hurricane florence. willie, there's a united states senator that is saying to the good people of south carolina and north carolina right now that if that is the president of the united states' idea of how you respond to a hurricane, get in your cars and leave. i mean this seriously not as a political dig. if you're in florence and considering riding it out, your president just said that a hurricane response where 3,000 died is his measure of get success. get out of there. of course, there are those that die in natural disasters that, of course, die because of nature, because of the storms themselves. but in puerto rico, so, so much negligence. such a delayed response and, again, such an unpresidential response from a man picking fights with leaders in communities there that were struggling just to get power and water back. >> yeah. obviously, we're going to be focused on what's happening or what's about to happen with hurricane florence. we've got the forecast in just a second. but this is the context for the comment the president made yesterday and it dovetails with bob woodward and a president who is not able to admit defeat, but to concede something didn't go well. you don't have to say this is terrible for you, but you can say this was a great tragedy. unsung success is not a term everybody should use when it comes to what happened in puerto rico. given the study we got from george washington university that showed nearly 3,000 people died in puerto rico. >> mika, half the island for so long didn't have electricity, didn't have clean water, and we still have found over all of these months that we haven't even been able to get accurate numbers for casualties in puerto rico. so it's, again, an absolute mess. and you just wonder why the president of the united states is calling that a success. >> i'll just never forget the visual images of him throwing the paper towels out at people as if that was some symbolic way of showing support. along with willie, joe and me, we have msnbc contributor mike barnacle. in just a moment, we'll be speaking with bob woodward. you may have heard, he has a new book out and we'll be get to go all of that. but first, we want to update you on hurricane florence which is inching closer to the united states as more than 1 million americans rush to evacuate along the southeastern coastline. fema is warning that hurricane florence could be the strongest storm to target the carolinas and virginia region in decades. more than 1.5 million people are under mandatory evacuation orders, meaning get out. outside of charleston, south carolina, state highway patrol reversed lanes along a busy interstate to help residents move inland as fast as possible. at ft. bragg, more than 80 military helicopters were moved inland and fema started setting up a staging area. tractor-trailers began arriving on monday. >> bill karins, you and i have been through quite a few of these together, i know, my gosh, going back to 2003, 2004. where does this one stack with all of those? >> this one is unique, joe. i don't think it's going to have the intensity of some we've seen in the past, but the fact that we could have a major hurricane stall, and it looks like it will, over the top of wilmington, north carolina, a city of 117,000 people, that's only under a voluntary evacuation is a scary thought. i was just looking up the numbers. new hannover county has a voluntary evacuation for the county. you could have the equivalent of a landfalling hurricane over the top of you. if you're planning on holding out the storm in that area, you won't have power, you'll be stuck in your safe room and your pets and your family for 60 hours. keep that in mind. today is your decision day in that area. 135-mile-per-hour winds, roughly 550 miles away from the coast right now. here is the stall. category 4 into thursday, friday, category 3. so it weakens as we stall. the storm surge will pile up at multiple high tide cycles and the rainfall will be incredible with this stall. and what has changed is that some of our computer models, a lot of them now are taking the storm, not making landfall and kind of drifting down the coast. so myrtle beach you're in play, georgetown you're in play. the forecast is dramatically improved for raleigh, richmond, norfolk, virginia beach. but our american model just off the coast, joe, friday evening, the european model still off the coast without a landfall until saturday. the european model does this, joe. this is our most reliability model towards wilmington, stalls down the south carolina coast and coming into georgia. by this time, it would be much weaker but this is a big change in the forecast from what we had last night especially for people from savannah to charleston, hilton head, georgetown and myrtle beach. much worse for you and still just as bad for our friends from jacksonville to north carolina so wilmington. >> and, again, bill, scraping down a complete change. it's going to scrape and bounce along the border of the carolinas and into georgia. as you said, can stall out. and when that happens, when it gets over land, that's when tornados starts spinning off, that's when flooding starts. >> oh, the rainfall, joe, the rainfall from this is going to be incredible. someone is going to get four feet of rain from this if it stalls out the way it will. so you're talking about a storm that has the surge of a major hurricane, the winds of a major hurricane, and then the possible flooding of a harvey. you're talking about if you can get out of the way safely and you have the means to do it, i would. >> yeah, no doubt about it. bill karins, thank you so much. as always, we appreciate it. we'll be going back to you for updates throughout the show. as somebody that's been going through this since 1978, 1979, if you can leave the area, please leave the area. don't stick around. let's go now, we've got bob woodward with us, mika, today. bob has done it again. >> "fear." >> seriously, bob, you seem to outdo the yourself every time with this time you tell the inside story of the trump administration in the book "fear." we knew you were working on it. we knew you were working on something. and you disappear and when you come out, there's an explosion, a political explosion. there's been one here, as well, bob. i want to ask you, though, what is your biggest take away? let's just look at this entire project from 30,000 feet. if you were trying to describe to somebody 30 years from now a historian, what was the big idea with the trump administration in its first 18 months? what would you say? >> one way to connect the dots on this, there's a war on truth that the president launches and he just will not accept -- it's not a matter of alternative data, but the information and the data and the conclusions of particularly national security experts in his own government and economic and financial experts. so in the course of this, people closest to him do not trust him. and the impulse-driven presidency is something that the more people know, the more they realize we're at risk. >> you cut your journal cystic investigative teeth, obviously, on the nixon administration. compare richard millhouse nixon's relationship with the truth to donald j. trump's. >> well, there was -- nixon was not a big believer in the truth, but as the tapes and the testimony and that investigation in the 70s established, he was a criminal president. breaking the law all the time, using the power of the presidency as an instrument of personal revenge to settle scores with enemies real and perceive. in the case of trump, there is the mueller investigation which clearly is important, but it's not ended and we don't know whether they're going to come up with information that establishes criminality. but what -- i thought the vacuum here in the coverage of trump was, first of all, excellent reporting by my newspaper, "the washington post," the "new york times," "wall street journal." but the focus was not so much on the mueller investigation. the question really is how does trump perform as president. and in the foreign policy areas, the handling of north korea, afghanistan, the middle east, all of the immigration issues, all of the trade issues, i was able to excavate and find out actually what happened. and, again, this is the pattern he won't face what's real. >> right. so before we get into the specifics of that, i still want to talk about trump the man because so many people have differing opinions on his fitness to be president, mental fitness, his physical fitness. let me start, though, by, again, let's focus on the truth. let's focus on donald trump the person. how is donald trump like richard nixon? how is donald trump different than richard nixon? >> each president -- i've done books now on nine presidents from nixon to trump. that's 20% of the presidents we've had in this country. each one is different and unique. some similarities, some differences. i think the key in examining trump is actually what will he do when people present him with facts? for instance, it sounds a little esoteric, but the world trade organization, which the united states is a member of, very important, allows us to file complaints of unfair trade practices. and there's a meeting in the oval office and the president says, well, the world trade organization is the worst organization ever. we lose all of our cases. and they present data -- pardon? >> i didn't know we actually whip most of our cases there. >> yeah. like 85.7% of them. not just 85%, but 85.7%. and he says, no, that's not true. and the people are saying, look, call the u.s. trade representative, your guy, and you will confirm this. i don't want to hear. i don't want to call him. i don't want to deal with it. and at some point, he gets literally where the aides ask him, where did you get these ideas? and he will say, well, i've had them for 30 years. they're right and if you disagree, you're wrong. >> so have you -- do you hear from -- when you interviewed all of the people that, the staff members and acquaintanceships and people close to his orbit any concern about donald trump's well being mentally or did they just believe that he just -- he's got an efficient personality that can't handle the truth? >> happily, i'm not a psychiatrist and i don't dig into that. what matters to people is the performance as president. and when you dig into this and excavate it, again, you find people are worried about the performance, the inability to grow, the inability to listen, the inability to change his mind. and so you have a situation -- i make this point, but i think a real ardent trump supporter would go through this and say, gee, maybe i like trump and some of the things, but this is not the way to manage the government. >> i know you're not a psychiatrist, i'm just curious if anybody expressed concern to you while you were entrying them that he may not have the mental capabilities to be president of the united states. >> well, demonstrate scene after scene how he deals with reality and data. and in the course of it, i mean, in one national security counsel meeting, he is so worked up about how much money we are spending with troops, american troops abroad or in south korea or in europe and he thinks we're being cheated. finally secretary of defense mattis, when trump is, you know, why are we doing this? what do we get out of it? mattis says, we're trying to prevent world war three. mattis at this point is so frustrated, he has the to communicate and tell the president -- and this is a year into office. this is not the first week. literally has to tell him we're trying to prevent world war three. can you imagine this secretaries of defense we've had, say bob gates, having to tell george w. bush or barack obama that actually our job is to prevent world war three. they knew that. that's the core probably the number one responsibility of the president. >> bob, you've heard all the denials from the people, from the president all the way down. the president effectively calling this book a work of fiction, defense second mattis, chief of staff kelly, gary cohen, although his was full throated perhaps more than the other ones. >> there is no throat at all. >> he said this book doesn't portray my experience at the white house, but didn't deny what you lay out in detail with some quotes. the latest is former governor of new jersey chris christie. he ran the transition and. chris christie said this just didn't the happen, these are leaks from steve bannon. >> i reached out to absolutely everyone. this is at a time when they were putting the word out in the white house don't talk to anybody for a book, don't talk to woodward. i did my due diligence on this. and you would call people and they would say, oh, is this for a book? cabinet officers, well, yes, it is for a book. well, i'm sorry, we can't talk to you or somebody would say, yeah, i'll talk to you in a clandestine way. so what these are -- and this goes way back to the nixon era. i call them politically calculated survival denials. they are not real. they are a form of the nondenial denial or people say this didn't happen, this is untrue, that is fine. and then when the truth comes out, often years later in the investigations or in memoirs, you see that's precisely what happened. >> so is it as specific as people talking to you? perhaps some of the people i just mentioned, and then saying if this ever goes public, i'm going to have to deny it, bob? >> well, they don't tell me that, but i understand the context. this mike is laughing. this is -- one reporter actually got hives yesterday because there were denials about things that this reporter had heard from the person. people told me, oh, yeah, i heard so-and-so say that. but off the record. well, when i did this, i was able to not take anything off the record. people would, you know, in the eighth hour of a series of interviews, hey, i'd like to do this off the record. i'd say no. >> it was on the record, just anonymous. >> it's not anonymous. i know who it is. >> anonymous to the reader, though. >> well, the source, but not the information. at 2:00 on tuesday, july 17th, these people gathered in the white house and this happened. the real portrait of something like this, it is specifically what happened at what time and what's going on in the white house. but people can say what they want. thank god for the first amendment. i'm able to say what i found out. >> bob, you've covered nine presidents. you've written about all nine presidents, some of them in books, most of them in the daily newspaper, "the washington post." have you ever heard of, been around, according to your reporting, someone so ill equipped to hold the job of president as donald trump? >> well, that is the judgment of people who work for him, who are -- the most -- the economic discussions, for instance, on -- at one point, trump said, well, let's print more money. we'll run the printing presses and then we'll borrow money and we'll make money as the federal government. no, no. that is not the way it works because you increase the deficit, interest rates go up, you could have a calamity. but he does not understand that. he thinks that at one point i have this in the book where he actually writes in his own hand, trade is bad. that he thinks somehow we're losing our nationalism, that we need to be isolated. he was elected as a disrupter. fine. that's exactly the -- you know, he won. and you can disrupt things, but you inherit a framework. and practices -- and, you know, when people say this is not normal, i think, you know, we know his approach is not normal. >> so given that, who is there in the white house to control or monitor the daily dangers that any president and this president, obviously, is confronted with? who is there? >> the chief of staff kelly. i talked at some length about -- and he literally put out memos telling people we have to have a process. general kelly didn't even know there was a meeting on steel tariffs. >> so we're going to have much more with bob woodward straight ahead. we're going to bring in kasie hunt and the president of the council on foreign relations richard haas. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. so, i have this recurring dream. i'm 85 years old in a job where i have to wear a giant hot dog suit. what? where's that coming from? i don't know. i started my 401k early, i diversified... i'm not a big spender. sounds like you're doing a lot. but i still feel like i'm not gonna have enough for retirement. like there's something else i should be doing. with the right conversation, you might find you're doing okay. so, no hot dog suit? not unless you want to. no. schedule a complimentary goal planning session today with td ameritrade®. with my bladder leakage, the products i've tried just didn't fit right. they were very saggy. it's getting in the way of our camping trips. but with new sizes, depend fit-flex is made for me. introducing more sizes for better comfort. new depend fit-flex underwear is guaranteed to be your best fit. are you one sneeze away from being voted out of the carpool? 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is that what you're saying, i'm a baby? it's darwinian world view, eat or be eaten. now you have so many people who have spoken to you and apparently some who have spoke to the "new york times" who are lying to the president every day. so you have the president putting the truth in jeopardy and then a whole swirl of lies happening inside the white house. >> most presidents suffer from the disease of isolation. it was george cannon who said you have the treacherous curtain of defer rans that falls down when people get in the white house. so they don't really break in and kind of say, hey, look, gary cohen in the book at one point said to the president, if you would shut the "f" up, you might learn something and at one point actually physically strikes him to get his attention. but you almost have to do that to get trump to tune in. >> wow. >> yeah. you know, it's so interesting, david ignatius talking about reading your book that donald trump, even if he's on the verge of apologizing, he won't do it because it makes him look weak. it reminds me of in the fall of 2015, i call him on three separate occasions. i said you need to apologize to john mccain. there was silence. had a similar call after the megyn kelly episode and a similar call after his incide introductory statements. he said i just don't do that. why doesn't he do that? >> well, it's a tile and as the book is called "fear" and the belief he articulated to bob costa and myself is that real power is fear and that you scare people and, of course, if you apologize or backtrack, that doesn't scare people. i also perhaps think it's a habit. he just won't do it. it's been something that he falls back on. i think think that it's very important to understand when somebody is elected president of the united states, there is a self-validation that takes place. >> oh, dear lord, yes. >> yes and, oh, wow, i won. only a few people get elected president. in trump's case, where he defied the party and all the rules and no previous political office, so there is that sense of i know best, not just some of the time, but always. >> most presidents have that when they walk through the gates. they think they're the smartest people in the world and they're the first people the crack the code. this president, though, has that in spades. i was going to ask you what donald trump's friends thought about his transformation, but he doesn't have a lot of close friends. were you able to talk to him that knew him before he became president, because there were quite a few who are surprised at how he's handling himself in the white house in that he's become this far right wing creature that he really never was in private life when he had to be a developer in manhattan dealing with the new york city council. >> i focus on what he does as president. this is a performance evaluation and description. and, yes, i've talked to some people about that and i think if you really look at his performance as president, it's not idealogical. sometimes it's right wing and sometimes the rhetoric is that way. sometimes the actions and the rhetoric is quite practical. >> richard haas. >> well, this president is on his third national security adviser, his second secretary of state, still on his first son-in-law. why don't you say something about the process of making policy and national security and who if anyone he really listens to. >> well, you see, that's the problem. he will not listen that well and he's got ideas. i mean, if you kind of extract what those the central ideas are, he hates the idea we're spending money, $3.5 billion keeping troops in south korea. it's one of the great national security bargains of all time, as you know, right? if you were working in the government, would you say that's wasted money? >> no, just the opposite. you would look at nato, south korea, and you would say this is a bargain. >> a complete bargain. they have toad him if the cost was ten times what it is, we would do it. and he somehow thinks we're being cheated, that we're being played for suckers. the second theme here is he thinks that these trade deficits are back for the economy. actually, the trade deficits with specific countries are good for the economy because americans are buying things that have lower prices, better quality, and that money is not taken from us. quite the opposite. but somehow, he has his -- in his head the idea that this -- we lose this money, americans lose this money and 99.9% of the economists radically disagree from both parties. all kinds of economists, except for two people who are in trump's orbit, peter navarro who is the special assistant in the white house and wilbur ross who is the secretary of commerce, they agree with the president. looking through this, i found no one else who does and empirically, it makes no sense to worry about these trade deficits that he does, but he's obsessed with it. >> kasie hunt. >> hi, bob. in your book, there's been a lot of reporting how the president trusts fewer and fewer people. but since you've spoken to all these people in the white house, i'm wondering what your assessment is of how many people are around the president that are still truly loyal to him, the person, and how does that compare to previous presidents and white houses that you have documented in a similar way? >> that's an important question. and the answer is not enough. presidents need lots of staff, lots of advisers, lots of input. need to have a pretty open debate making these decisions. gary cohen is talking to the president and the president says let's do this. and he says, no, you only do things with the american economy when you're 100% sure. you just do not take risks with the american economy. the president does not look at it that way. >> bob, you've covered nine presidents. i think you would not dispute that the press has been more aggressive and adversarial with this president than maybe any we've seen in recent memory. how is the press handling donald trump? should the way they're handling the press be the model for whoever the next president is, republican or democrat the? >> well, i think it's critical important to be aggressive. i don't know whether it -- if it looks political, if there's a kind of adversarial tone, my work on this, a long time ago, because what somebody called a radical centrist. the politics of this don't work for this kind of journalism when you're really trying to find out. so i think we need to work on we can be tough, what i've said is analytically sound, i believe, factually sound. but i am not going to get into psychological or personal evaluations of the president. i want to describe exactly what he does. and that's -- you look at it and you assess it, put it altogether. it's alambing. >> some previously ejected news reporters have injected opinion into their news writing. what do you make of that? >> i think you can be analytical. it's so much about tone. i think sometimes -- and you can truly understand this if you're covering trump day after day. you became emotionally engaged and unhenged about it all. that's understandable. but that fuels the distrust when trump supporters look and say, you see, this is bias. this is not analysis of fact. one of the things that he has done that has truly worked is the fake news, chattering on and on about that. that's sunk in. explain to the people watching in the the terms of your work and others' work in terms of background conversations for reportage. >> i did all of this reporting on deep background. i made it clear to people with the tape recorder going, i will protect you as a source, not name you, but i'm going to use all of the information. so it's not anonymous to me. the events described are so specific they're not anonymous. and when people would try to say let's take this off the record, i said, no. we're not going to do that. i think that's been a mistake in our business that we know people that -- a lot of people said, well, i heard that. i knew that. and the daily coverage, i understand that for somebody trying to say, look, this is what's really going on, and here is the interesting psychological point. you're interviewing somebody and you're in your seventh hour or eighth hour and they say, oh, yeah, i wanted to tell you this off the record. and if i say no, no off the record, you know, okay, i'll tell you, anyway. and that is important. you're smiling. i can do that for a book because i'm going back and trying to verify everything and get the full context. and -- but we're being used and the public is being cheated because reporters know things that they can't communicate. people who have denied or semi denied things that are in here and i had one of the best reporters in washington say i heard exactly that from that person, but it was off the record. >> would be woodward, thank you so much. president trump likes to tout how good the economy is doing, but the federal deficit is reaching abnormally high levels. also, senator majority leader mitch mcconnell admits november could be a challenge. he's comparing the midterms to a knife fight in an ally. and we're tracking the path of hurricane florence this morning. forecasters say it could be a catastrophic storm and it's closing in on the east coast. "morning joe" will be right back. at ally, we're doing digital financial services right. but if that's not enough, we have more than 8000 allys looking out for one thing: you. call in the next ten minutes... and if that's not enough, we'll look after your every dollar. put down the phone. and if that's not enough, we'll look after your every cent. grab your wallet. (beeping sound) (computer voice) access denied. and if that's still not enough to help you save... oh the new one! we'll bring out the dogs. mush! (dogs barking) the old one's just fine! we'll do anything, seriously anything, to help our customers. thanks. ally. do it right. takes more than just investment advice. from insurance to savings to retirement, it takes someone with experience and knowledge who can help me build a complete plan. brian, my certified financial planner™ professional, is committed to working in my best interest. i call it my "comfortable future plan," and it's all possible with a cfp® professional. find your certified financial planner™ professional at letsmakeaplan.org. the federal deficit on track to hit $1 trillion before the end of the fiscal year two years earlier than expected. according to new analysis from the nonpartisan congressional budget office, the deficit rose by $222 billion in the first 11 months of 2018. that is a 3 2% jump from the same time period last year. that brings the total figure to $895 billion. the cbo says the surge is due to the new republican tax law and an increase in government spending. officials say the figures were somewhat inflated due to a timing shift for some payments by the government. earlier analysis from the cbo said deficits wouldn't near the $1 trillion mark until 2019 and surpass it the following year. so conservative principals, of course, winning out again, joe, sarcastically. >> here we are again, government borrowing, soaring, this year moving at record rates increasing at $222 billion faster than before. i think we probably went 200 years ago a country before we racked up $222 billion in a single year for deficits. probably not until the 1980s. this has been a crisis that has been coming for a long time. the republican party promised in 2010 if they got control of congress again after botching it so badly during the bush years, it would be different. they took a $155 billion surplus in 2001 and turned intiet a $1 trillion deficit and they doubled the national debt. barack obama then doubled the national debt. donald trump, though, is spending money and in spieling up deficits at rates we just haven't seen. richard haass, not only do you talk about making the perfect elk kabob, but you warn about -- as does anybody who was saying, you worn about the drag on the united states economy when you start running deficits and when your federal debt is larger than your gdp. and here we are. >> in the short run now, we're spending so much on defending our debt that it's crowding out all other forms of spending. that is money we're not spending on other things. so we're going to end up raising interest rates to attract the financing we need. that means japanese central bankers, they're going to have all this influence. then there is a big crisis in the market. it's one of the great stupidities of our time. we've created an enormous financial vulnerability. in the future, people will look back on that and say this was avoidable, reckless, irresponsible. we're making ourselves vulnerable, we're denying ourselves the tool to deal with things with the next recession. there's no justification for this. >> and brought to you by barack obama and then now donald trump. we are seeing recklessness, the types of which we've never seen before. and where is the freedom caucus who is supposed to be the claims the mueller probe is a witch-hunt. we're going to ask the last independent counsel to investigate a white house, what he thinks about that and if he thinks it's being dragged out too long. ken starr joins us here on set. "morning joe" is coming right back. how can we say when you book direct at choicehotels.com you always get the lowest price on our rooms, guaranteed? let's say it in a really low voice. carl? lowest price, guaranteed. just stick with badda book. badda boom. book now at choicehotels.com if your moderate to severeor crohn's symptoms are holding you back, and your current treatment hasn't worked well enough it may be time for a change. ask your doctor about entyvio®, the only biologic developed and approved just for uc and crohn's. entyvio® works at the site of inflammation in the gi tract, and is clinically proven to help many patients achieve both symptom relief and remission. infusion and serious allergic reactions can happen during or after treatment. entyvio® may increase risk of infection, which can be serious. pml, a rare, serious, potentially fatal brain infection caused by a virus may be possible. tell your doctor if you have an infection experience frequent infections or have flu-like symptoms, or sores. liver problems can occur with entyvio®. if your uc or crohn's treatment isn't working for you, ask your gastroenterologist about entyvio®. entyvio®. relief and remission within reach. well, do you know what, mika -- >> oh, i can tell i just go need to clean out my purse. >> we were wrong. it looks now, mike barnicle, like the red sox will be playing in oakland in that one-game playoff. let's hope that -- you know, we had chris sale come back last night, they let him pitch for one inning, they're bubble wrapping him for four days. like at this pace sale will be able to go four innings by december. happy days are here again, mike. >> happy days is sort of here again. i have to tell you as a part-time resident of manhattan i'm concerned that the poor yankees will have to go to oakland to play a one-game playoff with the oakland a's and the oakland a's are very good but the yankees -- i'm sorry -- >> we appreciate your concern and really the sincerity. >> you're oozing is the word. >> we're up two games now only, joe, for the wild card. the red sox are running away with the division, up nine games. richard and i are concerned we will have to go to the observing and we don't know who to give the ball to in a one-game playoff. >> the problem with the yankees while mike barnicle gloets, for me as a constantly frightened red sox fan is you guys were in this thing until the last week despite the fact half of your players had come down with one disease or another. >> foot and mouth disease. >> no, i think that was the mets. >> we had one, too. >> did you really? >> it was going around new york apparently. >> good lord. but anyway, i think it's remarkable and i do mean this sincerely, what the yankees have done this year with half of their best players off the rosser >> it is a crazy thing, richard, that we are a game away from the second best record in baseball but it doesn't feel like a great season now. >> it's not feeling good. >> i guess that's the yankees standard. red sox when you were the loveable losers, 2004 we blew it and gave you that series and there has been no looking back. >> the choke is on you. >> all right. >> my lord. >> still, 14 years ago from 2004. >> let's move on. >> living in the past. >> good break. good break. okay. moving on, coming up, the forecast for hurricane florence shifts overnight. >> oh, my gosh, did you see? i can't believe it's going to now -- it looks like -- if you believe the european model, it's going to just go down the coast and just bash everybody on the border of south carolina. >> it's very concerning. >> they need to get out of there. >> it could still be one of the strongest storms to hit the east coast on record. bill karins has the latest tracking we will get to him. also talk about timing, newly revealed documents show the trump administration moved a million dollars from fema to i.c.e. just before hurricane season. "morning joe" is coming right back. ♪ this is a story about mail and packages. and it's also a story about people. people who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams they're handing us more than mail they're handing us their business and while we make more e-commerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country, we never forget... that your business is our business the united states postal service. priority: you ♪ to take care of yourself. but nature's bounty has innovative ways to help you maintain balance and help keep you active and well-rested. because hey, tomorrow's coming up fast. nature's bounty. because you're better off healthy. everyone who helped clear the rubble, and i was there and i watched and i helped a little bit, but i want to tell you those people were amazing. clearing the rubble, trying to find additional lives. you didn't know what was going to come down on all of us and they handled it. >> wow. that had to be something, donald trump clearing the rubble. >> yeah, he didn't. >> on september -- what? >> no. >> he just said there that he was there and he was helping -- >> that was one of the many claims donald trump has made in the years since 9/11. >> wait. he wasn't? because he just said he was clearing -- he wasn't clearing the rubble on 9/11? >> no, he would never do that. >> wow. >> that one is from april of 2016. now he's facing criticism for his conduct during yesterday's september 11th memorial event in pennsylvania. the president was captured by photographers pumping his fists as he greeted supporters en route to the ceremony and later president trump was seen giving a thumbs up as he and first lady melania trump were escorted through the flight 93 memorial. the president actually began the somber day tweeting about hillary clinton and the russia probe. so it's all about him, even on 9/11, joe. >> well, you know, it was interesting, willie, that the first pump. >> yeah. >> the first pumps when he saw the people waiting at the memorial, he thought it was, i guess, a rally for him? >> well, i think that's a habit. i think he arrived, he saw a crowd that was happy to see him and he had a moment that when captured in a still photograph didn't look very good, but i'm glad he was there at that beautiful flight 93 memorial, brand-new one, finished after 17 years. but, you know, i think you can't be surprised by things like that anymore, it's just his style, it's the way he does things. a lot of people don't like t a lot of people don't agree with t but when he sees a group of people there to greet him, like you say, i think he thinks it's a rally for him. >> right. all right. welcome back to "morning joe." it's wednesday, september 12th. along with joe, willie and me we have mississippi nbc contributor mike barnicle, president of the council on foreign relations richard haass, nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of kasie d.c. on sunday nights on msnbc, kasie hunt. the host of mississippi nbc's hard ball, chris matthews. i love that show. i love it. i love it. and editor in chief of the atlantic magazine, jeffrey goldberg is here. he is in a good mood. >> he is always in a good mood. >> he's not, but today he's forcing it. >> my only sunshine. >> do you know what he's doing, he's faking it, but that's okay. >> i'm in a reasonably good mood. >> reasonably good mood. fantastic. >> joe, these are serious times, as you know. >> yeah. >> mika tells me every day we can't smile. >> jeffrey, you cry, we try and laugh. the new issue asks the question is democracy dying? and it's a good question. we will get to that in just a moment. but first we want to update you on hurricane florence, which is inching closer to the united states as more than a million americans rush to evacuate along the southeastern coastline. fema is warning that hurricane florence could be the strongest storm to target the carolinas and virginia region in decades. let's go right to bill karins with the storm's track, timing. any changes, bill? >> yeah, a lot of changes overnight, especially with the stall and maybe going not just stalling but now drifting down the south carolina coastline. big implications for areas like charleston and myrtle beach, georgetown. we still know myrtle beach to wilmington that's the areas that's going to be hit the hardest. right now 130 mile per hour winds, still a category 4, still has a well-defined eye. it's moving quickly, 17 miles per hour towards the north carolina coast, about 500 to 550 miles away, here is where it stalls, it races towards the coast in the next 36 hours, hits the brakes friday morning, all day friday it's going to be lashing the coast, high winds, high waves, torrential rainfall and then it will slowly weaken as it drifts possibly over myrtle beach and into georgetown. because of the area that's going to be hit the hardest, that initial when it gets closest to the coast, we don't even know if we will get an official landfall or not, the storm surge 9 to 13 feet writesville beach, that will be the worst times. we could get multiple high tide cycles. all of our computer models continue to linger on the coast. our european model as we were saying goes over wilmington, joe and mika and drifts down along the south carolina coastline. we are easily going to see historic rainfall amounts, they are saying that in the wilmington area this will be the storm of a lifetime. joe and mika, picture this, you've got 24 hours straight of hurricane force winds. so if you are going to be in your safe room with your pets and with your kids, be prepared for 24 hours, no power. wilmington is only under a voluntary evacuation, but if you have the means, i would tell you to try to get out of harm's way. >> all right. bill karins. >> definitely. >> thank you. all right. hey, chris matthews, i want to just ask you a general question about where we are plit kroliti right now. for a lot of people their defining election was the election of jfk in 1960. for me, for a lot of different reasons, it was reagan in 1980. i always remember on the friday before it was a toss-up, it was going to be very close. we're trying to figure out exactly what's going to happen this fall. you have a series of polls out showing donald trump in the mid 30s, mitch mcconnell is now talking about a knife fight in the senate. you never really know which way these things are going, but i was just curious when you were with tip o'neal in 1980 did you see it coming? does it feel like a similar wave this year or is it just too early to tell? >> well, i really was with him from '81 on so '81 had already happened, but '82 was the one i worked on and we picked up 26 seats and that felt like a pretty good wave because the social security and the recession coming on and i think the speaker did a hell of a job of raising those issues. i think this is stronger. i think it's stronger than 26, i think it's a real wave, something like 94, 74. i think the democrats have picked up 30 to 40 seats in the house and the senate can wobbly right now, it's in our country all over the country it looks like these races are coming down to -- i think donnelly will win in indiana, i think manchin is going to win now, i think there's some safety for some of these guys, but ingmar inof error is like -- remember just as recently as '16 we looked at all those races in pennsylvania and everybody said, oh, eddie rent dell said we will win by three. that's margin of error. when you start talking about two or three points you don't know what you're talking about. it's too hard to pick. this election will be hard to pick but i do think there is a wave against the president, i think this last week or two have been terrible for him, i looked at the numbers dropping down to the low 30s for him in approval. these elections as you know, joe, change history for 30 years. people will get elected this november that would have never had a shot, people like -- tom foley out in eastern washington state was elected on a fluke, he filed the last day, he got into the congress, he served for 30 years, he became speaker of the house until the next wave came along in '94. it happens. jim howard a high school teacher in new jersey got elected for his whole life because of one of these waves. so i think you're going -- and if beto wins down there he will be a major national figure pretty quickly. >> oh, my gosh. >> a lot of these people you will see whole careers made or lost and women running, minority women, women of color, i think the fact there are so many running there are going to be so many that win and they will be there their whole lives. i think this election is not just a one-off. i think this election will be very big for the democrats. they might just win the senate. it's really going to be powerful stuff. >> by the way, if you see beto win in '18 you will probably see him on a ticket in '20 as well. >> i agree. >> i want to ask you this question i've been asking people the past few days, donald trump was sitting at 44, 45% early spring and now he's dropped back down into the 30s. i know there are a lot of reasons, maybe child separation, maybe helsinki, i'm just curious, why do you think the president was moving into territory where he had some of his higher approval ratings since becoming a politician just six months ago and now he's back to the 30s? >> the economics, he's battling his own good economic numbers. he has great numbers. who wouldn't be bragging about these unemployment rates down well below 4 and you have a market that's booming back up there to 2600 -- 26,000. you have great economic numbers. it's him. especially during this time we're honoring -- remembering -- marking, i guess, 9/11. the great thing about 9/11 and there was one great thing about all that horror, in the weeks thereafter you saw a unity in this country we had never felt since maybe world war ii. >> correct. >> a tremendous -- the yuppies at their sidewalk cafes were cheering the firefighters going by on their engines. the class differences were resolved for a while. there was a tremendous looking out for the first responders in a way that was wonderful. people were looking -- people -- you know, kids when they grow up they want to be nurses and they want to be firefighters. that's what you want to be when you're five or seven years old. you naturally have sort of a heroic instinct. you want to be a hero to people, you want to be the good guy or good woman. i think 9/11 brought that instinct of kids out in us. i spoke at the friendly sons that spring and all i had to do was talk about the irish tradition of firefighting in new york city and i just started listing names, you know, most of the guys that got killed going up those stairs were irish because of those long generation after generation traditions in new york city of always being a firefighter. of course, we had hispanic guys and african-american people, too, but there was a tremendous feel about the working class and how important they are in a big city like new york. the working class are the ones that save you when you are in trouble. they are the cops that come, the emergency workers, they are the working guys and women who come to save you when you're scared to death you're going to die. they are the ones -- when you are auppy and make a lot of money and master of the universe you forget about those people and you look down on them. well, you can't because in the end they are the ones that save you and i think that was the wonderful thing about 9/11 and afterwards people said, do you know what, they are the good guys. i felt that. >> jeffrey goldberg, i'm curious your thoughts on, again, donald trump's fall from 44, 45% to 35, 36%. i know for a lot of us and i will just speak for myself in the media, it all seems bad. there's an outrageous statement every day, there is -- there is a breaching of a constitutional norm every day. >> right. >> so it's tougher for me to figure out why he would be at 44 or 45% after charlottesville, after retweeting neo nazi tweets, but something has happened with independents especially. any guess what that may have been over the past six months? >> yeah, you know, i've thought about this a lot. remember when your kids are little and you take them to the circus and the circus is fun for two or three hours, but imagine having to sit through the circus for 36 or 48 hours straight, right, bombarded with the noise and nonsense of a circus. i think people are becoming inord to the drama, they're becoming tired of the excess drama and i think, you know, the show -- the show is maybe moving past its sell by date. i mean, the core is going to stay the core, but the core seems to shrink a little bit and, you know, the best thing that donald trump obviously could do for republicans running right now is stop tweeting very strange tweets about the various investigations and about hillary clinton and be -- to borrow a term that has -- that he's employed -- be a little bit more presidential. i think just a little bit of quiet might actually help. >> and that's of course what gary cohen was trying to tell him to do. willie, of course, as you know most of my political theories go back to johnny carson. carson who of course said you win in central time zone, but also carson understood he went into people's bedrooms every night and if he was too shrill, if he had an edge at some point they would just become exhausted. i've seen that with presidents, too. every president has a sell by date, but we'll tell you a lot of my friends in pensacola that still would vote for donald trump tomorrow do say they just don't want to talk about him anymore. they're just exhausted by it all. i wonder if jeffrey is not right that independents perhaps who don't feel an undying loyalty to donald trump and republicanism might just say, enough. no mas. i can't take the madness anymore. >> there are plenty of republicans you know we have talked to a lot of the same people or people you talked to on the street who voted for donald trump because he was change, he was going to shake it up, because they didn't like hillary clinton, but if you look in those numbers from the cnn poll that we had yesterday among independents he has lost 33% of independents in a month. is. >> wow. >> he was at 47 and he is down to 31. if your theory is true, if democrats have a wave and they take the house and maybe even the senate, if this is the culture we have right now politically with donald trump owning washington, he's got the house, he's got the senate, what does washington look like when he's got an adversarial house or maybe an adversarial senate? >> as richard nixon discovered in the middle of the night when he won reelection with almost every state, he had lost the subpoena power again. i think he said in the middle of the night we lost it again. he knew what was coming. the subpoena power needs that jerry nadler can spend months of '19 getting ready for something, whether it's impeachment or not, but it's certainly not going to be pleasant for the president. all those committee chairs on both sides of the hill will have subpoena power and they're going to use it. you can see what happened in the hearings with brett kavanaugh with cory booker and kamala harris' performance. they are raring to go, they can't wait to get the subpoena power and i think they're going to play it. it doesn't necessarily end up well. we saw back in the 80th congress back after -- after republicans came into power back in '46 and they blew it because all they did was hold hearings, but i think this time it's different. i think people want to have some hearings, they want some control on trump and one thing that's really changed, the suburbs. joe, where i grew up right on the philadelphia edge, those -- chester, delaware, montgomery, even up in the swing part of the state, they're going to vote for -- allentown, lehigh valley, they're going to vote democrat for those women candidates, i think all four win. i think the whole structure of the east coast -- what happens is i think two months from now people are going to vote the way we all thought they were going to vote in '16 for hillary, but there will be no hillary factor, it will just be you don't like trump. i think that's the big challenge. our family was 3-2 of brothers, 3-2 trump, this time it's going to be 2-3 against trump. so i think one of my brothers just switched. and he lives in bucks county. i tell you i think the suburbs are going to vote the way they did -- they were supposed to vote last time which was anti-trump, but there will be no hillary factor to disturb that pattern. >> could be fascinating. we shall see. we all hold back from completely prognosticating. jeffrey goldberg, i will ask you the question on the cover of your magazine, is democracy dying? >> i hope not. it is dying if we don't take care of it. that's sort of a through argument of a lot of the different articles we have in this special issue, which is to say we've lost some of the habits of democracy and if we don't restore those, if we don't refresh and resuscitate democracy and if we don't go back in some ways to how the founders viewed the constitution, how the founders viewed the organization of our government, then we are in real trouble. there's a great piece from ann applebaum about what happens happening in europe. history happening happens in a circular motion. we are just not used to this cycle because we've been living for a very long time in a stable democracy and we have certain assumptions about the way this country is organized, but jeff rosen points out in this issue that james madison if he came back to life today would be horrified by what he would see in the way our business is conducted. the hyper partisanship, the direct emotional appeals by a president to the people, gerrymandering, all of the rest. we are losing the habits and we're losing our early knowledge of what makes democracy viable and sustainable. >> jeffrey, it's richard. besides happy new year, let me raise the question of why this is happening. to what extent is it because we don't teach civics in our schools? to what extent is it gerrymandering? to what extent is it the way money is spent in american politics? it seems to me you're suggesting it goes way beyond donald trump, that he is as much a reflection as a cause. what do you see as the cause because that will help you think about what is the prescription, what do you do about it? >> there's no one answer to that, but you're right about gerrymandering and you're right, absolutely, donald trump is a symptom of a larger systemic problem. i think we have to look at technology, we have to look at the way in which various technology companies have now allowed us to communicate instantaneously with everyone on the planet. and this is, again, i want to come back to james madison, he is the linchpin figure in all of this. madison was extremely worried about direct communication between a president and a people. all of the founders were worried about the idea that the president could even communicate directly to the people. they didn't want that. what madison feared most was the mob, formations of mobs, mobs don't think, they just react. that's why they wanted to have a senate, the cooling, the saucer as george washington talked about it. so we have a situation now in which we might have, quote, an excess of democracy or instantaneous democracy brought to you by technology and it's very hard for a right hand deliberation to happen when mobs can form digitally now in addition to live and in person. so we have to really look at the way we're using technology. we're very very beginning of the technological revolution, communications revolution in digital terms, but this makes it very, very, very hard for people to have right hand conversations about some of the issues we need to be talking about. >> so, jeffrey -- no, please. you go. >> i mean, this trend, then, towards greater referendum, take brexit because it's not just the united states. >> right. >> take california. it seems to me that as you're saying too much democracy is as great a threat as too little democracy. the whole idea of the senate was to put a representative layer between the people. >> right. >> but that seems to go against the whole ethos of the moment. >> it does go against the ethos of the moment. there is an odor to the expression too much democracy. democracy is an absolute good. i don't think james madison would call what we have now too much democracy, he would say this is too much rule by emotion as opposed to reason. this is too much rule by immediate gratification. this is too much rule by what -- they didn't have the term at the time but low information voters. this is just reactive democracy as opposed to con temp la testify democracy. what you need, you know, what needs to come into the system obviously is a sense of restraint that we have now and this is where trump is the leading edge, we have now groups of politicians who will say and do anything for attention and this whole -- this whole system is built -- is predicated on the idea that people adhere to norms and one of the norms is restraint in speech and action so that we can be collaborative, but that's something that's missing now obviously as well. >> and unfortunately that rule by emotion that doesn't just pertain to the political sphere. we're seeing it touch on other parts of our culture because of immediate hyper partisanship, but also hyper democracy, jeffrey, as you said. jeffrey, i'm curious, your thoughts also on -- on the reality we've been hearing about for the past 20 years, that sometime in the next few decades whites will no longer be a majority of the united states. you look at the immigration patterns into western europe and central europe. you see so much of the nationalism, so much of the populism that's threatening democratic norms, and i wonder how much you believe these demographic changes are making -- making what we're seeing in europe and america predictable, but i would argue also a short-term effect of demographic changes. that this is not the birth cry of some great political movement, but rather the death rattle of populists, white nationalists and neo nazis. >> right. right. i mean, i want to be careful here in the way i talk about it, but -- first of all, the story in america is not unique. anytime you have a country in which there are pretty sudden demographic shifts you're going to have dislocation, alienation, resentment and it's going to boil up. this is why the answer to hyper restrictive immigration policies is not open immigration necessarily, it's controlled, orderly, thoughtful immigration processes that allow america to be america is the way a lot of us conceive it as a welcoming place, but also to give time to assimilate new immigrants to the american creed or to the american civic religion, right? you want -- people want to feel -- and this is not just whites who are experiencing some feelings of backlash, this is everybody, i think. you want immigrants to come in and buy into some of the basic propositions of what makes america, right? and so there's a feeling and donald trump rose to power, i think, because there is a feeling that the system is broken and out of control, and so what you ideally want, obviously, is republicans and democrats to work together to build a system that works and that has a governing intelligence over it rather than just a reactive kind of set of policies. but, you know, it's not going to get -- it's not going to get better as long as there is scare mongering going on about what refugees are and what they can do to our country. that's obviously a true thing. and remember this receding roar, this white backlash, could last quite a long time. >> okay. the new issue of the atlantic magazine is democracy dying? jeffrey goldberg, thank you. chris matthews, what's the opening line of "hard ball" going to be tonight? >> mika has to know. >> it's early in the day. that is resolved and decided around 5:30 or 6:00 in the evening. lots more news. we live on "the new york times" and the "washington post." we're news driven and, you know, i think we always hope a story breaks around 5:30 or 6:00, the hottest story breaks the latest, we love that, then we go on the air at 7:00 and we break the news. so i can't give it to you now because i can't tell what it's going to be tonight. it will have to do with trump process. >> it's a process. >> it's all connected, joe. i was certain the night when the big omarosa broke that he would go omarosa, let's play hard ball. >> or les moonves. >> less is more. all right. still ahead on "morning joe," before brett kavanaugh was a supreme court nominee he spent more than three years working for ken starr, the independent counsel who investigated bill clinton. ken starr joins us with his new book on that era straight ahead on "morning joe." if you're waiting patiently for a liver transplant, it could cost you your life. it's time to get out of line with upmc. at upmc, living-donor transplants put you first. so you don't die waiting. upmc does more living-donor liver transplants than any other center in the nation. find out more and get out of line today. takes more than just investment advice. from insurance to savings to retirement, it takes someone with experience and knowledge who can help me build a complete plan. brian, my certified financial planner™ professional, is committed to working in my best interest. i call it my "comfortable future plan," and it's all possible with a cfp® professional. find your certified financial planner™ professional at letsmakeaplan.org. find your certified financial planner™ professional so let's promote our falle a homecomingtravel dealame, on choicehotels.com like this. touchdown. earn a free night when you stay just twice this fall. or, badda book. badda boom. book now at choicehotels.com i'm ready to crush ap english. i'm ready to do what no one on my block has done before. forget that. what no one in the world has done before. all i need access, tools, connections. high-speed connections. is the world ready for me? through internet essentials, comcast has connected more than six-million low-income people to low-cost, high-speed internet at home. i'm trying to do some homework here. so they're ready for anything. republican senator susan collins is facing increasing pressure to oppose brett kavanaugh's confirmation. collins is facing a high dollar fundraising drive against her that her office was likened to extortion. she's also received abusive phone calls and profanity-laced voice mails over kavanaugh's nomination and anger at her if she votes to confirm him to the supreme court. according to recordings obtained by nbc news, progressive activists are pressuring the republican senator over concerns that if confirmed kavanaugh may help to undo roe v. wade, however, collins has said very little about how she might vote on kavanaugh's upcoming confirmation. kasie, have we ever seen anything like this where the people begin to speak out and it becomes a dicey political game for a senator, you know, potentially facing reelection concerns even? >> well, here is one thing i will say, if you're trying to convince susan collins to do something the tactics that some of these people are using is not the way to go about it. her office has received 3,000 plus wire hangers, she had one 25-year-old female staffer have somebody walk up to them and say that they hope that she is raped and impregnated. and i think everybody is feeling very -- and i've gotten notes from sources that people feel really uncomfortable with how this is playing out. susan collins really values her reputation as being independent, she did vote for neil gorsuch, which, of course, went along with the president here, but she has acknowledged she told a maine newspaper that if in fact some of the charges democrats have leveled against kavanaugh that he has not told the truth in his hearings that that would be a very serious concern for her. we have all assumed that this nomination is basically on the fast track, but there is this pressure that she and lisa murkowski are going to have to deal with and question about these three red state democrats that are also under pressure, they are coming under pressure from progressive activists on their own side. as you mentioned, collins, it's an interesting new fundraising drive, local groups have said please give us money if she votes no on kavanaugh, we will give it back to you, but if she doesn't we will use it to fund her 2020 challenger. so, i mean, this does raise real questions about, you know, we talk a lot about the -- how there's no bipartisanship in washington. these kind of tactics don't encourage independents like susan collins to stay in the ring. >> kasie, thanks. still ahead, 20 years ago an independent counsel report got a president impeached. kenneth starr joins us next with new insight into the clinton investigation and howeller's rua probe today. "morning joe" will be right back. at ally, we offer low-cost trades and high-yield savings. but if that's not enough, we offer innovative investing tools to prepare you for the future. looks like you hooked it. and if that's not enough, we'll help your kid prepare for the future. don't hook it kid. and if that's still not enough, we'll help your kid's kid prepare for the future. looks like he hooked it. we'll do anything... takes after his grandad. seriously anything, to help you invest for the future. ally. do it right. i want to say one thing to the american people. i want you to listen to me. i'm going to say this again. i did not have sexual relations with that woman, ms. lewinsky. i never told anybody to lie not a single time. never. these allegations are false and i need to go back to work for the american people. thank you. >> that was president bill clinton more than 20 years ago responding to allegations about an affair with then intern monica lewinsky. the following september came a damning report filed by the incompetent counsel ken starr whose recommendations after a four and a half year investigation of the clinton administration led to just the second presidential impeachment in american history. for the first time starr offers his full perspective in a new book titled "contempt: a memoire of the clinton investigation." ken starr joins us in studio now. it's good to have you with us. >> thank you. >> we were just talking i think people forget because of where we ended up with the monica lewinsky story that this started with an investigation of an arkansas land deal. this was a real estate investigation first. i ask this question because i think it has some bearing on what's happening now with the special counsel, how did we get from white water to monica lewinsky? >> it was a long road. as i account in the book, willie, when we arrived or when i arrived in little rock, arkansas, my predecessor appointed by yant reno said, ken, move your family to little rock, you are going to be here for a long time. why? why would a failed land deal in arkansas -- because the investigation, as bob fisk, a very honorable and great person, terrific lawyer, had framed the investigation under the auspices of janet reno, it was very far flung. we were looking into the death of vincent foster jr., we were looking into webster hubble, some of these names from the past and his billing practices and his defrauding the federal government, we were looking into campaign violations of the clinton gubernatorial campaign in 1990. so his mandate was much broader than the american people realized and certainly that i realized when i arrived in little rock on that very hot day in august in 1994. >> as you may know some of your critics had said when you found out and confirmed that vince foster had committed suicide, confirming a previous finding that you didn't need to keep turning the next corner and end up at an affair in the white house. what do you say to those critics? >> well, what the critics fail to take into account with all respect are the facts. the facts including that janet reno kept expanding the investigation. she asked me to look into the travel office firings was so deeply involved in and i described that in some detail in the book. secondly, she asked me to look into the fbi files investigation. we were looking into whether the rtc, the resolution thrift corporation, was improperly influenced to hold off on the investigation of madison guaranteed savings and loan. there were a variety of things that we were looking into that, again, there were no press releas releases, we were just doing our job. >> what do you say then to people who are watching the mueller investigation about what can happen when an investigation starts at one place and where it may end up? >> they should rest assured if they are concerned maybe they are applauding but for those who are concerned, that there are checks and balances in place, namely bob mueller, unlike the independent counsel which i operated is an officer of the justice department. in the book i try to make these -- and draw these distinctions that that 21-year experiment with the independent counsel statute was really a noble idea but it was just very poorly designed. one of the things that it did was that it pointed the investigation toward impeachment by its express terms. the statute was essentially calling on the independent counsel go to the house of representatives, by command, shall report to the house of representatives. we have a totally different -- and frankly more pro democracy strength tour now that i think is more respectful of the election process. >> so that quote that you mentioned bob fisk telling you you're going to be here for a long time in little rock, that jumped off the page at me when i read it. what is your assessment of people largely on the republican side in the house and the senate clamoring for bob mueller's investigation to end when, in fact, between bob fisk, between ken starr and between bob ray, your successor, the investigation went on from 1994 and finally concluded in the year 2002. so what is your assessment of people who think it's some calamity that mueller's investigation has gone on now for 15 months? >> my perspective is you don't know what you don't know, and you don't know what bob mueller knows. the assurance that we have is that mueller reports to someone who i think is very honorable whom i know well, rod rosenstein, the deputy attorney general because of jeff sessions having recused himself. again, there are these checks and balances in place that i think are -- they should be a source of assurance, but there's just the politics and the partisanship, but the work that has been done thus far -- >> worse now, the partisanship than what you confronted? >> i'll tell you it was nasty back then and we were under continual and unrelenting assault by the clinton white house. it's just a fact. no, i think there are more avenues, more platforms, social media was essentially nonexistent. mark zuckerberg had not awakened to the bold future that he was about to help create. so it is a different environment now, but, no, the partisanship as i talk about in the book, mike, was really nasty. i mean, it was personal. it was blood sport as james stewart said in his book about the way the clinton white house operated. very vicious, determined to take you out. >> mika? >> so, ken starr, can a president be indicted and if the answer is yes, why are so many people calling this a question they can't answer? >> well, i think a president can be indicted, but that is not the position of the justice department traditionally going back to the nixon/ford era and continuing through president clinton's tenure. and the authoritative within the justice department view as set forth within an office of legal counsel opinion during the clinton administration in the year 2000. so the basic point is we do not have an authoritative resolution on the issue. my point is, as i describe in the book, the supreme court of the united states and the case of clinton versus jones, the jones case determined unanimously that the president is subject to civility gags. well, if anything is clear to me the public policy concerns underlying an informing the criminal justice system are even stronger. all the arguments president clinton made with respect to i've been busy, i have these heavy responsibilities and no one says that, of course, it's absolutely true. we should be very careful and respectful of the president's schedule and the like, but no one is above the law and so in my judgment the president can, in fact, be indicted. but it cannot happen as i see it under justice department policy. that's enforceable on bob mueller. >> what about the question of responding to a subpoena? rudy giuliani back in the late 1990s had said that a president if subpoenaed would have to respond to it, now rudy giuliani 2018 is saying no. i'm curious what your opinion is about a president's ability to just ignore a subpoena from a federal court if he chooses to. >> well, i love rudy, but rudy was right then and as i describe in the book the take away from the book is rudy is not correct now. it is, in fact, the case, as i describe in the book "contempt" that the president is subject to subpoena and eventually after we were pushed back by the white house during the lewinsky phase of the investigation, we invited the president through letters five times to come before the grand jury and to give an account before the grand jury. push back, push back. so i authorized the issuance of a subpoena promptly with his very able lawyers from williams and conley we reached a resolution that is now part of history, his famous august 17, 1998, appearance before the grand jury. my view then and now is a president can be subpoenaed. >> ken, you made some headlines earlier this week, the headline read all over the internet, quote, i regretted the whole thing. >> yeah. >> a quote from you talking about the clinton investigation. the full quote is i regretted the whole thing but it had to be done. what element of the clinton investigation do you regret today? >> well, first of all, i think it would have been better for the nation it goes without saying for the president to have been truthful in the first instance and not to have committed perjury. he has apparently just unlimited belief in his acts to convince anyone including the court of law and the reason this book is named "on tempt" is he is the only president in american history to have been found in contempt by united states district court judge and he didn't appeal from that ruling. so just tell the truth. so i was hoping that he would tell the truth in the august 17, 1998, grand jury appearance. he was urged by members of his own party who recognized that by this time they knew he had committed perjury in the civil deposition in the fall la corbin jones case. don't do it again, president. for your sake, for the sake of the nation tell the truth, but he chose to lie and so all this -- so i regret that whole thing. i was supposed to be at pepperdine university as the dean and all of a sudden the big stop sign went up in the form of the attorney general of the united states, janet reno, making the determination, willie, that this had to be investigated. you cannot turn a blind eye to the possibility of perjury, obstruction of justice and the like. >> as you look back 20 years later do you have any regret or do you feel any responsibility for what happened to a young intern in monica lewinsky and what had err life has been like since? >> oh, i deeply regret that, but we gave monica the opportunity -- she is a very bright young person, she is very bright, she is very able and she made a calculated decision in january of 1998, i'm not going to do anything, as i recount this episode in the book, we heard her say this to her mother and she used some pretty strong language, i'm not going to do anything to bring this president down. so she embarked on this long journey of loyalty that i think contributed to her unhappiness. we wanted to make a deal and if we had been able to make an immunity deal, right there on the spot we were willing generously to say regardless of the perjury that you've already committed, we're trying to get to the bottom of this, we're authorized by the attorney general and the special division, just tell the truth, cooperate with the investigation, and she said, no, for five months. then she got some great defense lawyers who said let's make a deal. >> do you think that loyalty came under some duress from the clinton world? was she pressured into that? >> i don't know whether there was, but obviously she was so smart, she's so able, she could see ahead that it might result in at least the resignation of the president. >> the book is "contempt" a memoire of the clinton investigation. great to talk to you. >> thank you, willie. coming up, our conversation with bob woodward about his explosive new book and the time the president reportedly wanted to print more money as a way to address the deficit. 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"morning joe" is coming right back. again, they haven't seen anything like what's coming at us in 25, 30 years, maybe ever. it's tremendously big and tremendously wet. tremendous amounts of water. nto the street when you barely clip a passing car. minor accident - no big deal, right? wrong. your insurance company is gonna raise your rate after the other car got a scratch so small you coulda fixed it with a pen. maybe you should take that pen and use it to sign up with a different insurance company. for drivers with accident forgiveness liberty mutual won't raise their rates because of their first accident. liberty mutual insurance. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty ♪ to take care of yourself. but nature's bounty has innovative ways to help you maintain balance and help keep you active and well-rested. because hey, tomorrow's coming up fast. nature's bounty. because you're better off healthy. nature's bounty. if your adventure... ...keeps turning into unexpected bathroom trips... ...you may have overactive bladder, or oab. ohhhh...enough already! we need to see a doctor. ask your doctor about myrbetriq® (mirabegron). it treats oab symptoms of urgency, frequency, and leakage. it's the first and only oab treatment in its class. myrbetriq may increase blood pressure. tell your doctor right away if you have trouble emptying your bladder or have a weak urine stream. myrbetriq may cause serious allergic reactions... ...like swelling of the face, lips, throat or tongue, or trouble breathing. if experienced, stop taking and tell your doctor right away. myrbetriq may interact with other medicines. tell your doctor if you have liver or kidney problems. common side effects include increased blood pressure, common cold or flu symptoms,... ...sinus irritation, dry mouth, urinary tract infection, bladder inflammation,... ...back or joint pain, constipation, dizziness, and headache. need some help managing your oab symptoms along the way? ask your doctor if myrbetriq is right for you, and visit myrbetriq.com to learn more. it's good to... see you again, baron. a toast, to your demise. wanna get away? now you can with southwest fares as low as 69 dollars one-way. that's transfarency. (clap, clap, ding) wat t. rowe price, hundreds of our experts go beyond the numbers to examine investment opportunities firsthand. like a biotech firm that engineers a patient's own cells to fight cancer. this is strategic investing. because your investments deserve the full story. t. rowe price. invest with confidence. i think puerto rico was incredibly successful. puerto rico was actually our toughest one of all because it's an island. you can't truck everything onto it. a tremendous military hospital in the form of a ship. and i actually think, and the governor has been very nice, and if you ask the governor he'll tell what you a great job. i think probably the hardest one was puerto rico because of the island nature and i actually think it was one of the best jobs ever done with respect to what this is all about. the job that fema and law enforcement and everybody did working along with the governor in puerto rico i think was tremendous. i think puerto rico was an incredible unsung success. >> an unsung success. that's president trump citing the government's storm response in puerto rico where nearly 3,000 americans died, where electricity and clean water was so hard to find for so long, and where donald trump picked fights with leaders in puerto rico. he cites that as a model for hurricane florence. willie, there's a united states senator that is saying to the good people of south carolina and north carolina right now that if that is the president of the united states' idea of how you respond to a hurricane, get in your cars and leave. i must tell you, he says this seriously not as a political dig, if you're in florence's path and considering riding it out, your president just said that a hurricane response where 3,000 die is his measure of success, get out of there. of course there are those who die in natural disasters, that die because of nature, because of the storms themselves. but in puerto rico so much negligence, such a delayed response and, again, such an unpresidential response from a man picking fights with leaders in communities there that were struggling just to get power and water back. >> yeah, obviously we're going to be focused on what's happening or will be with florence. this is the context for the comment the president made yesterday and it dove tails with bob woodward who is sitting with us and a president who is unable to not admit defeat but even to concede when something didn't go well. you don't have to say that this was terrible for you, but you can say this was a great tragedy, unsung success is not a term anyone should use when it comes to what happened in puerto rico given the study from george washington university we got just a couple weeks ago that did, in fact, show nearly 3,000 people died in puerto rico. >> mika, half the island for so long didn't have electricity, didn't have clean water, and we still found over all of these months we haven't even been able to get accurate numbers for casualties in puerto rico. it's, again, an absolute mess. you just wonder why the president of the united states is calling that a success. >> well, i'll just never forget the visual images of him throwing the paper towels out at people, as if that was some symbolic way of showing support. along with willie, joe, and me, we have mike barnicle. and in just a moment, as willie mentioned, we'll be speaking with pulitzer prize winning associate editor of "the washington post," bob woodward. you may have heard he has a new book out. we'll be getting to all of that. first, we want to update you on hurricane florence which is inching closer to the united states as mourn than 1 million americans rush to evacuate along the southeastern coastline. fema is warning that hurricane florence could be the strongest storm to target the carolinas and virginia region in decades. more than 1.5 million people are under mandatory evacuation orders, meaning, get out. outside of charleston, south carolina, state highway patrol reversed lanes along a busy interstate to help residents move inland as fast as possible. at the ft. bragg military base, more than 80 military helicopters were moved inland. and fema started setting up for relief operations. tractor-trailers began arriving on monday. >> so let's go right now, mika, to bill karins with the storm's tracking and timing and, bill, you and i have been through quite a few of these together. my gosh, going back to 2003, 2004, where does this one stack with all of those? >> this one's unique, joe. i don't think it will have the intensity of some we've seen in the past, but the fact we could have a major hurricane stall, and it looks like it will, over the top of wilmington, north carolina, a city of 117,000 people, that's only under a voluntary evacuation, is a scary thought. i was looking at the numbers. new hanover county has a voluntary evacuation for the county. you could have what would be the equivalent of a landfalling hurricane for 24 hours over the top of you. if you plan on riding out the storm in that area, you have to be prepared for 60 hours of tropical storm force winds, you won't have power. you'll be stuck in your safe room with your pets and your family. you get the picture. keep that in mind if you're thinking about leaving or not leaving because today is really your decision day in that area. 130-mile-per-hour winds, roughly 550 miles away from the coast right now and here is the stall. category 4 thursday. into friday, category 3. so it slowly weakens as it stalls. we may not get the wind damage at the coast but the storm surge will pile up in high tide cycles and the rainfall will be incredible with this stall and what has changed some of our computer models, a lot of them now are actually taking the storm, not making landfall and kind of drifting down the coast. so myrtle beach, you're in play. georgetown, you're in play. the forecast has dramatically improved for raleigh, richmond and virginia beach. just off the coast, joe, friday evening, the european model still off the coast without a landfall. the european model does this, joe, our most reliable model, towards wilmington, stalls down along the south carolina coast and then coming inland into georgia. by this time it would be much weaker but this is a big change in the forecast from what we had last night especially for people from savannah to beaufort to charleston, hilton head, georgetown and myrtle beach. much worse for you and still just as bed for our friends in jacksonville and wilmington. >> a complete change. >> big change. >> it will scrape and bounce along the border of the carolinas and into georgia. as you said, it can stall out and when that happens, when it gets over land, of course that's when tornadoes start spinning off. that's when flooding starts. >> the rainfall, joe, from this will be incredible. someone is going to get 4 feet of rain if it stalls out the way it will. you're talking about a storm that has the surge of like a major hurricane, the winds of a major hurricane and then the possible flooding of a harvey. if you can get out of the way safely and you have the means to do it, i would. >> yeah, no doubt about it. all right, bill karins, thank you so much. somebody that's been going through this since 1978, 1979, if you can leave the area, please leave the area. don't stick around. let's go now -- we have bob woodward with us today. bob has done it again. >> "fear." >> seriously, bob, you seem to outdo yourself every time. this time you tell the inside story of the trump administration, the book "fear." we knew you were working on it. we knew you were working on something. you disappear and when you come out there's an explosion, a political explosion, there's been one here as well, bob. i want to ask you, though, what's your biggest takeaway? let's just look at this entire project from 30,000 feet. if you were trying to describe to somebody 30 years from now a historian what was the big idea with the trump administration and the first 18 months what would you say? >> one way to connect the dots on this, there's a war on truth the president launches and will not accept. it's not a matter of alternative data but the information in the data and the conclusions particularly of national security, experts in his own government and economic and financial experts. so in the course of this, people closest to him do not trust him and the impulse driven presidency is something the more people know, the more they realize we're at risk. >> you have your journalistic team on the nixon administration, compare nixon's relationship with the truth to donald j. trump's. >> well, there was -- nixon was not a big believer in the truth. as the tapes and the testimony in that investigation in the '70s established, he was a criminal president. breaking the law all the time using the power of the presidency as an instrument of personal revenge to settle scores with enemies, real, perceived. in the case of trump there is the mueller investigation which clearly is important, but it's not -- we don't know whether they're going to come up with information that establishes criminality. but what i thought the vacuum here in the coverage of trump w was, first of all, excellent reporting by my poster, "the new york times," "wall street journal," but the focus was not -- so much on the mueller investigation, the question really is how does trump perform as president? in the foreign policy areas, handling of north korea, afghanistan, the middle east, all of the immigration issues, trade issues, i was able to excavate and find out actually what happened. and this is the pattern, he won't face what's real. >> i want to talk about trump, the man, because so many people have differing opinions on his physical fitness, his mental fitness. let's focus on the truth, on donald trump, the person. how is he like richard nixon? how is he different than richard nixon? >> each president i've done books on now nine presidents from nixon to trump. 20% of the presidents we've had in this country and each one is different and unique. there are some similarities. some differences. i think the key in examination trump, what will he do when people present him with facts. the world trade organization, which the united states is a member of, very important. allows us to file complaints of unfair trade practices. and there's a meeting in the oval office, and the president says, well, the world trade organization is the worst organization ever. we lose all our cases and they present data -- >> i said, no, no, we actually win most of our cases there. >> like 85.7% of them. not just 85% but 85.7%. he says, no, that's not true. the people there say, look, call the u.s. trade representative, your guy. you will confirm this. i don't want to hear, i don't want to call him, i don't want to deal with it. at some points he gets literally where did you get these ideas, well, i've had them for 30 years. they're right. if you disagree, they're wrong. >> did you hear when you interviewed all of the people, staff members and acquaintances and people of his orbit, any concern about donald trump's well-being mentally or just believe he has an efficient personality that can't handle the truth? >> happily, i'm not a psychiatrist and i don't dig into that. what matters to people is the performance the people as president. you find people are worried about the inability to grow, the inability to listen, to change his mind. you have a situation. i make this point. gee, maybe i like trump and some of these things, but this is not the way to manage the president. >> we're just getting started on bob woodward's new book including pushback from top administration officials. plus, what chris christie is saying about the report the president accused the former governor of stealing from his campaign. you're watching "morning joe." when did you see the sign? when i needed to jumpstart sales. build attendance for an event. help people find their way. fastsigns designed new directional signage. and got them back on track. get started at fastsigns.com. takes more than just investment advice. from insurance to savings to retirement, it takes someone with experience and knowledge who can help me build a complete plan. brian, my certified financial planner™ professional, is committed to working in my best interest. i call it my "comfortable future plan," and it's all possible with a cfp® professional. find your certified financial planner™ professional at letsmakeaplan.org. find your certified financial planner™ professional that's why capital one iss feel the building something completely different. capital one cafés. welcoming places with people here to help you, not sell you. with savings and checking accounts with no fees or minimums. that are easy to open from right here or anywhere in 5 minutes. no smoke. no mirrors. this is banking reimagined. what's in your wallet? 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"we're here with bob woodward whose new book is out now. you've heard the denials from the people, from the president, all the way down. the president effect ill calling this book a work of fiction. chief of staff kelly, gary cohen, although his was less full-throated perhaps than the other ones. >> there's no throat at all. >> he says this book does not actually portray my experience at the white house but doesn't deny the stories you lay out in some detail. you quote the president of the united states saying christie was stealing money from the campaign. chris christie came out pretty strongly and said this just didn't happen. he said these were leaks from steve bannon. he said they didn't even reach out to me for fact checking. did you? >> i reached out to absolutely everyone. this is at a time they were putting the word out in the white house don't talk to anybody for a book. don't talk to woodward. i've done my due diligence. is this for a book? it is for a book. i'm sorry. we can't talk to you, or somebody would say, yeah, i'll talk to you in a clan des pides way. this goes back to the nixon era. i call them politically calculated survival denials. they are not real. they are a form of the nondenial denial or, you know, people say this didn't happen. this is untrue. that's fine. and then when the truth comes out often years later in an investigation or in memoirs you see that's precisely what happened. >> as specific as people talking to you if this ever goes public, i'm going to have to deny it, bob? >> they don't tell me that but i understand the context. my wife is laughing. this has other reporters, one reporter actually got hives yesterday because there were denials about things that this reporter had heard from the person. people told me, oh, yeah, i heard so and so say that but off the record. when i did this i was able to not take anything off the record. people would, in the eighth hour of a series of interviews, i'd like to do this off the record. i'd say, no. >> so it was on the record, just anonymous. >> it's not anonymous. i know who it is. the situation -- >> anonymous to the reader, though. >> well, the source but not the information. these people gathered in the white house and this happened. the real portrait of something like this, it's not an abstraction, it is specifically what happened, at what time, what's going on in the white house. people can say what they want. thank god for the first amendment. i'm able to say what i found out. some of them in books, most of them in the daily newspaper, "the washington post." someone so ill-equipped to hold the job as president as donald tru trump? >> that is the judgment of people who work for him. the most economic discussions, for instance, trump says, let's print more money. we'll run the printing presses and borrow money and we'll make money. no, no, that's not the way it works because you increase the deficit, interest rates go up. you could have a calamity. he does not understand that. he thinks that -- at one point, i have this in the book, he actually writes in his own hand trade is bad. that he thinks trade, that somehow we're losing our nationalism, that we need to be isolated. he is fight iing. he was elected as a disruptor. fine. he won. you can disrupt things, but you inherit a framework. we know his approach is not normal. >> who is there in the white house to control or monitor the daily dangers that any president and this president, obviously, is confronted with? who is there? >> well, chief of staff kelly. i talk in some length, and he literally put out memos telling people we have to have a process, no seat of the pants decisions are final, and there has to be a signature on a decision memo by the president. he will do what he wants. he calls people the steal -- steel executives in and general kelly didn't know there was a meeting on that. >> thank you. the new book is. "fear." coming up on "morning joe" the u.s. financial system was brought to the brink. we'll talk to andrew ross sorkin about his new cnbc documentary and another threat, america's ballooning deficits. "morning joe" is coming right back. ♪ take us downtown, waze. waze integration- seamlessly connecting the world inside... with the world outside... making life a little... easier. introducing the well-connected lincoln mkc. mitzi: psoriatic arthritis tries to get in my way? watch me. ( ♪ ) mike: i've tried lots of things for my joint pain. now? watch me. ( ♪ ) joni: think i'd give up showing these guys how it's done? please. real people with active psoriatic arthritis are changing the way they fight it. they're moving forward with cosentyx. it's a different kind of targeted biologic. it's proven to help people find less joint pain and clearer skin. don't use if you are allergic to cosentyx. before starting cosentyx you should be checked for tuberculosis. an increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms of an infection. or if you have received a vaccine, or plan to. if you have inflammatory bowel disease tell your doctor if symptoms develop or worsen. serious allergic reactions may occur. mitzi: with less joint pain, watch me. for less joint pain and clearer skin, ask your rheumatologist about cosentyx. ask your rheumatologist i decided that i wanted to go for electrical engineering and you need to go to college for that. if i didn't have internet in the home i would have to give up more time with my kids. which is the main reason i left the military. everybody wants more for their kids, but i feel like with my kids, they measurably get more than i ever got. and i get to do that. i get to provide that for them. ten years ago lehman brothers filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on september 15th, 2008. joining us now "new york times" columnist, co-anchor of "squawk box," andrew ross sorkin. his book "too big to fail." his new documentary "crisis on wall street -- the week that shook the world" airs tonight at 10:00 p.m. on cnbc. also with us for this conversation columnist at the washington examiner, welcome to you both. i will get into your book before we do that. what exactly happened that brought us to that day? to refresh people's memories. >> to refresh people's memories we were at the edge of an economic abyss. we literally had a series of dominos that started with the remarkable amount of debt taken on by many individuals and pushed on individuals in part by wall street banks. we landed in september 2008, aig being rescued by the government s and then a $700 billion scheme, if you will, to save the banks. a debate about whether that was a good decision, whether it was the right decision and whether it was about helping the banks or about helping the people. it was a moment. >> what was the alternative? hank paulsen would say it had to be done. but for the critics who say it shouldn't have been done, what might have happened if not for it? >> i'm ultimately in the camp that it had to be done. perhaps there is a way to do it so went directly to homeowners. could there have been principle reduction, ways to loan individuals money directly? could have the bankers themselves, if we were going to give money to the banks, been fired, held accountable, gone to jail. those are the issues. the issue if you think of the banks as a utility, a water utility, they are not paid like a utility. everybody ultimately needs the water. and could you have gone out and handed homeowners that needed the water the water, if you will, or did you need to do it and flush it through the system. >> so, andrew, ten years ago at this time of year, bear stearns had already disappeared and lehman brothers was about to disappear. what are your thoughts on whether or not lehman could have been saved and how much of it was personal given the contentious relationship -- go ahead. >> it's a great question. it's debated in the documentary. they didn't have the, quote/unquote, authority to save lehman brothers, that the only way they could have saved a failing financial institution if it had enough collateral that they could loan against. others in the documentary including warren buffett who say the federal could do effectively what it wanted and should have lent to lehman brothers. one issue, people talk about the financial crisis and the banks as dominos. if lehman went, the next one would go and the next one after that. it's more like popcorn. the next kernel was going to pop. the politics of all of it, the idea of bailing out a financial institution was remarkably unpopular. in fact, "the new york times" and "the wall street journal" op-ed page, editorials which are never the same, the day after lehman brothers failed, they both praised the government for not saving lehman. >> could it happen again? are we better off today than we were ten years ago? >> the good news is that the banking system, in my estimation, is materially better off than it was then. you could argue it's too big to fail squared. it is bigger. these institutions are bigger but better capitalized. we now have one debt than ever had before. municipalities, in cities, in countries. every crisis not just about debt but confidence the other side will pay you back and is willing to pay you back. when you look at our trade relationship with them and how much we rely on trusting us, that's where i worry that the next crisis lies. >> $895 billion. that's the number we are now spending more than the government took in within the last 11 months. that's a 30% increase in debt. where are these members of congress, so sworn and worried about debt. apparently not so much now. >> economic growth is the thing conservatives talk about a lot as the thing that will solve the debt problem that you can cut taxes but we have economic growth doing fantastically. you look at the president's job approval numbers. yet despite gdp growth is high, the fact we're still staring down such enormous levels of debt, such a huge deficit, is terrifying. i think for a lot of younger conservatives who know this is the mess they're going to have to clean up this is a real generational divide within the party. a much higher level of concern. what are we going to do? it's not just cutting discretionary spending. conservatives like to go after because it's politically easier to do so. no one wants to get near touching those issues. >> andrew, what kind of line can you draw? the rise of donald trump and also of a guy like bernie sanders railing against the elites who brought you things like the financial crisis. >> even more than what took place after and how the policymakers responded to it. so much pain and disrupt. not just distrust but of government and the idea of experts and expertise. i think that has opened up a n pando pandora's box. it is the moment in which the divide in this country, the true cleving happened. the occupy wall street movement, all of that has sort of pushed everybody away in ways i don't think anyone anticipated or understood at the time. >> andrew, quickly, and just as quickcal, is bobby going to be okay? >> i'm just the proud father of the show. you'll have to watch season four this spring. >> mike shamelessly groveling for a cameo. andrew ross sorkin, thank you very much. the updated version of "too big to fail" is out now and the cnbc documentary "crisis on wall street" premieres tonight at 10:00 p.m. eastern. kristen, stay with us. just because donald trump says something doesn't mean it's a bad idea. that's the take from astro physicist about president trump's calls for a space force branch of the military. neal explains why it is an idea whose time may have come. that's ahead on "morning joe." (vo) this is not a video game. this is not a screensaver. this is the destruction of a cancer cell by the body's own immune system, thanks to medicine that didn't exist until now. and today can save your life. ♪ ♪ you'll make my morning, buty the price ruin my day.ou? complicated relationship with milk? pour on the lactaid, 100% real milk, just without that annoying lactose. mmm, that's good. with new, more secure numbers. but con artists, they never change. they'll always try to steal your medical identity. so, what can you do? guard your card, just like a credit card. don't give your medicare number over the phone or email. and remember, medicare never calls unless you've asked them to. to find more ways to guard your card, go to medicare.gov/fraud. don't let your guard down. ♪ is my competitive edge. it senses our movements and automatically adjusts to keep us both effortlessly comfortable. so i'm at my best for this team... and the home team. sleep number proven quality sleep, from $999. the white house has been seriously considering the establishment of a space force as a separate military department for at least a year. long before president trump brought it up at a rally this past spring. our next guest makes the case that militaries have long used space science and space-based technology to their advantage while astro physicists have reaped the rewards of such military investments. he chronicles the militarization of space in his latest book entitled "accessory to war: the unspoken alliance between astro physics and the military." famed astro physicist of the american museum of natural history and director of the planitarian neil degrasse tyson. thank you for being on with us this morning. >> thanks for having me. >> i guess, first of all, let's lay out the premise of your book. is it based on how scientists and the military play off each other? >> yes, but there are certain branches of science that are well known in their relationship with war. physics, for example. we wouldn't have had the atom bomb. without chemists we wouldn't have mustard gas and napalm and other weapons of war. anthrax and conflict. but the astro physicist historically thinking we sit at the mountain top and wait for photons of light to come to us. it's a humble state of existence for us. there's been this two-way street between what we do and what military conquests, empire building, has required of us. the navigation around the world, the great seafaring nations, required knowledge of where they were, where the enemy was, where the friendlies were. astronomers back then were fundamental to this exercise. >> it would seem that the development of a space force would make perfect sense. >> space force -- just because it came out of trump's mouth doesn't mean it's a crazy idea. it's been around for a while. >> true. >> just saying. >> it's been around for a while when during the second world war that was a branch of the army. no one questions that then or today. space is similarly different from air than air is from ground infantry. i don't have a horse in the race. all space activities were prefl or currently handled by the air force, the u.s. space command under the air force. any space force, remove it and give it its own. i would say if you're doing that, throw in asteroid defense. i don't want to die like the dinosaurs did. >> values that might animate the astro physicist that may collide with the values that animate military folk? >> how do you think about those two? >> a brilliant access point. i would say about half this book addresses the conflict, as a community we're overwhelmingly sort of liberal, anti-war, but complicit when it comes to this exchange of technology. the discovery the military uses we don't have control over their adoption of it. if they make a discovery that would greatly help us are we going to say no because it was used in warfare? generally we don't. >> we do have a militarized environment in space. >> it can be transformed into weapons quickly. do we face a system here where we're looking at a 1950s, 1960s arms race style? we don't have diplomatic limits on this and have to compete with each other and we're facing a runaway conflict environment. >> another great question, first of all, the militarization of space, you're thinking there's a bomb, a weapon, a laser. i think you need to be more broad when you think of militarization. ever since we had access to space we were putting up communication satellites, reconnaissance satellites, satellites in the service -- spy satellites in the service of geopolitical conflict. that's been going on from the beginning. sputnik -- sputnik translates loosely from the russian to mean fellow traveler and sputnik, remember, you read about sputnik in 1957, october 4, and the radio transmitter just went beep-beep but there it was over our heads. you need permission to fly through someone's airspace but not space-space, the space above it. so there it was. wait a minute. the military folks knew. it wasn't any rocket. it was a ballistic missile with a hollowed out shell and they swapped the warhead for the beep-beep transmitter. and that was a message. that's why we lost out -- we freaked out. we freaked out. that's why. there's not a new thing. you're not going to have weapons destroying satellites in space. your satellite becomes hundreds or thousands of pieces of broken hardware moving at 18,000 miles an hour that can take out your own satellites. it's the it's the modern equivalent of trying to use mustard gas, because you can't shoot the soldiers in the trenches. that's what mustard gas. the wind changed, oh, my gosh, now it's coming back in our face. so space war fafare is not so m weapons, but access to information. the second gulf war was completely enabled by space assets alerting land, sea and air invasions, to where everybody is, where they're headed, where they're coming from, and where their targets are. >> okay. my mind is blown. the book is "accessory to war, the unspoken alliance between astrophysics and the military." absolutely fascinating. neil degrasse tyson, thank you very much for being in our space, space. we will be right back with much more "morning joe." over 260 years later, with a little resourcefulness, ingenuity, and grit, we're not only capturing energy from the sun and wind, we're storing it. as the nation's leader in energy storage, we're ensuring americans have the energy they need, whenever they need it. this is our era. this is america's energy era. nextera energy. are you one sneeze away from being voted out of the carpool? 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( ♪ ) republican senator susan collins facing increasing pressure to oppose brett kavanaugh's confirmation. collins is facing a high dollar fund raising drive against her her office has likened to extortion. she also has received abusive phone calls, profanity laced voice mails over his confirmation if she votes to conserve him to the supreme court. progressive activists are pressuring the republican senator over concerns that if confirmed, kavanaugh may help to undo roe v. wade. senator collins so far has said little how she might vote on his upcoming confirmation. joining us now is commentary editor for the washington examiner and the visiting fellow, kristen soltis anderson is back with us as well. tim, good morning, good to have you on with us, do you see a universe in which susan collins doesn't vote? >> that's not going to happen. she doesn't feel the political pressure. she won reelection by 20 points in very pro-democratic years twice. hillary clinton didn't even get 50% when she won maine. this is not a far left state. she's not a team player on all sorts of things. but on the big issues she tends to go along with the party leadership. i see her doing that here. >> tim, earlier kristen and i were talking about the substantial size of the debt, the deficit, front page story in the "washington post" this morning, $895 billion, 32% more than -- $895 billion, more than we've taken in in the past 11 months. this and other examples of maybe malfeasance you could call it in government occur, is the republican-led house of representatives, the republican congress, senate included, are they acting as accomplices in something that's going to affect generations to come negatively? >> i mean, i'm actually -- on this show i've gotten in trouble with joe before. i'm one of the conservatives who has never been that scared about debts and deficits, in part because the united states of america is an extraordinary creature in the history of mankind, our ability to borrow and print money is unprecedented. i do think the debts and deficits are too big. but the biggest strain to me is that republicans always run as if they're going to -- and they talk as if they're going to cut spending but they never really find spending programs they are willing to cut. we can argue about tax cuts here or there, republicans completely fail to deliver on their promise of shrinking federal spending. >> kristen, you're deeply ingrained in the world of polling. we've seen a spate of them over the last couple of weeks that show the president of the united states in the mid-30s, anywhere between 36% and 38% over five polls, including some plummets numbers among independents. what do you take away from the last two peeks of polls you've looked into? >> this is a sign that the gloo luck or good run the president had come to an end. i don't necessarily attribute it to any one individual thing. i've been asked if it's because of bob woodward's book or specific things with cohen or manafort. a lot of that stuff i view as having been priced into the president's job approval all along. people know there's turmoil in the white house, they know there are issues with russia, et cetera, et cetera. what i think's happened is that the president has been sort of unable to stop himself from engaging on those issues, blowing them up, making them bigger and at the same time stepping on any good news. i talked earlier about the positive economic numbers, the one area of strength he has in all of this polling. so it's happening all at exactly the wrong time. you also have democrats and republicans now back in their districts running. and democratic strategists are pushing a message that talks about health care a lot, an issue that doesn't get covered as much on cable news, as much as russia might. but it's an issue, as the air waves get flooded with ads, they will pull the numbers down. >> what's your best guesstimate as to what percentage of the republican population that you poll is his actual base? is it the 36%? is it lower than that? give me a guesstimate. >> yeah, so i think it's somewhere between a quarter and a third of all voters. it depends on kind of what level of extremity of the question you're asking, if you're asking things like do you support the child separation at the border? that was the sort of thing where you would see only about a quarter of people saying, yes, i thought that was the right policy. but you do see about a third of americans that will say things like i think he has good judgment, i trust him. those are not glowing numbers, but they have been pretty consistent over a period of time. the question is, is that 33% enough to win a midterm? i'm not that confident that it is. >> and the other thing you've got to remember here is that there -- and kristen has written about this before, there are multiple trump bases. there's the sort of populist base, there's i'm going to vote for whoever republicans nominate base, there's a strain of the populist base which will only vote democrat, but only in the end will vote for trump. a lot of conservatives who went along with trump in the general won't go along with him for the same things that will please the populus. >> thank you both, that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. thanks so much. good morning, everyone, i'm stephanie ruhle, and we are preparing for the worst. hurricane florence, a category four storm taking aim at the carolinas. >> even if you've ridden out storms before, this one is different. don't bet your life on riding out a monster. >> the president says the government is prepared for this tremendous and wet, in his words, storm. but a disturbing new document reveals that the administration shifted millions out of the fema budget to pay for child detention