>> virginia lieutenant governor ralph northam. democratic candidate for governor. we'll be watching next week to see how you do. thank you for joining us, sir. >> thanks so much, katy. that wraps things up for me this hour. ali velshi, my friend it is friday. >> are you done? >> the president is overseas. >> right. >> i think we're going to have a quiet weekend. i don't know. just say it. might have a quiet weekend. >> there's always one. i have property to sell you in florida. katy have a great afternoon and i hope you do have a quiet weekend. i hope we all do. i'm ali val shi, as katy alluded to, president trump will arrive in hawaii, the one stop before he kicks off his high-stakes visit to asia. the longer overseas trip of any president since 1991, but the president is traveling with some hefty political baggage as the russia investigation looms. >> mr. president, do you remember george papadopolos during that march meeting -- >> i don't remember much about that meeting. it was a very unimportant meeting that took place long time -- i don't remember much about it. >> the russia investigation is not the only conflict traveling with the president. secretary of state rex tillerson on the took, joining trump in asia, which could make for an awkward trip since the president said this last night. >> rex is in there working hard, doing his best, doing the best he can. >> he'll be with you the duration? >> i don't know who's going to be, we'll see. >> your state department still has unfilled positions. >> i told my people, where you don't need to fill slots don't fill them, but we have some people that i'm not happy with. >> we have reporters covering all angles of this. well kelly o'donnell live in hawaii, and start with you, kelly. what's going on in hawaii, of course, the least contentious part of this trip. >> reporter: well, i guess i'm obligated to say, aloha, ali. >> you are. >> reporter: indulge me for a moment. yes. the president will be here in a matter of hours and this is both a refueling stop and an appropriate way for the president to begin an asia trip. to come to the pacific command where u.s. military operates from, and, of course, we had pay respects at the "uss arizona" sight of pearl harbor. for president trump, this is a way to acclimate and to begin the conversations that will be so critical in the larger scope of the trip over the next couple of weeks, because he'll be able to meet with military leaders directly responsible for the kind of security that's required for our partners, the other nations the president will visit and certainly protecting the united states, and it gives the president a chance to have a more sentimental moment during his trip where he's able to pay those respects to the "uss arizona." this is, of course, the first time he is here at president. it is a very different experience for hawaii, which has been accustomed to president barack obama, a native son of hawaii. so there is certainly some expected protests here as well. we saw how the president was talking about secretary of state tillerson who will be part of the trip in asia, and has been sort of the diplomatic front man for the president. on some of these really difficult issues, namely north korea. there will also be talks about trade and the partnerships with china, with japan, with south korea. the two summits vietnam and manila, but for president trump, he's also making things somewhat difficult arguably for secretary of state tillerson, talking about the fact that he may not need to fill all the positions at the state department. something that many who watch the state department say is not the best practice, but the president says as a businessman, not filling every slot in an organization is something he thinks is valuable and can be helpful. here's how the president described the future of secretary tillerson when asked how long he'll be around. >> we don't need all the people that they -- you know, don't forget, i'm a business person. i tell my people, where you don't need to fill slots don't fill them, but we have some people that i'm not happy with there. >> but assistant secretary of state, not getting rid of that position? >> let me tell you, the one that matters is me. i'm the only one that matters. when it comes to it, that's what the policy is going to be. >> reporter: the only one that matters. that will be a quote that will linger over this trip. it's also difficult for presidents to ever predict how long any senior member of their cabinet stay on, but typically you would expect more confidence shown in someone with the prominent role of secretary of state. especially on the eve of a trip with so much at stake. ali? >> all right. let me bring hans into this. as kelly outlined, incredible diplomatic implications and big trade implications. a lot of ceos on the president with this trip, but military implications as well as things ratchet up with north korea. tell us about what's at stake? >> reporter: in general you see from the administration a focus on the diplomatic-led effort in terms of north korea and hot rhetoric from the president as assets are moved into the region. just the other night, b-1 lancers left guam. a strong reaction from north koreans on that. in general when the u.s. does a lot of these trainings and exercises they want to stress the tripar tide nature to say japan involved and south korea involved. where the presidenting first two stops? japan and then south korea. i think, ali, yesterday when we heard from mc345master, we hear timeline. give the dip marry push and every time secretary mattis talks he makes sure it's a diplomatic-led effort. and attaches a timeline. a couple months. give diplomacy, the sanctions, pressure. >> thanks very much. hans nichols at the pentagon. kelly o'donnell in honolulu. we'll be back with you as we follow this trip. former acting attorney general sally yates answered questions from members of the house intelligence committee today for about three hours. according to florida congressman tom rooney yates was asked about collusion and whether she leaked classified information about michael flynn's ongoing foreign ties to the press. but it's the march 2016 meeting, this one, attended by president trump and jeff sessions and george papadopolos that's making headlines. like this headline from the "new york times." trump and sessions denied knowing about russian contacts. records suggest otherwise. joining me now, one of those reporters from the "new york times." he's an msnbc contributor and contributed to that story. matt, quite simply, there are two narratives here. one is that both the president and jeff sessions said clearly on numerous occasions they had no contact with anybody who knew anything about russia, and both of them were in that meeting where we're now getting more and more information. the concept, not just of russia, but of george papadopoulos setting up a meeting with russians and the campaign was brought up. >> yes. two narratives and bob mueller puts documents on the public record in court along with some documents that george papadopoulos, that aide, attested to under oath that said actually the narrative is, i did have russian contacts. i was pushing for a russian meeting and we know from court records and from interviews of people in that meeting that he was touting those contacts in front of jeff sessions. in front of, at the time, candidate donald trump, saying i can set up a meeting. get a meeting with you, donald trump and with high russian official. when donald trump stands up earlier in the year as the newly sworn-in president and says nobody i know was in touch with russians. jeff sessions go to the senate, i don't know anybody in touch with russians those are flatly at odds. >> from the story that you've written it says trump and sessions denied knowing about russian contacts. mr. gordon, j.b. gordon, no one should talk about it because mr. sessions thought it was a bad idea and did not want it associated with the campaign. today, just today once again after calling papadopoulos a low-level guy, low-level volunteer and trump associate referring to as the coffee boy, donald trump said i don't remember much about the meeting because it was an unimportant meeting. i cannot stop but go back to watergate and references to the burglary being a third-rate burglary. at some point it starts to catch up to you, when you say it was unimportant, nothing discussed and drip, drip, we find out russia was discussed, a national security meeting with a national security adviser meeting team the president himself disclosed to reporters. >> frankly with president trump and his campaign, the problem, they keep saying things that turn out not to be true. the problem is actually not that george papadopoulos said i can set up a meeting. there's nothing illegal about that. you're allowed to do that. campaigns are ay lewed to meet with foreign leaders. that's totally okay. the problem is we've heard the past year nobody was meeting with russians. and again and again and again and again and again we find out there's were more meetings and even george papadopoulos lied about his contacts when approached by the fbi. so it's not like we know there's a "there" there. we just know every time somebody is asked about it the story is changing. >> the fundamental question. thank you for joining me. coming up next, we are going to dig into the gop tax plan that calls for doing away with the estate tax, which the president call as burden on americans. the thing is, killing the so-called death tax benefits only the wealthiest of the wealthy. surprise, surprise. happening right now in houston, looking at the victory parade for the world championship houston astros celebrating the team's first ever world series title. the team dedicated their enterprises. so begin to make the merits whether or not we should tax someone's assets after death, i suspect my next guest will say we shouldn't do it anyway, but the president says this effects millions and millions of americans. it doesn't. 5,500 in 2017. 600 of which are farms and businesses, 80 are family businesses. don't pretend it affects anyone other than a small group of the wealthiest americans in the united states. two out of every 1,000. the estate tax is one small portion of the 400-plus-page bill. congressional republicans are hope it will be their first major legislative victory during president trump's first year in office, but first i need to actually agree on the aspects of the plan. they need to. to bring unique perspective on this issue, here's the guy we want to talk to grover norquist. president and founder of americans for tax reform, and i would say the most prominent and a confiscate everything over -- >> the problem with the all miv minimum tax. >> 100%? >> not that it existed, but it kept grabbing lower and lower income americans? >> no. it's deliberately expanded when people want to do it. you suggest it only affects the people that pay it. the largest lobby in washington, d.c., i'm in washington, d.c., i look out the window and see the life insurance company is lobbyists. who has killed and weakened every effort to get rid of the death tax? the life insurance lobby. why? because the kennedys insure around the death tax. if you buy hundreds of millions of dollars of life insurance, and you die, you get the $100 on the other side tax-free. who gets rich? life insurance companies. >> you won't argue about the lobbyist about to sink their teeth in this bim and go everywhere? we don't agree on a ton on taxes but agree on that. a lot of the nonsense in the tax code is because of lobbyists. that said -- >> no. but many, many people are affected by the death tax, because not only does the tax foundation say it's abouts 150,000 job loss to have the death tax in, people that insure around the misallocations of resources, the tax foundation conservatives group that does calculations on what taxes do argues that it actually reduces total revenue of the government. a good thing, but it does so by contracting economic growth. >> i want to latch on to something you just said about jobs. >> sure. >> you had an op-ed, that i'm putting up on the screen. you say the republican tax bill is an amazingly powerful job creation measure. you talked about the estate tax creating jobs. the president -- >> killing it. >> right. but the, sorry. the removal of the estate tax created jobs. and the president keeps talking about this is a jobs act. talk to me about this. where do the jobs come from? >> well, two things. we're now competing internationally with a 35% business tax on american companies. socialist china -- >> okay. it's 18.6%, an effective rate. not 35%. >> the effective rate doesn't matter. the marginal rate matters. you can drown walking across a river with an average depth of a foot. what matters is, the margin. on the next dollar earned, how much do you keep? how much gets taken away? all decisions are made on the margin. they even taught me that at harvard, for crying out loud. the margin matters. not the average. >> so let's keep on going down this road. if the margin matters, we have a situation in the united states where corporate profitability is at record high. stock prices at record highs. capital basically free and available to companies. what will they do with it? you say matters, matters to whom? shareholders? >> two things. no. of course, the person who wins the most out of the tax reform and tax reduction republicans put forward is the person who didn't have a job who got one. talking about the unemployment rate going down. one of the reason the unemployment rate is down, people have been leaving the workforce. the labor force participation rate fell last no. >> not because of corporate tax policy at all. >> several reasons. one is that people don't think their jobs that are matched for them. yes, you do have government programs that make it difficult for some people to get certain jobs. but we have a very important project, and that is, we need to become more competitive internationally. there are 5 million americans who work overseas. we double tax those people. many more earn ins should be working overseas, they count at american jobs. i wish trump would talk about that. he's talking about american jobs you have to live, be in the country to have an american job. if you're an american working in london, that's an american job. >> hearing this and don't disagree. >> good. >> i still don't understand how the corporate tax cut either puts the $4,000 in everyone's pocket or creates jobs. you've asked people to sign pledges. we've talked many times about the holistic nature of tax cuts. for people to live in high-tax states, the -- inability to duct the state and local taxes off your federal taxes is going to mean for middle class workers in california, in connecticut, in new york and new jersey, for many of them a net increase in their taxes. why do you support that? >> first of all, it won't for many of them deal with middle income people having tax increases. you will have people paying a 13% rate, top rate in california, will have to go to the governor of california and tell him to stop being an incompetent idiot and get that rate down to a normal level. >> telling you it's a tax increase is my point. not because we can't do -- >> middle income people in california do not pay 13%. that's what it is in the silicon valley thing. >> it's offset doesn't make up for me. you agree -- some people in, including ohio, in connecticut, in new york, in new jersey and california, who will pay more as a result of getting rid of the state and local tax deduction? >> no. two things. one, getting rid of the income tax deduction, a factor for higher income people and getting rid of the death tax, ep hads out. >> that will irver, ever, ever affect the middle class person. >> you're switching. talked about the high rates of income taxes. hit higher income people in connecticut and new jersey. >> you pay state tax. state income tax. not only the rich pay it. >> right. in terms of its a percentage -- first of all, the first $24,000, if you're a married couple, the first $24,000 of your income is tax-free. you don't have to itemize deductions which is your income tax, property taxes and things like that, and/or contributions to churches. >> and that's very little money. for middle class people they generally earn more than $25,000. it may become useful for them -- >> they don't have that much and only 5% of americans will itemize. >> you can drown in a river that's an average of two inches deep. the point, the only 5% a lot live in new york, in new jersey, live in connecticut, live in california. >> the highest income 5%, which are, are you now making that the middle class? they itemize and have to take more than the $24,000 in deductions. the 94% of americans the conversation doesn't apply that we're having. >> it's actually not just -- >> $10,000, you're able to deduct for your property taxes, just not -- >> not a property owner that doesn't apply to you. >> right. >> rich people all own property. right? >> no. this is, this is an argument you made getting rid of the deductibility of property taxes and income taxes would be a problem for middle income people. i pointed out to you -- >> i've giving you -- i get that. cool. >> thank you. that's why the -- this measure will pass the house and the senate without a problem. because people are looking at their actual districts and who lives in them and finding overall this is a significant tax reduction for their citizens. >> you know a lot of new jersey and new york politicians are not going with that. right? their republicans in these two states not agreeing to support this bill. >> watch when they vote, in the house. the reason why the 10,000 was added was to make sure that people in upstate new york and in the suburbs of connecticut and new jersey, that we will get their vote. we have every single republican vote in california because they knew that was coming already. the challenge, the problem you're trying to spin out is actually been solved already. because the republicans are actually working to get this bill passed. >> working to. a work in progress. we'll see where it goes. grover, good to see you, thanks for joining me. president of americans for tax reform, perhaps most prominent fear s and loved tax advocate the country. >> thank you. and up next, former dnc donna brazill's book bringing a largely feud into the public's eye. strong stuff. saying the clinton camp took control of the democratic national committee during the primaries. >> do you think what we're learning from donna brazill's book suggests the campaign that what the democratic national committee did meant that this election was rigged? >> i this it was. >> do you a glee wigree with th it was rigged? >> yes. accused of obstructing justice to theat the fbinuclear war, and of violating the constitution by taking money from foreign governments and threatening to shut down news organizations that report the truth. if that isn't a case for impeaching and removing a dangerous president, then what has our government become? i'm tom steyer, and like you, i'm a citizen who knows it's up to us to do something. it's why i'm funding this effort to raise our voices together and demand that elected officials take a stand on impeachment. a republican congress once impeached a president for far less. yet today people in congress and his own administration know that this president is a clear and present danger who's mentally unstable and armed with nuclear weapons. and they do nothing. join us and tell your member of congress that they have a moral responsibility to stop doing what's political and start doing what's right. our country depends on it. the deep discord inside the democratic party continues to surface thanks to new revelations beaux the former interim chair of the dnc who wrote a book outlining's deep dysfunctions within the committee leading up to the 2016 election getting a lot of attention, specific allegations that hillary clinton's campaign had an extraordinary amount of control over the dnc. particularly its cash flow. well, before she won the nomination. here's how bernie sanders former campaign manager raeshgted. reacted. >> throughout the campaign we raised concerns about the role of the dnc and tipping the scales for hillary clinton's campaign and i think this validates what many of us already knew about what was happening. >> we should note, brazile admitted to providing information to clinton on a question ahead of the town hall with bernie sanders. as you might expect, president trump is all into this story. he's jumping all over it, tweeting about it. look at the tweets just from today alleging collusion, money laundering calling for the department of justice and fbi to investigate and bringing up favorite talking points about clinton including her e-mails and her e-mail server. for more on this i want to bring in charles homens, politics editor for "new york times" magazine. charles, good to talk to you. what do you make of this whole thing? donna brazile will sell a lot of books because of it and donald trump is shilling for her at this point telling everyone they've got to read it to find how the nomination was stolen from bernie sanders. overstated or real? >> it really speaks to the degree to which so many of the arguments that divided the democrats in 2016 are really not passed. many people in the party if you talk to them who would love to pass this and many think these are essential arguments to the settled now. >> you wrote earlier this month about political parties. a story called "are politicians responsible for their base or the other way around," the decline meant the decline of big moderating force that they had. they used to be able to control the fringes, but now the fringes can raise money without the party, and that means the party matters less? >> yeah. it's introduced really interesting dynamics. certainly there were democrats, if you spoke to them early this year, when there was the race between tom perez and keith elson for the dnc chair saying, look, it doesn't matter that much who runs the dnc. this isn't the thing worth dividing the party over at this point. sat the same time, a huge amount of symbolic importance about what it signals about direction of the party to have one or the other in the dnc chair. >> not an academic division or discussion. bernie sanders former campaign manager said that if things had gone differently, the outcome would have been very different. let's listen. >> bernie won the democratic nomination he would be in the white house and donald trump would not. >> what do you think of that? >> i think it's a counterfactual that's hard to reckon with one way or the other. it's really hard to say. there are i don't controlled experiments in politics g. point. what does the democratic party do at this point? even without donna brazile's book, they've been bearing dirty laundry, playing out in public, some say it's a necessary thing when you lose as badly as they've been doing in terms of state races and across the country in congress over the last couple of years. what do they do? >> you know, they have to figure that out for themselves. one thing that's strikes we are as far as we are into the trump presidency and there still is really palpable disagreement among democrats as to how you run against that, or if you run against that in 2018. certainly withere are people wh think it's cut and dry and given how far trump stands out of the spectrum of what democrats tend to believe that it should be easy to run against him and then there are people still sort of trying to sort out what it meant that all of these, that the meaningful number of voters defected to trump from the democratic party in 2016. and are, you know, advocating a safer course in which you sort of pretend he's not there. this is really an unsettled argument at this point within the party. >> charles good to talk to you. thanks for joining us. a politics editor at "new york times" magazine. hey, for 11 minutes yesterday some americans got their wish. the president was no longer on twitter. his account was deactivated. you couldn't find it. the "new york times" now reports it was actually a contractor for twitter who took trump's account down and report new safeguards are implemented to prevent this from happening again. twitter isn't commenting on that report. first said it was inadvertent, humanary and revealed a customer employee did it on their last day. not clear the president knew his account was down for 11 minutes, once back up and running, he tweeted, mentioned the rogue employee and said, "the word must finally be getting out and having an impact." coming up, steve bannon's continuing communications with the president, illegal. after the break, joined by someone who says if they're talking about russia, they're breaking the law. a tiny sword? bread...breadstick? a matchstick! a lamppost! coin slot! no? uhhh... 10 seconds. a stick! a walking stick! eiffel tower, mount kilimanjaro! 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doctor about victoza®. this job that they created to do online grocery grocery. and to have that one-on-one experience with the customers, he's meant for it. i'm joey gabe, personal shopper for walmart and i love to see a smile on my customer's face. accused of obstructing justice to theat the fbinuclear war, and of violating the constitution by taking money from foreign governments and threatening to shut down news organizations that report the truth. if that isn't a case for impeaching and removing a dangerous president, then what has our government become? i'm tom steyer, and like you, i'm a citizen who knows it's up to us to do something. it's why i'm funding this effort to raise our voices together and demand that elected officials take a stand on impeachment. a republican congress once impeached a president for far less. yet today people in congress and his own administration know that this president is a clear and present danger who's mentally unstable and armed with nuclear weapons. and they do nothing. join us and tell your member of congress that they have a moral responsibility to stop doing what's political and start doing what's right. our country depends on it. you might have noticed but steve bannon is not conflict shy. the former senior house adviser vowed war against establishment republicans. anyone who opposes trump and more importantly the special counsel in the russia investigation robert mueller. political reports bannon has been pushing president trump to apply pressure against mueller raising questions over whether or not those conversations are legal. joining me, co-authors and chief white house ethics lawyer for president george h.w. bush so he knows a few about these things. richard, what potentially about steve bannon talking to donald trump about russia and mueller would be illegal? >> they are conflict of issues statute. 18 united states code 207 prohibits a former senior official from representing back to the united states government, an agency they worked at. here it would be the white house with intent to influence the white house decisions on any matter for a period of one to two years, depending on his seniority and he was senior enough, it would probably be two years, and that's a criminal statute. he may not represent back to the white house, including to the president, with intend to influence on behalf of another person, and that includes anyone who was a subject of this investigation or is involved in the trump campaign or breitbart news. and it is abundantly clear this is a coordinated effort by those who are subject to this criminal investigation to derail the investigation and try to get robert mueller fired or otherwise hamper the investigation, and get the white house to do that. so far, donald trump has resisted that advice, although he's tweeted a lot about it, and steve bannon, if he is lobbying back to the president with intent to influence those decisions on behalf of other people, he would be violating the law. furthermore, if he participated in this particular party matter when at the white house, for example, advising on whether to fire the fbi director james comey that would be a separate violation of the same statute, which provides for a lifetime ban on ever representing back to the government on the same particular party matter that you participated in personally and substantially. put that all on top of obstruction of justice, what this is all about and i don't think he ought to be getting anywhere near>> it bottom line is, all of this should be known to the people who advise the president on ethics, but as we've known since the beginning, it's not the most robust part of the white house operation. >> i don't think anybody's advising the president on ethics. at least from what i've heard. they had somebody who said he was ath ethics lawyer fire off the letter to the government of ethics saying the oeg rules don't apply to the white house staff are and they've had a lot of problems over there. they've got to understand that for a senior person to leave the white house and they'd be lobbying back to the white house within months of their departure, if that is happening, that could be a serious violation of the conflict of interest statute. i don't know exactly what these telephone calls are. they're all being reported to the media. i'm not listening in on them, but from what i'm hearing in the media, what steve bannon is doing is -- is highly inappropriate and potentially illegal. >> richard, thank you for following up on this. richard painter, former chief white house ethics lawyer under president george w. bush. all right. isis claimed responsible for tuesday's attack in lower manhattan after days of silence. the terror group called the 29-year-old uzbek national a soldier of the caliphate but didn't offer evidence to back it up. this morning the president vowed action against isis. >> every time we're attacked from this point forward, and it took place yesterday, we are hitting them ten times harder. so when we have an animal doing an attack like he did the other day on the west side of manhattan, we are hitting them ten times harder. they claimed him as a soldier. good luck. every time they hit us, we know it's isis, we hit them like you folks won't believe. >> trump is also calling for the death penalty for sayfullo saipov. that's up to attorney general jeff sessions and the department of justice. i'm joined by a columnist and written on terrorism and radicalization. good to see you. we're getting more sophisticated people are inspired but not in any contact with isis even digitally. isis likes to take credit when certain things meet their standards, in the end, suggesting every time there's an attack here every time we hit them ten times haraldser, the "them" is not the same as the here? >> and are you actually hitting isis fighter in iraq? under donald trump's number of civilians killed by u.s. air strikes in syria and iraq doubled over 2016. that only helps isis after all. look at the statement that the federal officials put out, this guy saipov, one of the reasons he decided to join up with isis, because he heard baghdadi calling for revenge for killing iraqis. the cycle of violence trump wants to extend doesn't help anyone. oh, they hit us, we hit them, and they hit us again and doing it 16 years and doesn't make anyone sager. >> tsafer. >> and came in under normal means, or were born here. it does seem that the approach to dealing with radicalization of people in the united states needs to be differ than the one the president is espousing? >> of course. from the beginning trump decided to conflict terrorism with immigration. back to december 2015, when he first unveiled that horrific muslim ban, remember, wanted to ban all muslims. now we're lucky. only wants to ban six islamic countries. that was after san bernardino, one of the two attackers was an american-born, native-born american citizen. and indicted in the u.s. over the last, two, three years are american citizens. 60% are native born american citizens, not immigrants of any kind and, in fact, 51% are recent converts to islam. probably aren't even brown skin to begin with. to make this a brown immigrant foreign problem is absurd. saipov is an exception to the rule and comes from uzbekistan. going on about iran, syria and the uzbekistan isn't even in the middle east. >> and keep resting on who the enemies are, where we should be looking for the danger, we're missing the point. >> it's not just lazy, it's worse than lazy. it's dangerous. because these people claim to be keeping us safe. as we've seen over the years, the om thing the war or tear hear given us is more war and more terror. trump wants to double down on the worst aspects of the war on terror launch by george w. bush. said in the clip, we're going to hit them harder. that's what isis wants. isis now is on the defensive. now is the time to say, you know what? actually, you know, whatever you think of the air war and didn't has side effects, leads to all sorts of blowback, but isis lost i think 90% of its territory, 60,000 fighters, 130 commanders. for them attacks like this are great. a great publicity. a way to show they can retaliate, take revenge and stay relevant. they want relevance and publicity more than anything else in the world and have a president only too happy to give it to them. >> thank you for joining us. columnist for the intercept presenter on al jazeera english. and feeling pressure on most of the u.s. virgin islands still without power after six weeks, pressing congress for more help. one, a congresswoman, joins me next. edge university counts on centurylink to keep their global campus connected. and why a pro football team chose us to deliver fiber-enabled broadband to more than 65,000 fans. and why a leading car brand counts on us to keep their dealer network streamlined and nimble. 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meant to carry his story". representatives from the u.s. virgin islands are pleading with congress for more help to recover from hurricane maria. about 70% of the territory's 107,000 residents are still without power more than a month after the storm made landfall. the islands are also desperate for tourists who normally keep its economy afloat. democratic representative stacey plaska said attracting tourists this year will be nearly impossible with resorts closed, jobs are scarce, plus gasoline generators and food are more expensive than they are on the mainland of the united states. virgin islands congressman stacey plaska joins me. you and i talked about this before. if you look at the statistics of the u.s. virgin islands, it's some very high percentage dependent on tourism. it's more than the percentage you'd think because there are entire businesses that you wouldn't think are connected with the tourist industry, service industries and things like that, that only exist because there's a tourist industry. so it's probably upward of 90s% of the island depends on robust tourism. >> well, at this point, we have about 50% of our gdp is based on tourism which is a significant number for an island to base its economy on. the disposal income of other people. because of the hurricanes and the loss of many of our resorts, that, of course, is going to be compromised. airlift has not been the same as well as the cruise ships even coming into port. so we're really going to have to struggle in this next year and a half. many of the resorts have said it's going to take about two years to rebuild. and so this is an opportunity for us to re-create ourselves and to rethink what we're going to really need the support of congress to do that. >> what's the chicken and what's the egg here because you need the tourism to come back but the infrastructure has been ruined to the point it's not everybody's obvious choice to go to the virgin islands until they've heard from enough people that it's mostly up and running. >> right. a lot -- when you talk about chicken and the egg, part of the chicken and the egg is the fact that committees like transportation and infrastructure took away a lot of the money out of the virgin islands and puerto rico and removed us from the formulas like the states were and really gave us inadequate funding to support the infrastructure which contributed to the amount of devastation on the island. so while we're going to continue to need to rebuild, people on the island, we need to begin thinking about other industries. i talked to members of congress about fixing the tax law which they decimated in 2004 and this is a huge opportunity for us to recoup the losses we have in the changes in the 2004 jobs act which took away a lot of our knowledge-based businesses. i'm sure you're aware of what happened in puerto rico with the pharmaceuticals and others. that's one of the reasons that i came back home in the early 2000s was because of the tax laws that were there that allowed virgin islanders to come back home and to some of the financial services and knowledge-based businesses. so i'm asking congress to correct what they did previously so that we can boost those industries, haas well as begin working on tourism as well. >> do you feel you got support in congress for this? >> well, listen, i think that members are listening right now. i talked with them about the stafford act, which is where a lot of the relief money is coming out of. that right now the bill says and the law says that you rebuild as was. and that's just going to put us back in a position that the next hurricane where we're going to have those infrastructure decimated again. a lot of republican members realize that's not fiscally responsible and that the stafford act needs to be amended to build as should be, which will make us much more resilient, harden some of our utilities as well so we can withstand the next hurricane to come because climate change is real and it's going to happen again. >> and mitigating it on the front end when building is a lot cheaper than mfixing it on the back end. we're going to stay with you and the people of the virgin islands as this rebuild continues. congressman stacey palaskett, thank you. yesterday we told you about operation agua supplying puerto ricans with their own water purification systems. it's being delivered for about $30 a piece and they are making a big difference. and i want to thank you because since our segment aired yesterday, operation agua has raised an additional $135,000. this all goes toward providing puerto ricans with clean water. if you want to help, visit this website, aft excellent org/operation-agua. we'll be right back. xarelto® is selective, targeting just one critical factor interacting with less of your body's natural blood-clotting function. for afib patients well-managed on warfarin, there is limited information on how xarelto® compares in reducing the risk of 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