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New Pictures of Flood Rescues in Texas; Georgia Principal Apologizes for "Black People" Remark; Tornado Warnings in Texas; Michelle Obama's Candid Comments on Race; Jeb Bush and the Politics of Faith. Aired 6-7p ET

Aired May 10, 2015 - 18:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[18:00:00] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Six o'clock Eastern. I'm Poppy Harlow. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM, joining you live from New York.

And we are continuing to watch just dramatic images coming into us from Denton, Texas, taken just moments ago. You see extraordinary flooding there after days of severe weather, flooding that has left cars floating down the road. We do not know if there are any drivers or passengers inside this car, but we've seen multiple cars that have gotten swept up by the extraordinary flooding there.

Let's get straight to Jennifer Gray. She joins us live not far away from there in Cisco, Texas, where we had one of those tornadoes touch down yesterday, taking at least one life. Is the worst over for Texas?

JENNIFER GRAY, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, it depends on where you're talking about, because there's a lot going on in Texas right now. We have tornado warnings just to our east. That is west of Waco, in fact that storm is right around Meridian. It is heading to the northeast.

We have major flooding just to the north of Dallas. You are showing those dramatic pictures around the Denton area and points east. They have got an incredible amount of rain. Of course, those rivers and creeks, they have over-flooded their banks and the waters are rising very, very quickly.

We have choppers. We have the Texas National Guard out there trying to rescue people from their cars, and even from their roofs, and so just a dangerous situation north of Dallas.

Do not get in your car by any means because just a couple of inches of water can definitely carry your car away. You do not want to be in that situation. More people die from flooding than anything else when it comes to weather so you want to take this one seriously.

We're in Cisco, where you can see blue skies around me. In fact, most of the storms are well to our east, but this was hit with a tornado yesterday, and you can see the trees snapped behind me. We hear there are three homes were a total loss. We can't get to those because we have trees down and power lines down.

However, we have seen some pictures of those. We have heard that one person has died and three others injured. Last report, one of those people in critical condition, and so hard-hit here in Cisco. Folks here tell me that they've never had structures damaged by a tornado before.

They have had several tornadoes in this area, but this has been the worst that they have seen. Of course, we're about two hours west of Dallas. That is where all of the nasty weather is, and unfortunately, the storms to our east that tornado warning, I was mentioning west of Waco, all of that rain is heading to the north and east, and it is going to impact the Dallas Metroplex.

So it is not over for that area. We are going to get another round of rain before it is all said and done. So, Poppy, folks need to get into a safe place, stay where they are, do not get on the roads, and try to ride this one out -- Poppy.

HARLOW: Jennifer, in terms of how widespread the flooding is here, do you have a sense, because the images we're seeing are very tight shots, which means we don't have a big, wide aerial shot of how widespread the flooding is.

GRAY: I have pretty much seen the information that you have seen. But I have been monitoring chat discussions from the National Weather Service, as well as Twitter pictures, and it looks like that it's at least several miles wide and it has pinpointed, we have heard in the Crum area. And so -- that's the area we've been watching, and like I mentioned, it's not over yet, so this could become even more widespread before the evening is over.

HARLOW: Is this an area, Jen, that is used to flooding like this?

GRAY: I'm sorry?

HARLOW: Is this an area, Jen, of Texas that has dealt with flooding like this in the past?

GRAY: Yes, Texas is definitely dealt with flooding, a lot of times we get these storms, you have the warm, moist air feeding in from the Gulf of Mexico and you have these slow moving fronts that will come in, sometimes they'll settle out and sometimes move very, very slowly.

What you get are storms training, and that's what we're seeing a little bit of in Texas. You get storms basically like rail cars on a train track, one after another and the storms just follow the same line and that's how you can get six, seven, 10, even more than a foot of rain in just a very short period of time. And when it comes down at several inches per hour, you get this flash flooding, and we're seeing the dramatic pictures now of what is happening. It can happen very, very quickly -- Poppy.

HARLOW: All right. Jennifer Gray, thanks so much. Jennifer Gray, live for us in Cisco, Texas, where those tornadoes touched down yesterday -- keeping an eye on that severe flooding for us as well. Thank you for that.

Also, a shocking and brutal attack in southern Mississippi, and two police officers are now dead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAGLOIS: Sir, did you do it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, sir, I didn't do it. No, sir!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[18:05:00] HARLOW: This man and his brother and a woman now all charged with murdering two police officers, two young police officers during a traffic stop last night in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. A fourth suspect we are told has now also been arrested on obstruction of justice charges. Officer Liquori Tate was 24 years old, Officer Benjamin Deen, his partner, 34 years old. They were both shot and killed last night around 8:30 p.m. in what we're told was a traffic stop.

This is the first time in 30 years that Hattiesburg has lost a police officer in the line of duty.

Few minutes ago, I spoke with Officer Liquori Tate's heartbroken father.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RONALD TATE, OFFICER LIQUORI TATE'S FATHER (via tephone): I just want people to understand that take the blue suit off of my baby, because this was my baby, was allowed to go into this type of work, dangerous, a guy who understood and loved everybody, peaceful, passive, understanding, wouldn't hurt anybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: The city of Hattiesburg is planning a memorial service for both of those officers. It will be tomorrow afternoon.

And earlier, I spoke with the mayor of Hattiesburg, Johnny Dupree.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNNY DUPREE, MAYOR OF HATTIESBURG, MS (via telephone): Earlier today, we had Curtis and Marvin Banks, who were both charged with two counts of capital murder, Joanie Calloway with two counts of capital murder. And now, as I said earlier, the MBI was continuing in their investigation, continuing their interrogation of witnesses, and processing evidence, and so in that process, Cornelius Clark was charged and is being booked as we speak for obstruction of justice.

HARLOW: What can you tell us about what happened? Because we're watching video right now of one of the suspects saying he did not do it, he did not do it. The justice process will play out. But what can you tell us about what you know about how these officers were murdered? All we really have been told it was a traffic stop around 8:30 at night.

DUPREE: And, Poppy, it was a traffic stop. It was a call, it was a traffic stop. Officer Deen apparently saw something that triggered his request for backup. So, Officer Tate arrived on the scene after his request for backup and based on that, you have the ensuing pistol or weapon being drawn by one of the Banks, Mr. Martin Banks, and he actually shot the two officers.

HARLOW: Do we know if the officers, either of the officers fired any shots?

DUPREE: I don't -- I don't know that, Poppy. That would be something that you would have to ask Mississippi Bureau of Investigations. Those are the kind of things that they're keeping pretty close under wraps.

I will tell you that when this is over, we'll have our own internal, as we have, investigation where we can actually look at these and see how we can use this as a training tool, a training model, so that we don't let this happen to us again, if we can keep it from happening again.

HARLOW: I know that this is the first time in 30 years that an officer in Hattiesburg has been killed in the line of duty. What has this done to your community?

DUPREE: Well, in matter of experience, Poppy, this has brought our community even closer than what it has even prior to this. We always pride ourselves on the upcitiness (ph) of hello motto. We are close to everybody. Even to each other.

Our police department and our first responders and our citizens have a great relationship. When you look at -- someone said the other day, one of the analysts I think you have on the television said one of the things that you can tell about a community is the rate of solving crimes they have. You look at our rate of solving crimes, it's pretty good, and that's because we have community working with us and not against us.

We are high on community policing, and this brought us even closer. We are having a vigil tomorrow at 1:00 to bring the community together again so we can pray for this family.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: That was the mayor of Hattiesburg, Johnny Dupree. The governor of Mississippi also making a statement a short time ago, reading in part, quote, "This should remind us to thank all law enforcement for their unwavering service to protect and serve."

We're watching dramatic rescues in Texas, a state hit by severe weather. Millions are still in the path of these deadly storms. Where are they headed next? We'll discuss. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: We've been watching these dramatic images coming in to us here of severe flooding, and rescues in Denton, Texas. These images taken just moments ago. As you can see, emergency crews there trying to rescue people from this home that is completely, completely surrounded by the floodwaters. Aerial rescues from the medevac helicopters there.

Meteorologist Tom Sater joins me now from the CNN severe weather center.

Tom, you know, it's interesting. We saw 40 hurricanes -- hurricanes? We saw 40 tornadoes strike yesterday, some of them in Texas, and then all of this flooding. How bad is it there?

TOM SATER, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, rainfall totals differ, you know, neighborhood to neighborhood just because of the slow moving storms.

Let me show you, you can see there on the left hand of your screen, I'll zoom in a little bit, and this gives you an idea. The color purple, that's six to 10 inches. Now, you could you probably see Dallas there, Ft. Worth, just north of Ft. Worth, Dallas, there's Denton.

The pictures that you're seeing are just to the west of Denton in the town of Crum, near Crum, where you see the purple. I mean, six to ten inches of rain is the last 48 hours. Now, the attack on Wednesday, because Wednesday, there were 48 tornadoes, heavy amounts of rain as much as 11 to 15 inches south of Oklahoma City, and southward so it includes this region.

And then you toss. There was nine tornadoes on Thursday, six Friday, another 45 yesterday. Today, the number is closer to almost over ten now, early this morning we had five in South Dakota, believe it or not, which is seeing blizzard conditions.

But keep in mind Oklahoma and Texas, for months, Poppy, they've been dealing with drought in many counties and you think, OK, a dry ground would just soak this rainfall up, but in case it's just the opposite, when it's like hitting concrete. But it again is these individual super cell storms that earlier were only moving 25 miles an hour through this county.

[18:15:00] About an hour and a half later, that same super cell thunderstorm that produced a tornado again dropped one, and the speed increased to 55. So, that becomes a wind maker.

But when they're moving this slow, the amounts of rainfall on a saturated ground day after day is just incredible but three inches, three and a half in an hour, it will flood anywhere.

HARLOW: And I know they're not out of it yet in terms of more rain could come.

SATER: Absolutely. In fact this area, along with Dallas-Ft. Worth, all the way down to the Rio Grande, is under a tornado watch until 9:00 p.m. Central Time. And the reason it's 9:00 p.m. is there is a secondary band that I'm going to try to zoom in here, we can see this for you, you can see where Dallas is and there are a few more thunderstorms that are firing up.

But there is a line that will develop I believe in the next hour and a half and it's already extended in toward Oklahoma.

So, again, if it continues southward, the entire watch box area will be filled with more rainfall and these thunderstorms produce incredible amounts of rain, not to mention we've had hail over the last couple of days, tennis ball to softball and along with the damage. We've had a lot of property damage and unfortunately we lost a couple souls in the U.S. this week with the severe outbreaks.

But you can see, there's Dallas here, more rain to the north off toward the west, it's going to be this way for a while and it's not the only area. We've got watches continue all the way up to the north and South Dakota into Minnesota, parts of Missouri under a threat, and we didn't talk about the ten states picking up snow.

They've had to plow Coors Field, Poppy, for the five inches of snow because the Rockies had to play the Dodgers this afternoon. Amazing.

HARLOW: Tom Sater, thank you so much. We're going to keep monitoring the severe weather for you, especially what's happening in the flooding here in Denton, Texas.

Tom, thank you. Appreciate it.

A quick break, I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:20:24] HARLOW: A Georgia principal is apologizing after making remarks that many found incredibly offensive during her school's graduation ceremony.

CNN affiliate WSB talked to her about how it transpired and her apology.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NANCY GORDEUK, GEORGIA PRINCIPAL: Look who's leaving -- all the black people!

I'm sorry it happened. So sorry. But God has forgiven me. And we'll just go forward from there.

JESSICA JAGLOIS, WSB: We met Nancy Gordeuk at her Lilburn home where he says overnight, the comments she made captured on cell phone video has made her a target.

GORDEUK: Look who's leaving -- all the black people!

I haven't slept any, haven't eaten. JAGLOIS: Gordeuk says it started when she forgot to let the

valedictorian make his speech at TNT Academy's commencement Friday afternoon.

GORDEUK: So, I introduced him, he started speaking, and then a man, he was black, had came across, carrying his tablet back and forth.

JAGLOIS: She said he was being disruptive so she called security and he disappeared while the crowd booed.

GORDEUK: And at that time I got really frustrated, and said, you know, you all are being really rude to this young man and disrespectful to not listen to his speech, and then I turned my head and who I saw leaving were black people, and that's where the statement came.

JAGLOIS: I spoke to people who were there, including students, who said they felt robbed of their high school graduation experience by Gordeuk's racism.

GORDEUK: It was not a statement of racism. It was just my frustration.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: That was Jessica Jaglois of WSB.

The principal, as we said there, Nancy Gordeuk, has apologized for her actions insisting she takes a personal interest in the success of every one of her students.

But look, anyway you see it, it's got a lot of people talking.

CNN political commentators Ben Ferguson and Marc Lamont Hill are with me.

Guys, good to be with you.

Ben is here in New York, nice to have you here in New York with me.

BEN FERGUSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I know.

HARLOW: Marc, let me begin with you. Is this racism or is this as she says frustration that boiled over in a way that it shouldn't have?

MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I've been to a lot of graduations where people are rude. I was at one yesterday where people were sort of loud and it's frustrating. I understand that. Someone left before the valedictorian can give the speech -- frustrating again.

Saying you people are being rude is probably not the best way to handle it, but I can understand it. When you say, look who's leaving the black people -- pointing out the fact they're black is what's interesting.

Saying someone is black isn't racist per se, but context matters. Look who is asking me questions today, the white people.

HARLOW: Right.

HILL: Why is white relevant to the conversation? That's why it's racism.

HARLOW: Yes, I mean, it certainly struck me hearing it like that, and you're right, the context is really important.

Ben, what do you think?

FERGUSON: I think this woman should be forgiven but she shouldn't keep her job. And I think there's no way if you're a student and you hear that come from the principal of the school that you're ever going to be able to take her seriously on issues and imply it's not about race. That was an anger statement from a principal that should have never come out of her mouth.

I think you can forgive her. I don't think she should have death threats against her and everything else. But how do you expect her to lead kids, be a principal and have people if she is disciplining students that are African-American for them to honestly take her as if this could not be racially motivated? You just don't say things like that. It shouldn't come out even if you are angry.

HARLOW: It's interesting, at, Marc, the South Carolina freedom summit, Bobby Jindal was speaking and he talked about the president and he talked about the president sort of making things more divisive when it comes to race.

And you look at the latest CNN polling, there's the CNN/ORC poll in March saying four in ten Americans say race relations have gotten worse during Obama's presidency. What's your reaction to those?

HILL: I don't know if race relations have gotten worse in the Obama presidency. I think what you saw at the beginning of 2008 was a high point of hope. Many people were desperately craving a post-racial America and what they've realized is that we're not in post-racial America. We're not in post-racist America.

And because of that, I think the contrast between the high level of hope and the low level of despair people are feeling are tricking people into thinking somehow Obama is responsible. People are upset about employment issues. People are upset about Baltimore and Ferguson and Sanford, Florida, and Los Angeles. People are upset about that kind of stuff.

I don't think the president has done himself any favors with the way he's engaged race. Don't get me wrong. I'm not applauding Obama on race.

[18:25:00] FERGUSON: I agree with you on that.

HILL: But I don't think the president has made things worse. It's not as if there's a long legacy of Republicans or white presidents making America feel more racially together. HARLOW: Well, I -- interesting, Ben, what do you think he should be

doing? Because Bobby Jindal said, "The president tries to divide us by gender, age, geography and race. I think it's wrong. Part of his job is to unite us and bring us together."

What is he doing?

FERGUSON: I think the president's job is he has to sometimes be bigger than just the issue of race. When the president of the United States of America is the president of everyone, and when there is an issue, where Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or someone else is coming up, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be in the same role talking the same way. The beer summit was a prime example where I thought he got it wrong on the issue of race.

(CROSSTALK)

FERGUSON: No, Marc, I do, I think he got it wrong. I think that was an issue where he's totally --

(CROSSTALK)

HILL: You're putting Obama in the same category as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? You're putting the president in the same category as Jesses Jackson -- and I'm not dissing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. I'm just saying of the same sort.

FERGUSON: Marc, how many times have the president sent people from the White House, OK, from the White House to go to funerals of people that were African-American, but then did not send people from the White House to police officers that were killed and gunned down. It's happened multiple times recently.

Why? Because you have to deal with race issues, obviously from the White House perspective, different than you have a police officer killed that may be white. He doesn't go from the White House.

Why does he go to the other ones? Because it's an African-American issue and that's one where he feels I think a lot of pressure from many African Americans that you must show up because you're an African-American president and sometimes you have to be a president for everyone, not just be African-American. You got to be bigger than just that one racial issue.

HARLOW: But isn't it also, guys, I think we might have the some I play for you, they let me know, of Michelle Obama giving the commencement address -- we don't have the sound -- but giving hits commence address, right, yesterday and talking about how many points have been very difficult for her as the first African-American first lady, talking about racial stereotypes, slurs that have been thrown out at her.

We don't have the sound to play for you guys, but, Marc, answering Ben's question --

(CROSSTALK) HILL: This makes my point.

HARLOW: They're coming from a different --

HILL: No, I think there's an unrealistic expectation for the Obamas in particular about how they deal with race. Again, that's not to sort of be overly protective of President Obama and he's dealing -- how he's dealt with race. But I do think we have different expectations.

For example, when President Obama does something for black people, it's like people are going, see, see, he's helping black people. All presidents have tried to target African-American populations, and LGBT populations, and Jewish populations, and immigrant populations, right?

But when you're of that category, people look at it differently. If anything I think President Obama in some ways has gone out of his way not to highlight race and not to name race, so that he's not seen as the black president.

FERGUSON: Give me an example where the president of the United States of America has not -- has gone out of his way to not be about race? Because there's so many specific issues that we can talk about that specifically deal with race, Marc. You can't just act as if somehow he purposely walked away from it.

(CROSSTALK)

FERGUSON: He walks into it consistently and constantly when there is an issue in society that deals with race, he will automatically put himself into that issue. Not walk away from it, say, if I had a son, he would look like that, if I had a child look like this. I have a beer summit because --

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: I'm going to let Marc respond before we have to go -- Marc.

HILL: Ben, do you think George Bush would not have commented on Trayvon Martin? Do you think George or Bill Clinton would not have spoken about what happened in Baltimore? Every sitting president would talk about those things. The difference is President Obama is black --

(CROSSTALK)

FERGUSON: They didn't talk about from race perspective. They talked about it from a law and order perspective, to ask people to please be calm. And we do it --

(CROSSTALK)

HILL: Are you saying it's possible -- Ben, are you saying that it's possible to talk about Ferguson without talking about race?

FERGUSON: I'm saying that the whole entire issue of Ferguson does not always have to be about race, and there's many parts --

HILL: He didn't make it all about race. Did you watch the speech?

(CROSSTALK)

FERGUSON: The law enforcement and dealt with false narratives of "hands up, don't shoot", it never happened.

HARLOW: Guys, we got to go.

HILL: Ben, go to CNN.com and read -- OK.

HARLOW: We'll keep talking about this.

Marc, Ben, thank you.

Back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:31:43] HARLOW: We are continuing to monitor severe flooding in Denton County, Texas. These images taken moments ago. Not live but just happening this evening. This car being swallowed up by the flooding there in Denton, Texas.

Tom Sater joining me now from the CNN Severe Weather Center.

Are they going to get any relief? I mean, I know this is a pretty contained area but it's getting so bad there that they're being medevaced out.

SATER: Yes. They had numerous rescues. In fact there's another round of storms, Poppy, moving in, and this line of storms that I'll show you here in a moment because they're moving slow and there's one after another after another, thunderstorms, it's like box cars on a train, it's cause they're going to get some more rainfall. And it's not just going to be this Denton area of Texas.

But here's the amount of rainfall in the last 48 hours. You see purple. That's six to 10 inches. So if you're getting close you'll see north of Fort Worth, Dallas, there's Denton. Just to the west of Denton is where we're seeing the flood problems and a town -- an area near Crum, and so a stream obviously over its banks.

This is just 48-hour totals. This doesn't include the heavy rain, Poppy, that's been falling since Wednesday and fell Thursday. Here is a broad view and again tornado watches from South Dakota to Minnesota, down through areas of Missouri, Oklahoma, into south Texas, so again, this has been going on in the same location, the same region after noon after noon, after, after noon.

I mean, it's just been Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and today. And it slowly moves east tomorrow. But we do have a few warnings, too, that we can still see these storms dropped tornadoes. We've had 11 unconfirmed tornadoes today, which is much better than the 45 yesterday. But look at the line of storms to the top of the screen, this is what

we call training, like box cars on the train where again this heavy rain will fall over the same region storm after storm after storm. You can see that Denton is getting ready to get into some more rainfall and then once the band of thunderstorms moves through, it's just going to intensify. Each one of these storms is capable of dropping one to two inches an hour, on top of the six to 10 they've had in the last 48.

So I think it's not just Crum. We're going to see possibly several communities that are completely saturated from the south of Oklahoma City, which has had 11 to 15, all the way down through the Dallas metroplex.

HARLOW: All right.

SATER: Amazing.

HARLOW: Tom Sater, keep an eye on it for us. We appreciate it. We're going to keep a very close eye for you down there in Texas, and in that area that is still in the path of these severe storms.

Tom, thanks so much.

We're going to take a quick break. We'll be back in just a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:37:13] HARLOW: First Lady Michelle Obama getting very personal about the challenges that she's faced as the nation's first African- American first lady. On Saturday, she told the graduates at Alabama Tuskegee University that during her husband's 2008 campaign she was held to a different standard than the wives of other candidates because of her race.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHELLE OBAMA, FIRST LADY: But as potentially the first African- American first lady, I was also the focus of another set of questions and speculations, conversations sometimes rooted in the fears and misperceptions of others. Was I too loud or too angry or too emasculating? Or was I too soft, too much of a mom, not enough of a career woman?

Then there was the first time I was on a magazine cover. It was a cartoon drawing of me with a huge afro and a machine gun. Now, yes, it was satire, but if I'm really being honest, that knocked me back a bit. It made me wonder just how are people seeing me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: And she encouraged the graduates to be true to themselves.

Let's talk about it with CNN political commentators Ben Ferguson and Marc Lamont Hill. Guys, that was -- it was really remarkable to see, and I have no doubt

it had quite an impression on the graduates being so open and, you know, about these personal experiences and how they made her feel.

Marc, have we ever heard her be so candid on how she's dealt with race in this position?

HILL: No, it's stunning to me and I appreciated the first lady's candor and her honesty. It makes me look forward to post 2016 where we get that memoir. Hopefully we find out exactly what she was thinking instead of all the back channel books and stuff. But I thought it was a powerful point that she made and I think she's absolutely correct. I think that the nation has assessed her in a way that no first lady ever has. I think President Obama has gone through some of those same challenges.

HARLOW: Ben, she also referred to things that had been said about her in the media, including being called, quote, "her husband's crony of color," and quote -- I'm not even going to say the other thing. She has been said things that I don't want to repeat on air. What is your assessment of her coming out now and talking like this, and the change that it can make?

FERGUSON: Look, I think it's good that the first lady comes out and talks honestly about what has taken place. I think there are certainly people that made comments about her that were made in a negative way specifically because of the color of her skin. We saw that and the good news was a lot of those people got in serious trouble for doing so as they should have.

And I think that is one of the things about being now a first lady is you are going to take a lot of heat and it may not have anything to do with color. For example, is she too strong or is she too withheld or holding back too much? We heard the same exact thing said about Hillary Clinton. We heard the same thing said about Jackie Kennedy, for goodness sakes.

[18:40:14] I mean, you know, was she aloof, were words that people used in the press then. You know, they were saying that Laura Bush, maybe she has the president's ear too much because we never saw from her much about policy in public but was she talking to him in private? That's just part of being the first lady. So the early stuff that she had mentioned --

HILL: Yes.

FERGUSON: I think it's valid points, absolutely. But I also don't think that all of the criticism that she took or was really because of the color of her skin. It's because she's the first lady and it's politics.

HARLOW: But, Marc, what about -- you know, from a woman, right, why is it that women's appearances are talked about so much in politics? Do you think that some of these things would have been said about a man? HILL: Absolutely not. I mean, some of this is flat out sexism, I

mean, to Ben's point. First ladies get assessed in ways that they absolutely should not, and female presidential candidates.

HARLOW: Right.

HILL: I mean, look at Sarah Palin back in 2008 when she was on the VP side of the ticket. I mean, people talked about her appearance, they talked about her hair, they talked about her wardrobe, and I thought that it was completely inappropriate to do that. And we never do that with male presidential or vice presidential candidates. So some of it isn't about race. Some of it is about gender and the way first ladies sort of get objectified and scrutinized.

But there are particular ways that happened for Michelle Obama and it's because we didn't have a template for what a black first lady is supposed to look like, in the same way that we didn't have a template for what black presidents are supposed to look like. And so we were assessing Michelle Obama through the eyes and through the lens of whiteness, and as a result she didn't match up, she didn't engage her husband the same way.

She didn't parent her children in the same way. She didn't respond in the same way. And because we tend to look at things that are not white through a deficit lens we kept saying something is wrong with Michelle. And Michelle was kind of like, no, something is wrong with y'all. And at some point, America realizes that's why people love Michelle now.

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: She did -- she did talk in that speech about how she finally just grasped onto her true self and owned it, and was so much happier since then, but talked about those really tough moments at the beginning of her time in the White House.

Ben, do you agree as Marc just said that we sometimes look at things through a deficit lens?

FERGUSON: I think we look at things through these lens of, OK, what is she wearing, what does she look like, what designer, because that's the issues that a lot of people care about when it comes to a first lady. And we had that from back in the JFK days and it's never ended.

HARLOW: It's ridiculous.

FERGUSON: It is ridiculous. But I mean, Marc and I, we received a lot of hate in our life through Twitter. I think we can both agree that we've never received a tweet about our wardrobe and I promise you, every woman that is on TV receives those tweets all the time. I'm sure you do, Poppy, as well.

HARLOW: Yes. I -- yes.

FERGUSON: And I think that's just a different part of culture of being a man and a woman, and it's different. HARLOW: But --

FERGUSON: I mean, I'll take the criticism. If you want me to wear a blue shirt instead of a white one next week we'll see if we can make it happen. But that's part of the deal of being the first lady.

HARLOW: So -- it should not be part of the deal of being the first lady but can --

FERGUSON: No. But many of us are into it.

HARLOW: Guys --

FERGUSON: Because they talk about the designer and who designed their dress, and what are they wearing for the ball and what are they wearing when they have a state dinner. I mean, they do those interviews and they continue to talk about it. They want to stop that from happening. Then make it a first lady issue. But when you sit down and you talk about the designer you're wearing that night for that state dinner or for this event or for this inauguration --

HARLOW: Hey, can I just --

FERGUSON: -- I think you're feeding into it.

HARLOW: We have to go. But I will just say that I don't think anyone ever asked the president what they're wearing, I'll just leave it at that.

Ben Ferguson, Marc Lamont Hill.

HILL: Except for that tan suit.

(LAUGHTER)

HARLOW: Yes. Thank you very much, gentlemen, I appreciate it.

We're going to take a quick break. We're going to come back with the monitoring of the severe weather we've been watching in Texas there, extraordinary flooding. We'll bring you the latest in just a minute.

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[18:47:34] HARLOW: You're looking at live pictures right now. These are live pictures out of Denton County, Texas, where the flooding there has gotten worse and worse. We've seen a number of cars caught on the road in this flooding. We do not know if there are drivers in the vehicles or what their status is right now.

I'm joined on the phone by Sergeant Lonny Haschel of the Texas Highway Patrol.

Thank you for being with me, sir. What can you tell us about the rescues that your team has been able to carry out thus far?

SGT. LONNY HASCHEL, TEXAS HIGHWAY PATROL: Thank you, Miss Harlow. Most important no injuries. Right now that's the most important thing. We've had five separate helicopter rescues by Texas Military Forces. Six people have been rescued by air. The issue is we can't get to those farms and residences because of very narrow pathways by boat so we had to use the helicopter.

The Department of Public Safety is responding with Texas Military Forces, city and local authorities as well as Texas Park and Wildlife to get these folks taken care of and rescued from this high water.

HARLOW: It's very good to hear, no injuries, no deaths as a result of this. We have seen these images that are just so stunning of the cars caught on the road. We saw one car earlier practically swallowed up by the flooding.

Do we know if they were parked cars that drifted because of the flooding where the driver is able to get out?

HASCHEL: The information we have right now is that yes, they were, however, this is still a very fluid situation. There's about a two to three-mile stretch -- this is in the city of Crum, which is just west of Denton, and there is a creek that runs through there called Hickory Creek. This creek has overflowed its boundaries and we are in the middle of conducting these rescues and searching to make sure that we have everyone accounted for. So it's still a very fluid situation.

HARLOW: And obviously we're still a few hours here, though, from the sun going down. Are you confident that your teams are going to be able to get everyone out that needs to be taken out of that area before nightfall?

HASCHEL: This part of Texas for the last couple of days, it has really been hit hard by Mother Nature. We've gotten more storms rolling in actually as we speak, so to that end, emergency services and emergency management officials placed these resources in strategic locations just in case we needed them. So we were able to access this emergency equipment very quickly and get them there where they were needed. So hopefully we'll get all this taken care of and still have that no injury result.

HARLOW: Yes. Absolutely. Good to hear that, sir. Good news out of this situation there in Texas.

Appreciate you joining me again, Lonny Haschel, with the Texas Highway Patrol.

[18:50:07] Let's go straight to Jennifer Gray, our meteorologist on the ground there in Cisco, Texas.

Jen, as he just mentioned, they're not out of the woods yet. There are more storm warnings. Any other tornado warnings at this point?

GRAY: Yes. We actually have a tornado warning right now. It is just to the west of Waco. And this storm is crossing over the Whitney area and should be in the vicinity of Covington and Hillsboro just in the next little while. All these storms are south of Dallas, east of where we are here in

Cisco, Texas, and you can see the sun is shining, but just behind me you can see those darker clouds. That is actually the tail end of that system that's resulting in all the flooding up in the Denton area. And in fact more rain is to come. They may get a little bit of a break but all of this that is out on the horizon is shifting up to the north, and it is pumping a lot of rain and a lot of moisture so they aren't out of the woods yet.

In fact, more rain is expected in that area before it is all said and done and, Poppy, you need to remind folks to not drive in all of this. We've seen those pictures, those cars swallowed up by the water. It only takes a couple of inches to completely sweep the car away. And when it comes to weather, more people die in flooding than anything else. That's why you can't stress it enough. It's a dangerous situation.

Of course we're continuing the severe weather threat as well. So we could see more tornado warnings before the evening is over as well as the additional flooding in Dallas. So a lot of different things going on especially in Texas, and we've had tornado warnings as well and South Dakota we've seen a little damage up there.

HARLOW: Yes.

GRAY: And so all across the plains still vulnerable for yet another day, Poppy.

HARLOW: Absolutely. And as you said, the most people that die from weather die from flooding. Stay out of that -- out of your car if you are in Denton County, Texas.

Jennifer Gray, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Coming up next, Ben and Marc will join me again to talk about this, should politicians let their faith be their guide? Up next, Jeb Bush taking a stand on the issue in a big, big speech at a university. It may win over evangelicals but what about other votes? How will it play there? We'll talk about it next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: We hear it often, politics and religion don't mix, but of course, here in America people mix them all the time. Just yesterday Republican potential presidential contender Jeb Bush told graduates at Liberty University that what the country needs is more, not fewer, people in politics willing to put their faith into action.

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