Im fredricka whitfield. And we begin this hour with Tropical Storm ophelia. Just hours after making land fall in north carolina, heavy rain, coastal flooding, and high winds, are hitting much of the Eastern Seaboard today. North carolina, maryland, and var are all under a State Of Emergency right now. And the storm is already knocked out power to more than 50,000 homes. And businesses. With those outages expected to grow. Allison chinchar is Tracking Ophelia from the cnn Weather Center and Polo Sandoval is in pelican island, new jersey, watching the impact and feeling it there. Lets begin with you, allison. The National Hurricane center issued a new advisory moments ago. The biggest change that we noted is the sustained winds have calmed down ever so slightly, dropping down now to 50 miles an hour. Still gusting up to 65. Look at the scope of this storm. You have so many of these Outer Rain Bands far away from that center point. And the center is still over north carolina, and you have
privateers, pirates with permission from the russian government? this is an important piece because essentially we ve been parsing out attribution. for each one of these things that happens. sometimes you ll hear this was the russian intelligence service, and sometimes you ll hear like over the july 4th weekend, this is our evil, a group that is a transnational organization that seems to be based in russia. i m here to tell you these are distinctions without a difference. in other words, because it s all coming from russia and russia permits this to happen, and the code that they use for their malware actually makes it certain that it will never attack a russian target, you can bet that putin is permitting this. this is essentially state sanctioned, state-approved cyber terrorism. we shouldn t care whether it s criminals or putin s government. they are now one and the same. russia also targeted the republican national convention but failed to recover data. how often are these hacke
cyber perspective? are we ready for it possibility of waking up one morning and realizing that we can t use the atm? or our supermarkets can t open their registers or we can t use our credit cards. that s the discussion that s going on right now at the national security council. what do we do and what happens if we do it. it s incredibly complicated. the latest ransomware was programmed not to infect russian computers and spare the kremlin s allies. are these groups essentially privateers with permission from the russian government? this is an important piece because essentially we ve been parsing out attribution. we heard over the july 4th weekend this is our evil, a group that is a transnational organization that seems to be based in rationale u. i m here to tell you these are distinctions without a difference. in other words, because it s all coming from russia and russia permits this to happen, and the
accus accuser, and why he says democrats are the ones that want to keep this country divided. parsing out fact from fiction in the president s claims, plus republican senator lankford and senator shaheen join the conversation. morning joe is just moments away. (music throughout) but one blows them all out of the water. hydro boost from neutrogena®. with hyaluronic acid to plump skin cells so it bounces back. neutrogena®
this deep interest in parsing out exactly and unpacking everything that has happened and certainly there is a suspicion that there was some signaling to the russians that, wink, wink, we ll get this right, we ll have a special relationship even before the american people gave them the mandate to conduct. candidate trump at the microphone at his rally publicly asked russia to please find hillary clinton s e-mails and releasthem. right, and the sessions meeting with the russian ambassador in washington has been the focus of this story so far but he met with him in cleveland when he went there by his own admission. at the convention? at the republican convention. he said he was not going there as a senator, he paid for it through campaign funds, his travel and accommodations. he was there as a representative of the trump campaign, meeting with the russian ambassador in cleveland.