Meet the Press NOW — July 8

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policy and a major show of support for Ukraine and new tariff whiplash. President Trump says his Aug. 1 deadline isn't 100% firm, but then it says no extensions will be granted, throwing trade negotiations and the global economy into a fresh state of uncertainty. Welcome to MEET THE PRESS now.

I'm Kelly o' Donnell in Washington and we begin again today with the very latest out of Texas, where we're waiting an update and a press conference from Governor Greg Abbott and state officials on last week's catastrophic flooding. We'll bring it to you as soon as it begins. Now, of course, that comes as the death toll is rising and hope for survivors is fading as crews continue the frantic search for victims. The search and rescue operations happening as officials face intensifying scrutiny about their disaster preparedness leading up to the storm and their emergency response efforts in those crucial final moments before the worst of the flooding.

At a news conference earlier today, Kerr County Sheriff said his priority is bringing people home. And that happened as reporters pressed him and the county's emergency alert system. I think that the community is asking these questions. What happened?

When did happen? Was the emergency manager awake at the time? Did they push a button to issue an emergency alert? Sir, it's not that easy.

You just push a button, okay? It's a lot more than that. And we told you several times, I can't tell you this time, okay, we understand you have many questions. We understand that.

But right now this team up here is focused on bringing people home. That's our focus. All those questions will be answered. But the priority right now is bringing people home.

We're seeing them out there running and sweating and grinding it out day after day. But their community is asking these questions and we will have, we will get answers. Right now, all of our resources are focused. Who is, who was in charge of the emergency operation center at the time that we getting any question?

Tensions on display. The death toll has now risen to 107, the majority of those in Kurt county. Authorities say that five girls from camp missed it and one counselor are still unaccounted for. At least 30 children are among the dead and no one has been rescued alive since Friday.

Meanwhile, at the White House today, President Trump confirming that he plans to travel to Texas to assess the damage personally Friday, the president announcing the trip during a Cabinet meeting as he praised the federal response to the situation and spoke about the historic scale of the flesh flooding. There's never been a wave like this outside of the breaking of a dam. Yes, this was almost a wave that was ended up being 30ft high, more actually now with the dam. You can understand that, but this approached almost with that speed.

When you see a dam break, it's not a pretty sight. It wipes out everything. This is the kind of thing that built up so fast, and it's happened two or three times before over the years, but not to this extent. NBC's Aaron Gilchrist joins us now from Kerrville, Texas.

And also with me as NBC News senior White House correspondent Kate Gutierrez. Let me start with you, Aaron. How long do you expect from the people you're talking to on the ground for rescue operations to continue before they shift fully into recovery? Kelly, that's the distinction that we often hear in natural disasters, rescue versus recovery.

And that's not really a distinction that officials here have been trying to make. They said that they're engaged in rescue and recover operations as part of their search effort here. The reality is that we learned this from the sheriff here in Kerr county earlier today during that briefing. They haven't found anyone alive here in Kerr county since, since Friday, since in the hours right after the flooding happened here.

And we know that they have had, we'll say, success in, in recovering people who were caught up in the flooding here and have been trapped for potentially under debris in some, in so many instances. But to this point, they've not rescued anyone who is is still alive. And so I think that language may stay the way it is for some time because they're trying to operate with some level of hope. But again, the reality is setting in for first responders who are out here doing all of the work, trying to get into the debris piles that exist, all of them down the Guadalupe riverbanks for miles and miles throughout this county and in other places as well.

There are also helic that are still being flown overhead as crews are searching from the air. There are people, as we said, on the ground, on foot, and in boats as well, all engaged in the same effort here to locate so many people who are still missing. And quite frankly, here in Kerr county, they've not been able to tell us exactly how many people are missing. This was a holiday weekend.

People would come in from out of town with their RVs. They were checked into cabins. They would have had tents along the river in Silk Valley, the effort is to just keep looking until there is no one left to be found. I think that's a fair assessment to make, is this search for effort will continue, likely for weeks, and it makes sense to want to maintain hope for people there in those communities.

Are you hearing plans in the works to build or improve on an emergency alert system? Again, I know they are still very much in the sort of first phase of this, but is that being talked about, given the fact that flash flooding has been such an important part of the local sort of threat level? Yes, it is. It's something that we've heard just everyday citizens talking about.

Obviously, it's a question we've been putting to lawmakers here in Texas, both at the federal level, at the state level, and at the local level, for that matter. We know that this is an area that's been called flash flood alley by the folks who live here. They know that this river is prone to some level of flooding. Nothing like what we saw on the 4th of July here.

And so people, the dice, folks who said, you know, yeah, we see water come up. We see water come into people's properties. Sometimes it gets a little muddy sometimes. Nobody had an expectation, though, that they would have water up to the ceiling or higher in some cases for places that were really close to the river's edge.

And so there are conversations now about why wasn't there a siren system, for example, here in Kerrville, for example. There are other places, other cities in this area that do have sirens of some sort. Here in Kerrville, there aren't any. And so there are conversations what it would take to put those things in place.

Obviously, the questions being asked, would that have been enough if those sirens had gone off right after that most significant warning came out for the National Weather service at about 1 o' clock in the morning on Friday? Those are all things that are part of the after action assessments and planning for the future and something that we understand will be talked about very likely in a special session of the state legislature that's been called here in Texas that was already scheduled. But Governor Habit said while he was surveying some of the damage, he flew over here just a little while ago and said that emergency funding for these communities that could include money for different alert systems is something that is going to be a part of the special session that happens here a little bit later this month, Kelly, and we expect to hear some of that from the governor as we are awaiting a news conference. Of course, we'll bring that to viewers when it happens.

Gabe, let me turn to you. What federal resources have been devoted to assisting Texas, and we know that obviously there's always a big component of available help personnel and equipment and so forth. What are you hearing about how the federal government is trying to step in here? Well, Kelly, today Homeland Security Kristi Noem addressed this as he mentioned in his Cabinet meeting with the president here at the White House.

She praised the federal response, saying that the federal government was working in tandem with local and state officials to try and be part of this response. Now, the Coast Guard, as it usually does during these types of disasters, had been involved with rescue operations over the weekend. Certainly FEMA also activated once President Trump signed a major disaster declaration, setting aside funding to help the residents of Texas. But Secretary Noem making it a point to say that it is working with the state of Texas and local officials in order to get this done.

And you raise the issue of fema. Of course, that has been something President Trump has talked about, making significant changes to how that federal agency would work, winding it down, shifting a lot of responsibilities to states. Texas, of course, is the state that encounters many issues with large scale disasters. Are we hearing anything new from the White House on that approach, how they would handle FEMA going forward?

You know, Kelly, it's interesting over the last couple days, the White House has been very reluctant to talk about this issue specifically. Previously, as he alluded to the president and said that he thinks that states should wean off of fema. White House Press Secretary Caroline Webbing yesterday, when she was asked about this, she kind of sidestepped the question. The president himself when he was asked about this on Sunday also didn't give a straight answer whether he believed that FEMA should be done away with.

It now appears right now that the administration still believes that FEMA in its previous form needs to be more streamlined. Secretary Noem made a point of saying that today trying to cut out the bureaucracy here, but has been unclear about what a post FEMA future would look like or if the agency were dismantled and more resources given to the states. There's still a lot of unanswered questions about how exactly that will look, especially with hurricane season getting in the way. But still, it does appear that the administration at some point plans to shift more the responsibility onto the state's guy.

And the president did acknowledge that he wants to see some of this for himself, expecting that is likely for Friday. Do we get a sense of what he might hope to achieve? I presume meeting with some officials and trying to get sense of things? Well, as you know, Kelly, this is when the president has to fulfill his role as consoler in chief.

And this is something that, you know, he planned. He said that he wanted to go even sooner. But of course, in these types of situations, presidents often wait in order for the initial phase of the recovery and the response to be done with so as not to interfere with those operations. A huge security detail the president has to travel with.

But today he did reaffirm that he plans to travel to Central Texas along with first Lady Millennial Trump on Friday. And maybe we can press in on those FEMA questions at that time as well. Thank you. Gay.

Appreciate your time. You're reporting today. And joining me now is Illinois Democratic Congressman and former meteorologist Eric Sorenson. You certainly bring skills to this and understanding of what can be such a complex situation with weather.

We appreciate getting your insight on this. As you know, the governor of Texas may have a news conference at any moment. So bear with me if we have to step away. But let's start with your knowledge about this.

You have worked along with Texas Congressman Moran trying to introduce a bipartisan bill that would strengthen weather monitoring systems and especially rural areas. Do you believe that there is now a more urgent call for that? And do you think that there are some lessons from this incident that could help to inform how you approach this legislation? Kelly's gonna be with you.

I think those are the logical next steps and those are the steps that I want to hear from Gutter Abbott, you know, as he gives this press conference. I want to know now that there has to be something that his learned here. You know, in this river system we've had significant floods in 1978 and 2002 and 2025. But the problem, Kelly, is these are about a generation apart.

And so that means people will have forgotten what happened before. You know, and I recollect back to a significant tornado that happened in the delved here, Illinois in 1967. Right. A school was getting out.

And that led us to understand, wait a minute, we should have tornado drills that prepared us in schools. We have to learn something from the tragedies that we see. And so we go forward. We're not going to repeat the bad history.

There, of course, are many questions that are coming now in building about who knew what, when, who was responsible, because you have the meteorological background. Can you help us to understand it is to know what this threat actually was in real time. It was a holiday weekend. It was very late at night.

Do you have a sense of how many of those answers are obtainable at this point? Right. So this was different than, for instance, Houston, which gets flooded by Hurricane Ike. We knew this area, low pressure as it was exiting out of the Rio Grande valley could produce 5, 10, 15 inches of rain.

And the meteorologists at the National Weather Service are heroes. The meteorologists at local broadcast media are heroes because they were getting that information out in real time leading up to the event. The problem was the struck in the middle of the night. What happened between the 1:15am where the flash flood emergency came out and the 4am when the water rose?

Was there a chance that we could have gotten, especially these young girls, out of harm's way? Those are the things that I want to find answers to. And we need to make sure that we do that from Capitol Hill in a bipartisan way, where I'm working with Congressman Moran of Northeast Texas and Mike Flood in Nebraska to make sure that we're solidifying our support for the National Weather Service. But then, not only that, we have to invest in the National Weather Service.

We have to get President Trump to understand that investing in the National Weather Service, making sure we have more accurate weather models, could maybe make these types of disasters a thing of the past. The White House has been, and the administration more broadly have been very defensive about the fact that there were enough personnel with the National Weather Service and FEMA on duty and so forth at the time when these forecasts needed to be tweaked and updated and when alerts would go out. Of course, it's a federal and local response. Do you have any concerns that some of the cuts to the federal employee roster at these agencies, agencies made A difference could have made a difference or would affect just how they organize themselves.

Now, from what we know at the National Weather Service office in New Braunfels, Texas is they did have enough people sitting at the warning desk, at the decision making desks to do everything that they could. Now that cannot be said at every National Weather Service office. We've got short staffing almost through the entire enterprise. We need to take care of that.

That's what Congressman Mike Flood and I, that's what we want to do in Congress with this bill. But then also going forward, we need to make sure that there is a commitment from the administration that the National Weather Service is just that. It is a service. We, we take it for granted that our phones are going to go off in the middle of the night in the 20th warning or the flash flood warning is issue.

But we need to know when that happens that there's going to be a way for us to escape. And so we are going to have to continue to work on the social science to make sure that the communication of meteorology gets better. Because it can't just be that we're issuing weather alert days and then nothing happens. You know, this was a disaster like we haven't seen in a generation.

And people should have known that. I can imagine that on a holiday weekend, especially when you've got nine, ten year old girls at camp, they probably don't have phones right at their bedside there. People are on vacation. They're maybe getting away from being connected in the same way we would be.

So that's raised the issue of sirens. And in your former life before Congress, where you were actively working and forecasting and communicating to your community about dangers that could come, there's been this notion of is it a cry wolf risk if you have a siren that goes off? Concerns about would that scare people? Where do you come down on the sort of the balance between trying to give people information and also not scaring the community?

Right. Well, most counties in my congressional district and in my former coverage area as a meteorologist, we have tornado sirens in my woods in western Illinois. These happen very frequently. They get tested every Tuesday, the first Tuesday of the month at 10am Kids understand what it means.

You go inside when you hear them. But if we were to strategically place these sirens down the river valley so that you could hear, almost hear them coming, understanding that it's a different tone, that the tone could say seek higher ground. Now, telling people what to do, it's more than a siren. If we could invest in that to provide that safety for people in what we know is flash flood alley.

We know the Guadalupe river has flash floods greater than almost any other river in the country. But we're also going to need the efforts of Congressman Chip Roy, who doesn't believe in spending money as we know he wants to curtail any spending. This is an opportunity for him to actually have the government work for the people of his district. And I look forward once I get back to Washington to have a conversation.

Exactly. And that conversation will be important. And you obviously have some very difficult real world circumstances to use to make your case for this legislation. I thank you for your time and your expertise on this.

And we especially with these weather things. Let's have you back again because you can give us insights from both sides of that experience. We are, of course, still awaiting the press conference from the Texas governor and we will bring that to you when it begins. He's been doing a tour and getting some some insights from people on the ground.

And coming up, we'll also touch base with what's happening with President Trump as he lashes out of Vladimir Putin says the US Will in fact send more weapons to Ukraine. That's just days after his own Pentagon announced it was halting those shipments. Plus, we're expecting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu back at the White House. He's in Washington all week this hour.

And he will have another meeting with President Trump as he tries to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. So there developments to come. You're watching MEET THE PRESS now. Welcome back.

President Trump reaffirmed today that the US Will be sending more weapons to Ukraine to help defend it against Russia's ongoing assault. This is a notable reversal because an announcement out of the Pentagon just last week said that the administration would pause weapon shipments to Ukraine, citing concerns about the US Stockpiles getting too low. Now today during his cabinet meeting, President Trump dodged questions about what led to the policy reversal and expressed his growing frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A lot of people are dying and it should end.

And I don't know, we get a lot of thrown at us by Putin for you want to know the truth? It's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless who want to put defensive weapons because Putin is not, he's not treating human beings right killing too many people. So we're sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine and I approve them. So who are the pause last week?

I don't know where you tell me. And joining me now maybe you can answer that question is our NBC News Senior national security correspondent Courtney Cuby. That was an interesting thing because just out of the frame there, to the President's left, was the Defense Secretary. I would love to see his facial reaction in the moment.

What do we know about the flow of weapons? Did the pause actually take effect or is it restarted? Where are we right now? So there has been a pause.

It began around June 26th. That was ammunition that was supposed to be going into munitions, in some cases, things like Patriot interceptors that did go into effect. We heard from President Trump last night during the dinner with bbn, the Prime Minister of Israel. He said that he wanted to restart defensive weapons going in.

And we got a statement of the Pentagon saying just that at the President's order, they want to restart defensive weapons. But what we don't have is, is any information about whether that's actually occurring beyond that one statement and exactly what's going in. We know that Ukraine is in desperate need of these sorts of defensive weapons, specifically the Patriot interceptors. That's because in the last eight or 10 days, we have seen Russia unleash a massive barrage of missiles and drones, some of the biggest that we've seen throughout the entire course of this.

Warning the skies with this. Exactly. Hitting a lot of civilian targets. Hitting civilian targets, yes.

And threatening Ukraine in many different areas. But at this point, we don't have any kind of. Any kind of information that those Patriot interceptors are still flowing. Is there any clarity about what happened here?

What prompted this change? So we know that there has been an ongoing concern, even preceding the Trump administration, about some of the US Stockpiles, and specifically about things like the Patriot interceptors just not having enough. Exactly. Because the US has to maintain a certain stockpile.

That would mean that if in fact the US War or some ally was attacked, they would have enough to defend US Assets and allies around the world. There has been some dispute in recent years about exactly what that stockpile should look like. But as the Trump administration came in, Secretary Hegstat ordered this review that was looking at all munitions and other weapons as well, and how the US Was either selling them or giving them as aid to various countries. So as part of that review, the Secretary ordered this.

Now, but it's important to remember this isn't the first time that they have stopped aid flowing into Ukraine. So the big question is, what is the policy here? Has there been some sort of policy that says, whoa, whoa, whoa, every single one of these needs to be looked at versus the stockpile, and we need to have a case by case of literally every munition that goes, that goes in here. And do you get a sense that they can turn the switch back on quickly?

Yes, we know that some of these things are already forward based, some of as close as Poland when they were turned off. And he made a distinction, defensive, not offensive weapons. Exactly. And that's what leads us to believe that this would be at least the Patriot interceptors, if not some other things.

Thank you for your expertise. Appreciate it so much, Courtney. And we will now kind of shift into what we discussing there. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he's on a multi day visit to Washington.

Of course, you see him there on Capitol Hill with the House Speaker. And of course this is one of the ways that Netanyahu is able to try to get his message out. In just a few moments, he's expected back at the White House for the second time in as many days. And of course there you've got not only the president but you've got the Secretary of state slash national security advisor.

So there's a lot for him to do. Also the Middle east envoy Steve Witkoff signaled earlier today perhaps a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas could be on its way. Gaza is a tragic. It's a tragedy.

It's a tragedy and he wants to get it solved and I want to get it solved. And I think the other side wants to get it solved. We are hopeful that by the end of this week we will have an agreement that will bring us into a 60 day ceasefire there. 10 live hostages will be released, 9 deceased will be released.

We're meeting at the President's direction with all the hostage families to let them know. And we think that this will lead to a lasting peace in Gaza. And that is wick off there. This trip marks the first time face to face meetings between the two leaders, meaning Netanyahu and Trump have happened since the US Carried out that airstrike, a joint airstrike with Israel on Iran's nuclear facilities.

And up next, here we go again. President Trump again delays his tariff deadline to allow for more trade negotiations while vowing that this extension is really the last one. We'll get an update on where all of this tariff turmoil stands. And you're watching Meet the Pressure now.

Welcome back. This might sound familiar. Yet again, President Trump is delaying his tariff deadline, this time saying his so called reciprocal tariffs on countries will go into effect on August 1st unless they make a deal. And this comes as the President and his administration appear to be walking back a previous promise tied to the original 90 day extension of these tariffs that was back in April with the July 9 deadline.

And that they'd be able to make 90 trade deals in 90 days. Well, just first they pay and everybody pays. Everybody has to pay. And the incentive is that they have the right to deal with the United States.

If they don't want to, they don't have to pay, they don't have to deal. Here we have made some. We can make a lot more deal. It's just too time consuming.

It just makes it more complicated. And we can do things over the years. We're not hard line. But it's about time the United States of America started collecting money from countries that were ripping us off.

Yesterday, President Trump posted on social media a series of letters he says he's sending to world leaders informing them of new tariff rates if those countries don't negotiate new trade deals. The rates range from 25 to 40%. And joining me now is White House correspondent Vaughn Hilliard. And Vaughn will talk trade.

But just know Governor Rabbit appears to be getting closer to his news conference. So if we jump, you'll know why. President Trump is talking about something that we've heard before, moving the dates. Also sort of expressing a sentiment today that it's a lot of work to try to get this done.

Do you sense anything different this time with pushing back the deadline? I think that's a good question, Kelly. And to be fair, the Texas governor, I think we'll be having this conversation a lot before August 1st because this is now the third time that the president has effectively suspended these tariffs from going into effect. It was back in April when he first announced the sky high tariffs on essentially every country around the world.

And then after The S&P 500 dropped by more than 12% over the course of one week, ended up delaying the tariffs for 90 days. That deadline would be tomorrow, July 9, because yesterday he signed an executive order pushing them from going into effect until August 1st, even though just this afternoon at a cabinet meeting with his other secretaries, he denied changing the dates. But this is at a point where also he has suggested, you know, that he wanted those 90 days to be used to negotiate trade deals with other countries. His own trade advisor, Peter Navarro, had said that they potentially could have 90 deals in 90 days.

But only two frameworks of agreements have been struck over those 90 days. And I asked Navarro very specifically yesterday why those deals never came to fruition. He said it's because other countries drag their feet. But for the president, I think that is going to be a serious question.

As to how the markets will respond and how U.S. consumers would ultimately be impacted if in fact those tariffs that he is placing on 14 countries yesterday and Howard's commerce secretary suggested another nearly two dozen over the next 48 hours, how those tariffs will actually impact the American economy. And Vaughn, I'm going to have to end our conversation there as we turn to Texas and Governor Greg Abbott about 20 years ago, 21 years ago, been to the store every year for many years. I've seen these little campers since they were disobedient.

Them bigger than toddlers, young kids. I've seen them grow and mature to beautiful young men and women. Nothing is as heart wrenching. He's hearing the stories of what the girls around here, especially the girls at Camp mystic went through to see where they lived in one moment, where they disappeared the next moment or were gone forever a few moments after that.

I wanted these people to know, I want you all to know, the hearts of our fellow Texans are breaking every single day because of the people of this community and the surrounding area are going to through. There's nothing more important on our hearts and minds than the people of this community, especially those who are still lost. I told them what we were doing not just today, but what we are going to be doing for the days, weeks and months to come. This is what they needed to hear.

They need to know. Texas is in this with the people, the hill country right here. We are not leaving until this job is finished. The job right now, the primary job right now continues to be locating everybody who was affected by this flood.

There still remain those who are missing. We have to find every single person person who's missing and that's job number one. While we are doing that job supporting that, we also be conducting other business affecting the storm. We did several things in that regard today.

One is to get a better assessment about what exactly needed to be provided for the community. We took a flyover to get that assessment. I've been here for multiple times over the course of the past two decades, but multiple times in the course of just this one flooding episode. And I have a good feel on the ground of what is needed.

But when you're in the air, you get a fuller perspective of how widespread, how catastrophic the damage is and what must be done to fully address it. We were able to process the that better day today when we flew around and on that fly around today I had with me the speaker of the House, Dustin Burrows, who's going to speak after myself. I want to provide you with Some information, some of which is just now updated. First, the numbers that I have is that there are 94 fatalities, 94 fatalities associated with this fighting event in this area.

Separate from that in other fighting events in other parts of the state of Texas, there's another 15 fatalities for a total of 109. To put this into perspective, just in the current Kendall counties of alone, there are far more fatalities than there were in hurricane Harvey. That's how catastrophic this is. I also have some updated numbers on those who are missing.

First from camp missing. My information is those are missing is down to now five campers and one council. Five campers and one council are missing. In addition to that, there is a another child not associated with the camp who is missing.

So for Kerr county, that would be a total of seven who are missing. In other parts of the state, there are 12 who are missing. I have a new number. How so?

One thing we've been reaching out to the public about is to get better information about those who are not registered at a camp, those who are not registered at a hotel, those who may have been down here, who no one really had any accounting of. And through law enforcement agencies working together, they provided me this number. Just in the Kerr county area alone, there are 161 people who are known to be missing. And again, that comes from combined law force members.

161 known people who are missing. No lists. We will not stop until every missing person is accountable. No, this also there very likely could be more added to that list.

List. One way that we were able to expand the list of those who are missing is because family members, friends, neighbors, etc, begin calling in and reporting them as missing. What I want to do is once again provide a reminder to anybody watching this that if you have a friend, a family member, somebody that you think may be missing because of this form, we need you to call the number that I'm about to give you. It is 830-258-1111.

That's 830-258-1111. If you want to go to a website address, you can go to Kerrville missingps.texas.gov I'm going to repeat it twice more. That's Kerrville spelled K e R R V I L L e no space. Then the word missing M I s S I n g.

So kerbal [email protected] so you call that phone number, go to that website and provide the name and the best identification you can and the last known location of anybody that you think is missing. Know this. Also, if you make a prank call or provide false information, that's a crime. Do not provide false information because you're hindering our ability to undertake this investigation.

Entering ability to actually rescue and find those who truly are missing. So you better be correct when you're calling and let us know there's somebody who's missing. Importantly, we know that so many families are going through grief that's beyond anyone's comprehension right now, beyond any of us being able to walk up to them and give them the magic words that will make them suddenly feel healed. We know that they need grief counselors.

We have five organizations that together are providing dozens of grief counselors for all of the affected family members around here. It's so important at times like this for family members to access that grief counseling so they can have their mental and emotional health needs addressed in what may be the most challenging times of their lives. Something else this will help as we begin the process of helping places like the Hunt Store, the local community Hunt Texas be able to rebuild. One thing that is speeding that recovery was the immediate granting of the major master declaration that was granted by President Trump.

It immediately opened not only access to more funding but also access to more resources to be able to more quickly, more effectively respond to the storm. That includes debris removal which has already begun. It includes assistance for individuals who are eligible to apply and the director of Texas Division of Emergency Management will explain more about that in a second. But there are two categories of people or entities that there is money available to assist more individuals affected by this storm.

Another are public entities like the town of Hunt, like the town of Kerrville, like the county of Per, etc. They may have needs with regard to roads or utilities. Whatever the case may be now the census is available for them to more effectively, more quickly address that. With regard to roads, anybody who's driven around here knows that there are some roads that need repairs.

The Texas Department of Public safety is working 247 to make sure they're going to be getting these roads repaired impassable as quickly as possible. Going back to President Trump, he and I spoke again this morning and he could not stop talking about how sad he was for all the liberals who've lost their life. He recounted his own understanding of what happened with what was really a tsunami wave of wall water that swept too many of them away. And he cares a lot about those young ladies and he wants to step up and make sure that any need that we have here in Texas is going to be met very Quickly.

He's already done that by helping to provide the quick assistance by sending down Secretary Christian home who Listen, I've been dealing with events like this for 10 years. Never have I seen someone respond as quickly and as effectively as what Secretary no do. Also, while coming over here, I received this text from Secretary Kennedy. It says the following, says got rabbit.

It's Secretary Robert Kennedy. It says we are set to declare a public health emergency for the Texas Hill Country Clubs. This will make it easier for healthcare and mental health providers from out out of state to help both by traveling to the area and by telemedicine. Please, please let us know where we can be most helpful, which I will let him know.

I just wanted you to know about that. A new update. Now I would like to turn things over to the speaker of the Texas House. Thank you, Governor.

First, to the members of the community and all those who've been packed, protected the survivors, those who've lost loved ones. I know there's not any adequate words any of us can express to share our care and concern. But I want to promise you every person in this state, every tip of it. We have held you in our thoughts, in our prayers, and we'll continue to do so as you go through this and you take care of what I know all Texans can endure.

I had the opportunity to fly with Gunner Rabbit today over the damaged area. It is hard to comprehend the amount of water that came through in such a short period of time. It is unimaginable. What the victims and survivors went through is they were faced with that.

We heard the stories about that and looking at the debris and looking at the problems, all the damage that's been done, I know there's a long road to recover, recovery, but through that we saw some silver linings. We saw Texas flags being flown proudly because we know people of the state are resilient. We saw people from all over the state coming together and working and volunteering and trying to begin helping rebuild and continuing with the search and recovery efforts. I've had members of the Texas House, small to stay, looking for ways to help.

You have a great local representative of West Villa. I promise you, Every Texan, all 150 members of the Texas House have been looking for ways to help. Whether it's helping to raise money or wanting to do things, they are committed to it. I want to thank Governor Abbott for saying that we will address these issues in special session in two weeks and I want to assure you the Texas House will be organized, we will be ready and we stand willing and able to listen to the community and experts and do all that we can to help address it from this perspective.

So thank you all very much for the opportunity. I'll turn over the microphone. This is the kind of event that the speaker of the House would have come to in an ordinary situation. When you consider the fact that we're going to start a special session two Mondays from now, a special session that will have at the top of this agenda helping communities like in Kerr County, Kendall county as well as in central Texas, in the big country, all areas affected by the floods of the past week.

Those issues are going to be on the agenda for the state to address from top to bottom. We want to make sure that when we end that session, we end it making sure these communities are better, more resilient and have the resources that they need for the next chapter of their lives. Now we have the director of the Texas Department of public safety. Mark Governor thank you.

The governor said we have 109 fatalities and 161 missing. Every asset and resource that Department of Public Safety has is being used on this response. We have 258 people just on DPS assigned peering. They're from the highway patrol detachment, Marine unit, criminal investigators, Texas Rangers, swat, Audi and ICT and victim services.

And you ask what do all these do? Everybody does something different. Everybody understands search and rescue. When the Government 161 missing the City of Perville set up a line that if you can't get hold of love when they're missing in the corporal area, call this number.

That number grew to several hundred. These analysts worked with Kerr County Sheriff's Department and the cold Police Department to narrow that down. People that have been identified as deceased, people who have been found alive he conflicted numbers have been reported twice and we are still down to 161 missing. All I can tell you is there's nothing to celebrate about how well we've done this are but there's a lot of work to be done and we're thankful that the speaker standing behind us and the governor the Texas legislature has funded us on the property staff and equipped to respond to this.

Just this last session a few weeks ago, we were given six replacement helicopters and one fixed wing. That is exactly what we use to respond to these I'll tell you another thing. We have plenty of resources but at the same time we're not turning down one resource until we recover every last person on this list of 161. So we have FBI, DEA, HSI, the United States Border Patrol The United States Guilds, Coast Guard, everybody working together under a unified command.

And we won't stop until we finish a couple things. Right now in Bernie county, we have three Zodiac boats and 26 DPS personnel from the Tactical Marine Unit and Texas continuing searching. I'm in constant communication with the Travis County Sheriff, Hernandez, and continue to monitor the events there at that news conference. But let me turn now to my colleague Aaron Gilkers, who's on the ground, because there were a couple of key pieces of new information, headlines out of this press conference from the governor in terms of those missing and the numbers of those who've been lost.

What are your takeaways? Well, that missing number is something that has been elusive up until now, Kelly. It's a question that been asked over and over again. How many people are you looking for?

And it was not one that we gave answer to. We were told initially that because there were likely a lot of people who had come into the area who were in, who were not necessarily in a camp like Camp mystic, but were in RVs or in tents along the river, along Guadalupe river here, they didn't have a handle on how many people were missing. And so now to hear that Kerr county believes there are 161 people they described as known missing in Kerr county at this point, five days after this flooding event is really a critical piece of information that I think helps us understand the search effort that's been underway for these last several days. We know that there have been helicopters and boats and people on foot searching through the massive debris piles that exist all up and down this riverfront.

You may be able to see some of the equipment behind me that have been trying to wade through some of the debris here where we're positioned in Kerrville. It's all to find these people who are still missing. We heard from the governor there that there's six people missing from Camp Mistick. Five little girls and a counselor.

One other child I counted for here in Kerr county as well. And then 12 people in other places. We know that of that 109 people confirmed dead, most of them, the overwhelming majority were found here in Kerr County. But there were several people in at least five other counties in sort of related flooding who have also died and are among the missing as well.

We know that in one county, the fire chief in nearby Burnett County. Burnett County. I'm not sure how to pronounce it. The fire chief there is still among the missing.

And so, Kelly, you heard the governor say that the search effort is going to. Going to go for as long as it needs to go. He said they're not leaving until this job is finished. And that is locating all these missing people and then making sure that they have assessed and that other needs that have come up in the community is impacted by this massive flooding.

Kelly? Aaron, thank you for all those new details. And we have an abbreviated panel today, but I do want to get to our friends and colleagues here. Leanne Caldwell, who is senior Washington correspondent for punk, Democratic strategist Joel Payne and Republican strategist Matt Borman.

Thank you. I know you've been patient watching this with me. What strikes you about when the president is heading? What do you think?

I'll start with Houston to see the Republican at the table. What will Governor Abbott ask for? I think certainly a fast passage of this kind of relief package, so to speak. I think it's notable that this is Chip Roy's district and much of it is.

And again, Roy has been pretty critical when it comes to spending. But I think in general he's going to hold for grease wheels in the Congress when it comes to getting funding out for this cleanup and rescue recovery effort quickly. And as red as Texas is, you think this opens the door for Democrats to make an argument about federal staffing levels? We've seen the Trump administration take the sledgehammer to some agencies.

Do you think this can give some sort of new evidence for those who would make the argument that FEMA needs to stay and so forth? Well, Kelly, look, I think there's room for critique of how particularly this administration has gone about thinking about staffing emergency response, both federally and at the state level. But look, that's a sobering, haunting assessment that we heard on the ground and the local officials about the number of missing individuals. And I would advise any Democrat to be careful politicizing this.

I think it is okay to critique. It is okay to offer solutions and offer examples of how President Trump and his approach might be impacting people on the ground. But I think not turning everything into political red meat is something I'd advise any Democrat right now, always important, especially when people's lives are on the line and people are waiting for work. When you expect to be talking to lawmakers when they come back to you, do you think there will be an expectation that this will bring about a they've just done the big beautiful bill, as the president named it.

Is there room for them to address this in new ways? We had Eric Sorensen on earlier in the program. He's doing a bipartisan thing to try to increase some of the weather resources. What's your sense of how this will be received?

Well, Congress, generally speaking, usually does respond to national natural disasters with additional findings. Sometimes is politicized, sometimes it takes time. But it's usually Republicans who are most likely to oppose federal funding for national disasters. Of course, this isn't a really red state with Chip Roy, who is very anti government funding, who represents this district.

So I think that there are opportunities, I think something also to look down the line is that Democrats have also, as you say, Joel, tried not to politicize this yet. But they are asking questions about if any of these staffing cuts, if any of these government cuts did impact this. And so far the Trump administration has dismissed and gotten very defensive with those questions that are asked. But it's going to continue to be.

Is there any safe space between making it look too partisan and asking substantive questions about some of these issues, whether it's what to do for next steps or were there any real world priorities? Right. I mean, if your priorities to keep people safe, particularly people and many of these communities that come from working class back backgrounds, as we've seen the advance of climate change and changing weather, you're going to see more, unfortunately, you're going to see more weather events like this. And this will become more topical for members of Congress, for the president, for all of us to consider.

So it's not a thing that Republicans are going to be able to run away from. They're going to have to address this. They're going to address it with are you going to have the emergency funding there? And also are you going to acknowledge maybe some of the effects of climate change in hurricane season?

In hurricane season, for sure, yeah. And do you get a sense that this is a test for President Trump? We have seen him in other times in his first term when there was a weather event. Puerto Rico comes to mind where that was, you know, seen as maybe not the most touchy feeling moment for the president.

Do you think because he has so many friends on the ground in Texas, that this is a test for him politically? I think he's really, especially starting with East Palestine. He really has made these sorts of moments his own. Asheville, too.

Asheville as well. He understands the power of visuals and being there on the ground, especially with people and in places where he feels very comfortable. And I think this will be no different. Thank you.

I appreciate your patience. I know it was abbreviated today, but with good reason. Those new facts coming out of Texas are very distressing. More than 100 dead and 161 missing.

And of course, if you're looking for ways to help, we will have on your screen some of the organizations that can help flood victims. These have been vetted by NBC News. We will be back tomorrow with more of Meet the Press now. But the news continues with Hallie Jackson.

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