3 winds. All yesterday, the storm pounded puerto rico throwing the entire island of 3. 5 Million People into darkness. The island is also without water and Cell Phone Service t. Monster hurricane smashed into the already struggling u. S. Territory as a category 4 storm, flooding homes and according to officials there, 70 of homes on the im had their rooves ripped off. Joining us from san juan, puerto rico, nbc news correspondent Tammy Leitner. Tammy. Reporter good morning. You know as the sun comes up here in san juan, residents will give some of them their first look at the devastation and it is heart breaking. Were standing outside of a bank and can you see that the doors just completely blew off the bank t. Shutters are twisted, mangled messes here. From what weve seen, this is what it looks look, pleas after place, businesses with the rooves ripped off, streets that have become rivers. The freeways are completely flooded. Many of them impassable because of the streets and the downed power lines. But one of the biggest problems is, they still dont know the extent of the damage. We spoke with the mayor, who was very emotional. Lets go ahead and listen to what she has to say. Im 54yearsold, ive never seen devastation like this one. The puerto rico and san juan we knew yesterday is no longer there. So we have to reconstruct, rebuild, reinvent. We have to be resilient. And we have to push on. If not with our bodies, with our hearts and our souls. I am concerned we may not get to everybody in time. And that is reporter obviously, shes very emotional. Because at this point we really dont know the extent of the damage. Not until officials are able fly over the island and check some of the more remote parts of puerto rico. Places we visited in the days leading up to the storm, where there is very little Running Water still from irma, where people live in tin and wood houses. So theres still a lot to be seen of what type of damage there is. Back to you. Thank you very much. Lets go straight to meteorologist bill karins with a check on the storms latest track. Bill. Good morning. Typically, after huge storms like this it takes twotothree days to get a proper assessment of how bad it was and the damage is. We are 24 hours after that. We will get more pictures today. It doesnt help the whole island doesnt have power a. 50 miles wide, lashing the Dominican Republic t. Story overnight was the torrential rains would not stop over the island t. Entire island, which is 100 miles west to east is under a flash flood warning. The Weather Service says catastrophic flooding continues on the island because of the heavy rain. We are starting to get a few images in, a few pictures of the hardest hit areas. This is down towards where the eye made landfall. This gentleman was trying to find if he had valuables left in the house. You see the concrete structure, the base, it was fine. He obviously lost a wall off the roof. Structures behind it, lost roof, roof damage. This is the issue we will deal with. People dont have anywhere to live. They cant stay in these structures, let alone the water and food issues in the days ahead. This is also in the same area, look at the trees, all the leaves stripped. More rooves damaged. This is in san juan, this is an Apartment Building with obvious structural damage. A lot of water was still in the streets in the areas. This will be recedeing today. Today will be about clearing the streets. It will be about getting help to the people that need it the most and power lines and power problems will be the biggest issue. Broken power poles, firefighters trying to clear the way for the rescue cruise. Thats what today is about rescuing. No more damage in puerto rico from winds today, the wind damage is done. Thank you very much now to the urgent scene in mexico, where crews race against the clock to try and find survivors intur u buried we nieto the rubble in the wack of that 7. 1 earth quack. Officials say the death toll has been raised to at least 230 people, 100 of those deaths coming in mexico city alon. Crews have been desperately searching for those trapped in collapsed buildings, listening in silence for signs of life. In the capital cities, rays of hope amany id the destruction after 52 people were rescued from the rubble of a building there yesterday. Elsewhere in mexico city, a much more grim scene as teams have been working throughout the night to free a young girl trapped beneath the remnants of her school. Officials say 21 children and four adults were killed when that building caved if, during the middle of classes on tuesday afternoon. Joining us from mexico city, nbc news correspondent Steve Patterson who is at that school. Steve. Reporter mika, the entire focus of this nation is right here. This is the school where 21 young Elementary Schoolage children were killed after that earthquake struck. I want to show you whats going on here. People right now are searching for some glimmer of hope. They have found it. But the operation right now is dire. It is a race against time. They believe that young girl is trapped somewhere back in that debris pile. You see crew members and rescue workers on top there. They are looking, they are focused. They are searching and pulling out piece by piece by hand, pieces of this debris that has crushed and crumbled when that school collapsed. It was a fourstory building. It just folded on top of itself, trapping and killing those 21 Young Students and then four other teaches and administrators. They do believe that 12yearold girl again is inside there and also because theyve identified her location, shes given them some sign that she is alive. According to local officials, they believe there are other heat signatures inside there, meaning that there may be more people trapped inside alive that they may be able to rescue. As we have been mentioning all morning long, it is entering 48 hours, there is a sign of hope. There is a lot more to be done here on scene. Steve patterson, thank you, we will be following these natural disasters all morning long. With us now on the set of morning joe, we have ms nbc contributor mike barnacle, ms nbc news contributor Mark Halperin. Capitol hill correspondent casey hunt in washington and a lot to get to this morning. A lot to get to. Weve got the daily news, actually, this is quite an interesting headline. I want your papers, bob mueller is uncle sam. Oh. Theres that. A lot of stories on russia developing. President ial politics and polls showing the president s numbers actually have been moving up over the past couple of weeks. And then i just got to say the inexplicable coming from republicans on capitol hill again. The donors, all i can say the donors must be extraordinarily persuasive because they have moved to put their lands on the burning stove again and theres just no reason, but theyre doing it. What is it, the third time . Fourth time . Ive lost count. Its sad for the country. Its a big waste of time. Its sad for the republican, themselves. Senate a ma jeter leader Mitch Mcconnell said the latest effort to repeal and replace obamacare will be on the floor again next week. Republicans are fighting for the 50 votes needed to pass the budget reconciliation period that ends a week from saturday. After that 60 votes are required to aphiladelphia to a filibuster. But critical republican senators, like alaskas Lisa Murkowski still if doubt. Reporter are you ready to support it . Nope. Reporter why not . Because i am doing the Due Diligence that ive committed to doing yesterday. What i have had an opportunity to do is to sit down with my team, who sat down with hhs, and we are fer eting out lots of numbers and we are continuing to do that. Well, first of all you meet with hhs, you better be at your local aviation airport, to meet every plane that comes in, to see if hhs is on a private plane. Well get to that late zpler they need their comfortable travel, those members of the administration. Theyre into luxury, unlike the rest of america. Only four or five times a week. But they will make America Great again. Senator mccain continued to calm for a regular order to consider the Health Care Bill and President Trump reacted on twitter to another republican opponent of the bill yesterday tweeting, rand paul is a friend of mine, but he is such a negative force when it comes to fixing health care. Yesterday evening the president spoke about the bill from republican senators Lindsey Graham and bill cassidy and fended his producesstration with the process. I believe that Graham Cassidy really will do it the right way. There is tremendous support from republicans, certainly with 47 or 48 already senators and a lot of others think of it positively. Mike pence has been working on it, our Vice President has done such a great job for health care and knows health care so well. I thought one on one i would go to the oval office sit down on my desk and there would be a Health Care Bill on my desk to be honest. It hasnt worked out that way. I think a lot of republicans are embarrassed by it. Oh my god. A couple days ago, first of all, he doesnt really know whats in the bill. He hasnt known whats been in any of these Health Care Bills. Hes just wanted anything to sign. And it makes you wonder, what would have happened if sevenandahalf, eight months ago they had started with a process and theyve had regular order and they had marshalled through the process regularly instead of drafting something quickly, having two or three people do it. Shove it down everybodys vote throats and have the president say he leaks it and the president says its a mean bill, et cetera, et cetera, if they had done at this time right way this reminds me, mika, one good thing she tells the women and the men who are these comptist itself, when it comes to success, there are no short cuts and you have a senate, Mark Halperin, that has been taking one short cut after another short cut. They havent gone 32 another order, they havent had hearings. They said we have an idea, we will reorder onesixth of the economy without going through the right committees, without really letting the members know whats inside the bills, without getting scoring from the Congressional Budget Office and without knowing what the impact is of our reordering onesixth of the economy from washington, d. C. Now, that is something that head monday berke would have called radical, something russell kirk would have called radical, something in his time paul ryan would have called radical, something that Mitch Mcconnell would have called you cant reorder onesixth of the United States economy without a committee hearing, without regular order without a cbo score. Without being a dangerous radical. And i dont understand how they think they will get away with that and how some of my friends and they are flendz friends, thats why it hurts so much, are getting on tv and lying every day to the American People. Lying through their teeth about whats in that bill and whats not in this bill. They also dont have the support of any major segment of the Health Care Industry. There you go. Which is important of the grass roots of the country. On the politics of this, theyre actually today closer to getting a senate vote, a Successful Senate vote and house bill than they were yesterday according to congressional people i talked to. So this could happen. But the substance of it is, is really problematic to the party. Theyre doing many of them, theyre making many of the same mistakes president obama made in passing health care, first and foremost in being honest and who will impact and that will pass and if it does pass, that will be a huge problem. Isnt it over the course of a year . We were talking about health care hearings and Health Care Committees and votes and we were talking about that for six, seven, ache, nine months, where they were actually going through a process. I hate it. The result. I didnt it to pass. I was upset it passed. But they went through a regular process. There is a hay, lets go from secret, write a bill as fast as we can. Dont tell anybody whats in it. Shove it down the American Peoples throat. I want to read you two tweets to your point right now from may 4th 2017. Are you ready . I appreciate the apparent progress on Health Care Reform in the house. I will admit i am concerned with a process. The bill has not been scored. Three hours final debate should be viewed with caution. Whose tweets were those . Senator Lindsey Graham of south carolina. Wow. That was him talking about the process fourandahalf months ago, now hes leading this process in the exactly the same way it was conducted in may. Now wants a vote on it next week without all that regular ord you talked about. Mike barnical, nobody knows whats in this bill. Whats so stunning about this ill just say this, what is so inhumane about this is, there are people who depend on ped cade on sort of health care that we are talking about, about the guarantees that have been given, that are going to be stripped away and have that process, have those hearings. Let the senators, let the congressmen hear who is going to be hurt by the bill, instead of seeing this in story six months after a bill passes and i promise you, republicans, heres once that will pay in the end. You think im being a son of a bitch right now . No you should listen to me, you will end up paying horribly in the end. I dont know what pressure you think you are under right now. Wait until you go back to your voters supporting this bill. It is, its inhuh pain . Joe the mystifying thing about this is, we could have taken this block off and shown 134g when we were talking about the same issue in may or april or june as mark pointed out, into the single legitimate medical group, hospital association, Doctors Association is behind this. We dont know whats in the bill t. Cbo hasnt scored it. We have senator after senator after senator on this program. We ask questions about this bill. They really dont know whats contained in the bill. They go right to blocked grants. If you take a look at the list of blocked france, what it does, its astounding the number of states that voted for Hillary Clinton. Theyre talking points. I saw a republican senator last night say the same thing five times, i trust my people more than i trust a bureaucrat in washington, d. C. I trust the people in my state more than i trust the faceless bureaucrat in washington, d. C. Great. Awesome. We have been saying that since the ice age. I get it. It doesnt apply here. The bottom line is they will vote on something that will seriously disrupt the economy, onesixth of the economy, more importantly will seriously disrupt hundreds of thousands of people in this country. Multitudes of families in this country without knowing what theyre voting for. And will create hurt the most. State by state chaos. You have to rebuild basically 50 marketplaces over a couple of years. Casey hunt, we saw you in that Lisa Murkowski sound pooit in hot pursuit getting answers from her. What is different from this bill than the last one for her . Whats the selling point from senators cassidy and graham to someone like Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins who said i cant vote for this because of the rollback of Medicaid Expansion and things inside. Why would they change this too im . Reporter ill tell you what this is about, guys, its not about process. Its about politics. Very pure and simple politics. Its pause all of these members of Congress Went home. They talked not just to people if their districts, but to their big donors, maybe they dont like the president. But they look at congress and they say, what the hell are you guys do something are you not doing anything and the money started to dry up a bit. Its scared a lot of people and its kind of changed the fundamental mood on capitol hill around it. Leadership didnt want to get back into this. They wanted to basically prove themselves to all of those contradiction on tax reform. There was a lean of thinking that said, look, we can go, we can build a big tax reform bill and do what we want. Theyll forget about what happened on health care, but the administration seized on the plan from Lindsey Graham and bill cassidy. One of the things i think we should make sure to focus on the substance, will you asked about the policy in this bill. They are working hard to try to cut deals for the alaska sen