Texas prepares for direct hit from Hurricane Harvey

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Texas prepares for direct hit from Hurricane Harvey

'The Five' discuss the latest on the storm path and response

This is a rush transcript from "The Five," August 25, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE, FOX NEWS HOST: This is a Fox News alert. I am Kimberly Guilfoyle and this is "The Five."

Hurricane Harvey a massive category 4 storm will soon make landfall on the Texas coast. Let's bring in Steve Harrigan, covering who is the storm from Corpus Christi headquarters.

STEVE HARRIGAN, FOX NEWS HOST: Kimberly, we've been watching these conditions to get worst over the past two hours. We already have hurricane force winds. The category 4 storm (INAUDIBLE) buildings, well-made houses and large trees either are snapping through this -- here in Corpus Christi. Buildings parts of the buildings, parts of routes, coming off here in some crashing.

We've seen some street lights down as well. So, the physical destruction is starting. Really like a ghost town here right now. Almost no one out at all. Hotels boarded up with plywood. In preparation really for the past few days, long lines, flashlights -- debris flies in the air. People waiting outside for grocery at the grocery stores (INAUDIBLE). There has been mandatory evacuation in effect for a lot of the low lying areas along the water. Voluntary evacuation.

For those who have decided to stay, they are really on their own at this point. Now, they are not going to be able to go out and help people. It's a life or death situation in some cases. So, those people -- don't put your life at risk. You see some small things just flying through the air. And if the storm -- that could be the real danger. We could see 30 inches of rain around here.

That would be catastrophic flooding. Coming from state officials. So, there is concern about the long-term here. Four or five days it really puts people at risk, the storm surge. So, we have drama right now. I have the storm. The eye of the storm. The real heavy damage might still be to come. Kimberly, back to you.

GUILFOYLE: All right. My goodness! What an incredible shot in that great reporting. Steve, thank you so much for what you do. Let's go now to Matt Finn who is in Blessing, Texas, with the latest. Matt?

MATT FINN, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Kimberly. We are 150 miles northeast of where Steve is. The conditions is not nearly as bad here in Blessing, Texas but they are changing by the minute. One minute there's blinding wind and rain and then it kind of settles down where we are right now. Here in Blessing, there was a mandatory evacuation issued last night at midnight.

The last bus to leave this county left at 1:30 p.m. today. So now, law enforcement officials are saying, if you're still here, you are unfortunately on your own. This town looking like many of the towns here in this area. Almost entirely evacuated. Very quiet. No one wandering around. There are, you know, trees blowing in the wind. And water starting to pile up along the streets. I can imagine in just a couple of minutes or hours, it is going to begin to look much worse here.

This is considered ground zero. Some of the strongest forces of the storm is expected to hit this area. The National Weather Service told county officials here a short while ago, they can expect 15-30-50 inches of rain here in this county. A mayor of the neighboring city that were in said that they've never seen anything like this. An unprecedented amount of rain expected to hit this area. Kimberly, back to you.

GUILFOYLE: All right. Matt, thanks so much. Let's go to Rob Schmitt. He was braving the storm in Corpus Christi, Texas.

ROB SCHMITT, FOX NEWS HOST: Hey, guys. Yes. Welcome back to the party here in Corpus Christi. As I'm about to get blown over. We are seeing I think about 60-mile-an-hour sustain winds right now. Gust around 90. We're about 25 miles from the eye of this storm straight west. This is I believe about as bad as it's going to get for Corpus Christi right here at this moment, as we're going to touch in pretty closely the eye wall of this category 4 hurricane.

We're right by the water here. There is a shoreline boulevard here in downtown Corpus Christi. And we've been kind of watching this thing develop all day long. And the interesting thing about this storm was, this was not supposed to hit until about 1:00 in the morning. This thing just kept on streaming right through the gulf. It never slowed down. And now we are watching it makes land fall.

Something like five hours earlier than we initially anticipated. And actually stronger than we anticipated. You remember yesterday, we were talking about maybe a tropical storm, maybe a category 1 storm. And here we are today, and we have category 4 hurricane making landfall. A major hurricane. The strongest storm that we've seen -- I feel like they jump up right now, I will probably fly away.

The strongest storm we have seen in the United States in 12 years. So, at this point, damage is going to be the big thing. There's a hotel right next to our hotel. We saw the shingle start to come off about an hour ago. Slowly just ripping off in old buildings. It looks like hadn't been well taken care off. You see the damage from that now. The -- are flying everywhere. There's a lot of loose debris flying around. But the real question is going to be the water in this storm.

That's what everybody is really worried about. Especially when you move to the other side of the storm. Right now, we are on the west side of this hurricane. I guess you would say. On the east side and the north side of the hurricane, the dirty side, that's where this water is really going to build up. And when this thing stalls out, and it sits over, you know, the South Texas area, especially up in the Galveston and Houston on that dirty side, it's just going to dump rain for days and days and days.

And it is going to create a mess. And that is going to be the real story after right now, which is the wind which we're dealing as we speak. We'll send it back to you in the studio.

GUILFOYLE: Okay. Rob, we have a couple follow-up questions if you cannot bear with us. So, you talked about the water levels. They are really worried about that. Anticipating some, you know, major concerns. What are they doing in terms of trying to prepare places, buildings, et cetera, facilities, so they don't sustain intensive water damage?

SCHMITT: We have not seen a lot -- I haven't seen many sandbags. We've been moving around Corpus Christi quite a bit. I mean, the one thing that you have, obviously at the gulf, they are ready for this kind of thing. They have this seawall right here which I believe is either twelve or 14 feet high. They are expecting somewhere between a six to 12 foot storm surge.

So, that's one way they're going to try to handle it but as far as the rain that comes from the storm, the rain that dumps from the sky. I haven't seen much evidence of preparation at all. I've seen a lot of boarded up gas stations and retail stores and stuff like that. They are anticipating the wind.

But as far as the flood control, I really don't know how they are going to handle that. And I haven't seen a lot of preparation for it. Now it could be that I've missed it. But we've driven around. It's not a big city. We've driven around. I have not seen the sandbags. I haven't seen the flood preparation. But the gulf, they are used to a lot of water here. I mean, that's the way it is down here.

GUILFOYLE: So, does it seem, Rob, the people have been hitting the public safety warnings, are the officials there telling them to stay inside? And about what time did you notice that it really was clearing out?

SCHMITT: Yes, there's nobody here. I mean, our hotel has got, you know, maybe 50 people in it. Most of them involved in the media. There is no cars on the road. This is not a mandatory evacuation area right here.

GUILFOYLE: Uh-hm.

SCHMITT: But if you go just a little bit closer to the coast, because, right, we are kind of on a bay here. But if you go out on to the little stretch of islands that kind of make up the Gulf Coast, they had to get out. It's mandatory. I assume they are all out. Most of the people here are out too. I mean, people are just going to play with this. I mean, when it started to turn into a category 3, category 4 hurricane. I think, okay, yes, screw this, we are getting out of here. And rightly so, I mean, this is a serious storm.

GUILFOYLE: All right. Well, obviously, we want you to take care of yourself there and protect yourself from the elements and we'll probably checking back in with you later.

Rob, thanks for that update.

SCHMITT: Yes. Sure.

GUILFOYLE: All right. Let's bring in chief meteorologist Rick Reichmuth from the Fox News Weather Center to get the very latest. Rick, thanks for being with us.

RICK REICHMUTH, FOX NEWS CHIEF METEOROLOGIST: Yes. It's about 300,000 people in Corpus Christi. So, it's certainly is a decent sized city. The storm has slowed down and it's for progression. That's bad news. You would like it to move on and get out of there, it's not going to happen. It's going to be with us as Robert was saying, for the better part of five to six days. Not at the strength.

But it is going to take a long time for a 130-mile-an-hour storm to begin to wind down. In fact, we might not really see that for the better part of say, 36 hours or so. And one should notice, Kimberly, this year, last year, they launched a satellite up into the atmosphere. It's called GOES-16. This is the first time we've had a hurricane that we've seen with its imagery.

You get an image every five minutes instead of every 15 minutes. And it creates a much more accurate and potentially hopefully life-saving picture. But to get an idea of this storm right here, we kind of see this doughnut. We see the center of that eye a lot of times. When the storms has begun to interact with land, they start to break down. That's not happening at all. We've got a strengthening new storm all afternoon.

Strengthening storm allows the winds that are high up in the atmosphere to transport down to the ground a lot easier. And that means that we are going to see probably these wins at 130 gusting to maybe 155 miles an hour. And that is about to happen. In fact, the outer eye wall or the inner eye wall is now coming on shore here in the South Padre Island. Winds here are already about an hour ago, they clocked at about 110 miles an hour. And that was before we had this eye wall coming on shore.

We won't say there's a landfall until the center point here crosses land. That's still probably maybe an hour or two away. Because it's moving so slowly. I want to show you this. This is one of the computer models that we look at. The weather models that we'd like. We trust this one a lot. And here we are right now with the landfall. We go about 24 hours from now, we still have a hurricane just around 50 miles or so inland. That's Saturday.

Go into Sunday and to Monday morning, still the center of a storm here around Corpus Christi. Right where Rob is. Go into Tuesday, into Wednesday, you get the idea. We still have this storm here. It is not until maybe Thursday or so that it's gone. And some models indicating now that the storm actually might just kind of dissipate over the next say, week and a half here.

That means all of that moisture that is up in the atmosphere is going to fall down across this area and that is why we're so concerned about this catastrophic flooding. How much rain? National Weather Service has been saying things like 35 inches. I've never seen the National Weather Service put out a forecast like that. That said, this same model that we are looking at -- take a look at some of these numbers. Fifty three inches here.

That is from kind of Corpus Christi north. We'll move that map a little towards the north, go to Houston and we are talking about numbers that are pushing 20 inches. So, everywhere in between, that is about 250-mile stretch, we are talking maybe one to two feet, in some spots, four feet or so. Go inland as well, San Antonio, may be 10 inches. Austin, eight inches. This is kind of that cut off line. If he goes any farther towards the west, we're solidly into Hill County major damage there appeared, anywhere to the East, and no doubt, you are in it.

So, everybody getting the rain, a lot of people getting the wind. And I actually did not even talk about the storm surge today which is going to be with us all night long. And because of that continued on -- it doesn't go away right away. A lot of that storm surge 12 feet might be with us for a couple of days.

GUILFOYLE: My goodness. Staggering facts including the amounts of water fall, you know, expected from this and rains. Really considerable. All right. Rick, thanks for that. We'll check in back in with you. Let's take it around the table Dana for some comments.

DANA PERINO, FOX NEWS HOST: Well, when he said that Port Lavaca could get 53 inches of rain. I am 60 inches tall. So, that is, I mean, I'm not that tall. But I mean, I am talking, that's a lot of rain. So, I've been watching over the past couple of days in particular today, I think we have the most skilled and talented weather team. And also they are very brave. May be slightly crazy. The graphics are amazing.

The other thing though is that they help explain, they tell a story. And they have a really big hearts. Like they've been really trying to tell people how to take care of themselves. So, I think that our coverage on Fox has been amazing. And so, it looks like because the storm is going to be so bad, he needs to stick with the channel through the weekend.

GUILFOYLE: No. Absolutely. It's going to be expensive. And as we are continuing into next week, you just really see how courageous they are to put it on the line, to bring it to our viewers. Really being in the eye of it in order to do that. Jesse?

JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS HOST: Yes. Our heart goes out to the people of Texas especially there along the Gulf. FOX News loves Texas. Texas loves Fox News. Everybody in America loves Texas. Anybody who has spent any time down in that part of the country knows how great the people are. And you know how they are going to come together for the cleanup, because they are going to weather it. And then the clean-up is going to be the worst part.

So, it's nice to see -- you hate when you see a national disaster happen. But it's great because it brings the country together. And it unifies the country in a way that sometimes other things don't. More than sports, more than, you know, a terrorist attack but a natural disaster happens in America, churches, families, the Feds, the governors, everybody comes together. And it's a beautiful thing to see.

Just about the team too. Steve Harrigan is getting low to the ground that everyone needs that deserves combat pay. This guy Rob Schmitt over there in Corpus Christi. It looks like he was having the time of his life out there reporting in a category 4 and that's been a great job. You know, like you said, great team out there. I just can't believe how quickly this thing has been upgraded and hope everybody stays safe.

GUILFOYLE: And I just can't believe given your "Watters World" name, you are not out there.

(LAUGHTER)

PERINO: Yes. I mean --

WATTERS: I bet a lot of people want to see me out there.

PERINO: Yes. Actually, I would love to make a bet with you and then end up with you as a hurricane.

WATTERS: Oh, really? What happens if you lose, can we --

PERINO: I will go to a hurricane.

(LAUGHTER)

PERINO: Juan, I'll get your thoughts.

JUAN WILLIAMS, FOX NEWS HOST: Juan, I am just worried about a Sharknado. You know, but all of this water coming up the ocean. You never know what's in it, Kimberly.

GUILFOYLE: Right.

WILLIAMS: You'll never know what could be in it. So, I mean --

PERINO: It's just for contained water.

GUILFOYLE: Yes. I also like, yes.

WILLIAMS: But I got to say, one of the interesting things to me, just looking at it is, how come there's not a mandatory evacuation. You can be there and the government says no problem? I just think that's wow!

GUILFOYLE: I guess in that one particular area where Rob was but he was saying, you know, to the --

WILLIAMS: No, no, he was saying on the island. But in Corpus Christi, you saw Harrigan there.

PERINO: Yes.

WILLIAMS: It looked to me like the other guy said he could fly.

PERINO: It went from a one to a four.

WILLIAMS: No, no. But Harrigan was right there in our hour. And I am saying, he looked like he was going to get knocked over.

LISA BOOTHE, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, we know that Governor Abbott has called for an evacuation especially for those in the low lying areas and the coastal areas as well. Well, we also know that it's somewhat contradictory to what some of the local areas have said. I know the mayor of Houston has said something a little bit contradictory to that. Not urging people to leave like Governor Abbott has.

But, you know, we certainly pray for those individuals who have decided to wait this storm out. Praying for their safety. And you know, thankfully, we have a brave team there as Rob had mentioned. All 50 people or he had said, you know, what? I think 50 people in the hotel? They are all media. Big party.

GUILFOYLE: Yes. We are the only lunatics that show up for it.

All right. Up next, a lot of breaking news out of the White House tonight. And Ed Henry is here with the report. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WILLIAMS: Welcome back to a very busy news night. North Korea today fired off three more missiles. But thankfully, all three failed according to the U.S. military.

Here at home, President Trump just pardoned Joe Arpaio, the controversial former sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona. Mr. Arpaio was convicted earlier time of criminal contempt for failing to comply with the federal court order that prohibited his agency from profiling -- racial profiling of illegal immigrants.

As Hurricane Harvey as you've been watching is now a category 4 storm. That is due to make landfall in Texas in the next few hours.

For more on how President Trump is dealing with all of these developments, let's bring in Ed Henry who is at the White House. Ed?

ED HENRY, FOX NEWS CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Juan, so just another Friday night at this White House, I suppose. I mean, you talk about the storms out there, the very serious storms bearing down on Texas. But the political storms potentially around this White House. In terms of North Korea, this could be seen as a good night for this president because for all the bluster from Kim Jong-un, he backed down in recent weeks after President Trump talked about all the fire and fury.

Then tonight, we see North Korea launching three short-range missiles. And you know what? They turned out to be duds. They didn't do anything at all. So, this is more bluster. And so, the administration is feeling pretty good about that when you talk to top officials here. In terms of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the president issuing his first pardon. This is something that is being widely criticized.

The ACLU calling Arpaio racist tonight. Jeff Flake, the Republican senator from Arizona who has been in various scrapes with the president in recent days wrote that book, highly critical of the president is saying that this does not follow the proper process. Both at the Justice Department and in terms of the fact that Sheriff Joe was in criminal contempt. And so, Jeff Flake and others tonight are saying that that should have played out in the legal process rather than him being pardoned.

But the bottom-line for this president tonight Juan, and everyone else at the table is, he believes that Joe Arpaio is all about law and order. This is someone who is out there on the front lines fighting illegal immigration long before President Trump was elected. Long before a lot of people in Washington around the country were talking about it. And the president wanted to reward him with his pardon and he frankly feels damn the consequences.

WILLIAMS: Lisa?

BOOTHE: Hey, Ed. Yes. Slow news night as always here. Regarding North Korea, we heard anything from the White House about the missile launch?

HENRY: They have not issued an official statement. What I find interesting Lisa is that it was Tuesday I believe at the State Department, the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was talking about what I mentioned a moment ago that boy, for all the talk from North Korea, we have not seen any missiles in several days now. And the administration took that obviously as a big victory. That was Tuesday. Fast forward to Friday. That looks initially, when we saw these three short-range missiles as a bad thing for the administration because the fact of the matter is, they were counting three days ago that there had not been any missiles.

Now all of a sudden, North Korea is back with more missiles. But again, to put it in perspective and the reason why the administration, they talked to him privately, again, they haven't put out an official statement -- they feel good about this. Because they say, it's just more bluster. Yes, they launched more missiles but they were duds. They didn't go anywhere. They didn't harm anyone. And so, look, North Korea is still threat, Lisa, it has not gone away.

We all know that. But the fact of the matter is, the president was lampooned when he talked about fire and fury and stood up to Kim Jong-un. Ever since he issued those strong words. North Korea has been fairly quiet.

BOOTHE: He took a lot of heat for that as well for his comments.

WILLIAMS: Dana Perino.

PERINO: So, the week started off with the president's first primetime address. And it was about Afghanistan and then they went to go through the week. In addition today, the president issuing new sanctions against Venezuela. He had him giving direction to the military to go forward on his transgender plan in the military. And you also had Nikki Haley in Vienna who was there to look into what Iran has been doing. So, they've got a lot, you know, at any White House, what did they want to try to do next week? I mean, all of this news comes at them, but what do they want to accomplish next week?

HENRY: Great question, last night on "The Story," I broke that the president was going to be going out next week and more publicly selling tax reform and tax cuts. We've got more meat on the bones if you will this morning learning from the White House that the president will be going to Missouri. The Show Me state. Maybe to lay out a little more detail about this tax plan and start to sell it in a way that even some Republicans have criticized him for not selling health care enough, not selling repeal and replace.

He's been attacking Mitch McConnell on others but there was a sense that the president himself was not selling it. Now, on taxes, it's a great question Dana. They want to get out there next week very aggressively. But because of the storm, we are now learning from the White House the last few hours, the president is likely go to Texas. Perhaps, you know, Sunday, Monday or Tuesday.

We will see whether that affects his travel to Missouri. And then when you mentioned, the whole series of issues, Venezuela, North Korea, the pardon of Sheriff Joe, I should add to the mix as well -- that just in the last few moments, we've confirmed that Sebastian Gorka, a very high profile National Security aide here at the White House is now out. He says, he resigned. Other White House officials telling us, he was essentially pushed out by General Kelly.

So, look, I remember the early days of the Obama administration where they had this problem where they had all these problems with the economy and the financial crisis coming out. You knew about that in the end of the Bush administration. And frankly, I talked to David Axelrod and others at that time about how they sometimes felt like they were doing too much.

PERINO: Yes.

HENRY: You're right, you're spinning plates. And the system ends up getting short-circuited. But this president has talked about taking on the swamp. And if it's a whole bunch of issues all at once, he wants to go right at it.

WILLIAMS: Jesse?

WATTERS: All right. So, I want to talk to you about the pardon of Arpaio. Put it in perspective for us. So, you've had Bill Clinton who famously pardoned Mark Rich, the biggest tax cheat in U.S. history. You know, you have President Obama committed this sentence of Bradley Manning, a huge traitor. And, you know, committed sentences of a lot of crack dealers at the end of his administration.

HENRY: What do you think about those parts, Jesse?

WATTERS: I was very upset by it.

(LAUGHTER)

HENRY: It sounds like it.

WATTERS: How did you know?

BOOTHE: I don't see where you're going with this.

WILLIAMS: Do you have a question?

WATTERS: Right.

WILLIAMS: Don't worry.

WATTERS: I'm leading up to it. People want to hear what I have to say.

GUILFOYLE: Oh my God!

WATTERS: So, now you have Arpaio, he is 85-years-old. He is a very loyal friend to the president. It was a misdemeanor charge. Everyone is pulling their hair out in Washington about Sheriff Joe being pardoned. Big picture this. Is it this big of a deal?

HENRY: In the big picture of this administration with all the things Dana and I just talked about, not that big of a deal. Where I think you are right about where the president is going with this, people in Washington including Republicans have mentioned Jeff Flake, are going to be shocked, shocked, horrified that this is going on. And the president's base is going to love it. And they're going to say, he's tough on illegal immigration.

And again, as I said earlier, damn the consequences. The red flag I will put up despite that is that what we are hearing in the early and this has just happened. So, our reporting is still playing out. But in the early moments here, we are being told that the Justice Department did not officially sign off on this. It did not go through the normal protocols. That is similar to what you mentioned a moment ago with Mark Rich.

Where Bill Clinton was doing this sort of in the middle of the night before he left office. And that's when you can get into trouble. But when you don't dot the eyes and cross the teeth. I'm not saying they'll be in trouble here, I'm just saying their processes that didn't happen. That could be a red flag. But yes, the President's base is going to love this.

WATTERS: And Arpaio is going to be on "Hannity" tonight at 10:00 if anybody wants to tune in and watch that.

BOOTHE: I really worry about Jesse's confidence levels.

WILLIAMS: Yes. Yes. So, Ed, I want to look hard at some of these social issues that really, I think they are politically explosive tonight. Because we haven't talked about the fact that apparently, the president has not decided that he is going to do away with the dreamers program.

HENRY: Yes. That's another one.

WILLIAMS: And again, this is politically explosive once it gets exposed. But it's Friday night. He's doing Arpaio. And here's another explosive one. He just gave us a tidbit on.

HENRY: Yes.

WILLIAMS: He's doing away with the military transgender folks. He's now saying, you've got to get rid of these transgender people. Here's the order. Ed, can you help us? What is going on? Is he trying to distract us from something else?

HENRY: Well, on DACA, I'll answer that in a moment but in DACA the only clarification I would say is that the president has not decided. There were reports tonight that he's leaning towards doing away with this program that President Obama put in place basically keeping the children of illegal immigrants in this country. Highly controversial on both sides.

He's leaning towards doing away with it but has not made a final decision. In terms of, is he shifting anything? I will tell you right, before I came on, presidential advisor, look at my notes, just texted me and says, who says the president doesn't know what he's doing? He pardons Arpaio in advance transgenders in the military in the middle of a hurricane. That sounds to me like people around this president get what they are doing. This is a news dump. There is no other way that --

WILLIAMS: Yes. That's what I was saying to you. I mean, that to my experience, that the White House, this is a Friday night news dump. And he is hoping it will limit --

BOOTHE: I kind of admire it.

GUILFOYLE: Yes. I think it's the right thing.

WILLIAMS: Yes, I just think it's --

HENRY: Normally it gets buried in the Southern morning papers, this time is going to be overwhelmed by the hurricane --

WILLIAMS: Yes. But I think most Americans on a Friday night, late August, want to talk about a storm. They don't -- but in fact, there is a storm, a political storm. I'm so glad that you took the time --

HENRY: But most Americans on Friday nights, they want to hear more from Jesse Watters. That's the good news about it.

(LAUGHTER)

WATTERS: Category 5 Watters.

WILLIAMS: Well, they could take this job, I get to sit next to Jesse. Kimberly?

HENRY: It's a dream. It's a dream.

(LAUGHTER)

GUILFOYLE: Anyway, that was my point was that, typically, the president is doing this on purpose. I mean, we knew that he was going to do this with Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He said it the other night during the rally in Arizona. So, he is going to give his followers, you know, what he is promised them and what they would like. You've got North Korea going on. You've got Venezuela sanctions. All of these things at once. It seems to me that it's a good strategy, you know, politically, to do this on a Friday night in the middle of Harvey.

WILLIAMS: Look, can I say something to you?

GUILFOYLE: Yes.

WILLIAMS: Don't you think it's divisive?

GUILFOYLE: No. I think it's political and smart move.

HENRY: And Kimberly?

GUILFOYLE: Yes.

HENRY: You know what's interesting as you lay that out is this is been one of the great fears we have heard from the left, that they are deeply concerned that as, you know, there is outrage of the president that they foment, they resist movement and everything else, that meanwhile, quietly and maybe not so quietly -- on the night like tonight, this administration is getting very effective at overturning Obama regulations --

GUILFOYLE: Right.

HENRY: -- rules, and all of the rest. What they have not been effective at so far is actually putting some of their policies into law.

GUILFOYLE: Right.

HENRY: Witness repeal and replace Obamacare. Tax reform. It's early. They have a lot of time, but in terms of this legislative year, the clock is ticking.

WILLIAMS: Thanks so much. We really appreciate it. There's so many other topics. We will talk to you next week. When we come back, we will have the latest on hurricane Harvey.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WATTERS: Welcome back. Hurricane Harvey is just off the coast of Texas with a category four, storm expected to make landfall in the next few hours. For the latest, let's go to Rob Schmitt, he looks like the least nervous reporter I've ever seen in a category 4 hurricane. Rob, tell me, when is the worst of this storm expected to hit?

SCHMITT: Well, for Corpus Christi, it's happening as we speak, guys. I will say that right now. I think the eye is straight east of us. A little reprieve, I can get my foot in here for a second. This is as bad as it's going to get for Corpus Christi. Where Matt is a little bit north of me, he is going to start getting at here in the next 20 minutes, 30 minutes. A lot harder. This thing is going to move up. Hopefully starting to fade a little bit as it hit over the land. It start spinning around and dumping rain. This is a pretty intense storm right now. I mean, I was going to try to show you but I leaned forward to see how far I could lean all the wind is holding me up. I just fall backwards. That doesn't work. This is starting to hurt. Rain pellets sting my face. It's getting a lot tougher now. Since I last talked to 20 minutes ago. This is got to be 90-100 miles an hour winds. Sustained, 60-70 miles an hour. This storm has moved on to land. Near port Lavaca. It's getting creamed right now. Nobody can be there, because it's under mandatory evacuation. Frankly, there is a very good chance that is going to be all underwater. The quickest way to die is to go into a flood zone like that with no way out. The bridge could be underwater by tomorrow.

WATTERS: All right we have a question from Dana Perino.

PERINO: Rob we are here in the company studio and our hair and makeup is perfection. If you are out there in the field. I have to ask, is this an assignment you volunteered for? Or were you told you had to go there?

SCHMITT: I beg for stuff like this.

(LAUGHTER)

I don't know why. There's something fun about it. I did not ask to go to this one, but I ended up here anyway. I begged to go to hurricanes before. I always want to get myself in the middle of something crazy like this. I just heard a really loud bang of metal. I'm hoping a street sign doesn't lashed my head off. The excitement, I guess, it makes it interesting to me.

PERINO: You are doing great. Thank you so much.

SCHMITT: I don't want people to think I'm crazy. You have to do it the right way. We scouted out the area. We are not stupid. We know what we are doing.

GUILFOYLE: Cameraman is doing a great job.

WATTERS: It's a little too late. Some of the others may think you're a little crazy, Rob. You are doing a great job out there. Stay safe.

GUILFOYLE: Crazy like a Fox.

WATTERS: All right when we come right back, we have more on hurricane Harvey. The most powerful hurricane to threaten the U.S. in 12 years.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PERINO: Welcome back to our continuing coverage of hurricane Harvey, a category 4 storm looming over the coast of Texas. For the latest let us go to Steve Harrigan in Corpus Christi nearly standing, Steve, what is the latest?

GUILFOYLE: Oh, my god.

HARRIGAN: Dana, and parts of the Texas coast, there have been gust reported up to 180 miles per hour. It's only going to get worse over the next few hours. This building behind me is beginning to lose part of its roof. You can hear the shingles fall off and crash in this deserted streets. We've also seen some stoplights down, still blinking red and green, but they are lying flat now. Some real concern about the people that did not obey the evacuation. Some of those evacuation orders, mandatory. Others were voluntary. I just spoke to a man a while ago said he has relatives in Rockport about 30 miles away here. He said that town is underwater. Are we going to see the worst of it? We are seeing dramatic winds, dramatic destruction from that wind. A category 4 storm means we will see all large trees snap or tear up. We will see road damage in the roof taken off of houses. It could get even worse over the next day or two after that. That is when 30 inches of rain continuing to fall. If this storm sits in place as expected. A 12-foot storm surge could be the worst of it. It could be a slow and dirtier storm. Even more damaging than what we are seeing right now. Dana back to you.

PERINO: One more question from Juan Williams. If we can keep you for one moment.

WILLIAMS: Steve, what was the shipping and the islands? What's going on there?

HARRIGAN: You know Juan, a lot of the danger of this area is the fact that you have so many places, low-lying terrain. There's only one way in and out. A lot of these places are flooded right now. We have heard from Corpus Christie police, they are not going out on rescues. We have areas where it's unreachable. Now nighttime is coming. They are likely to lose power for three to seven days. For people who have stayed in certain areas who might not have seen this storm coming or might not have realized the power of the storm because it increases power so dramatically and so quickly, you have people in real life threatening situations. You can probably hear that crash. That is a metal roof coming down the street slowly. We are starting to hear more and more of those crash.

WILLIAMS: Take care.

HARRIGAN: People in Rockport are going to have a rough night.

PERINO: Steve, take care of yourself. I hope anyone out there still is safe. Thank you so much. Hurricane Harvey is already being politicized. That story directly ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOOTHE: Welcome back. Who didn't see this coming? CNN didn't wait long to bring up climate change in hurricane Harvey coverage.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is there and why to this? Why there's so much water associated with this storm? One thing we've heard from scientists from the last ten years is that climate change does impact the intensity of many of the storms that we see.

I would attribute what we are looking at here -- this is not an uncommon occurrence. To see storms growing and intensifying rapidly in the western gulf of Mexico.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOOTHE: Juan, why is CNN using a crisis like this to drive a political narrative?

GUILFOYLE: Yeah, why, Juan?

WILLIAMS: Cheese, I don't know. My sense is that we live in a highly politicized -- it's hard to politicize the weather. Everyone's getting affected by the weather. Weather attacks a one-man group.

GUILFOYLE: I like that.

WILLIAMS: You like that? I think that is Bob Marley. You know what is interesting to me is, there are people on either side, because when I was reading today. As we were preparing, Lisa, the ocean temperature in the gulf has gone up. You see the level of the water higher than you've ever been. We have to be positioning the oil rig platforms. The idea that you know exactly why this is happening or attribute the intensity of the storm to climate change, it's premature. Let's put it that way.

BOOTHE: Even the former national hurricane center, the Director -- let's see, he suddenly contradicted what he said. Saying look, this is something I've seen throughout my career. This is something where you can go back in history. Where we've had hurricanes or mass flooding that lead to a lot of unfortunate things. Jesse, this is not the first time the media has tried to do this. NBC's Ron Allen using a hurricane Matthew to promote the need for the Paris climate deal. What say you?

WATTERS: I'm surprised CNN isn't blaming the storm on racism. Or Russia. If the storm is named Robert, then probably they would have to make a little name change there. I think Wolf Blitzer like two weeks ago said maybe the terror attacks, where were they? Were they drove the van in Barcelona? Maybe it was a copycat attack. From Charlottesville. When people on the news wonder about things, they always act -- it sounds really dumb. I love when a liberal commentator asks a serious question to an expert, basically some liberal scheme and the expert goes, I don't think so. I really enjoyed that. I want to loop that clip. Listen --

GUILFOYLE: Hopefully their producer is watching.

WATTERS: Storms have been happening since the beginning of time. There was no industrial revolution, hundred years before when they are having hurricanes. So they haven't had one for the last, almost decade like this and Obama was president. I don't know if it's fair to blame global warming on these things. These things just happen. It's called the weather.

BOOTHE: Kimberly, don't you think it's also just cheap, given the fact that we do have a lot of lives at risk in Texas right now and what they should be doing, informing viewers about things they need to be concerned about? The places they can go, to look for help?

GUILFOYLE: Yes, they can never miss an opportunity to be politically opportunistic. And take advantage of it. The fact is, we haven't had a major hurricane in the United States in 12 years. The theory isn't really holding up to try to blame it on global warming and climate change. If they could, they would. The facts just don't warrant and substantiate it.

PERINO: This is stronger but hurricane Sandy did a heck of a lot of damage. Some towns of New Jersey are still trying to recover from that economically. I do think trying to say that you have more water dropping in this storm, because of climate change -- I think the national weather guy was right to push back on that but it's not true. Climate change is happening. We can't exactly say why. It's always been changing. But I do think the other thing that is happening is that you see pre-criticism. President Trump, of him handling the hurricane. This all goes back to hurricane Katrina. President Bush did take responsibility for and things that happen there. There is an after action report. The government has improved dramatically on how it deals with this kinds of things. The other thing that President Trump doesn't have to deal with is an incompetent governor and mayor, the City of New Orleans. That was really something that President Bush decided to take responsibility for. To take the heat off of them so they could try to actually work together to get stuff done and try to help people there.

BOOTHE: Dana from having worked in the White House, what would you advise this White House? How should they be handling situations like this?

PERINO: I think they are doing a fine job. It's premature to say they would go to Texas on Monday or early next week. We kind of don't know what it's going to be like. But they can adjust that. One of the people that is there at the White House now is deputy chief of staff Joe Hagan. He was also deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush. He was there for Hurricane Katrina. Department of homeland security, the council. Hugh is also there. A part of that whole team. They know what went wrong. They know how to help this be a successful response, but again state and local governments are so important in these things. The president can only do so much. It's really up to them.

WILLIAMS: That is why I was wondering about the failure to make the evacuation mandatory. Thinking that one of the big points that became so politically divisive with hurricane Katrina was a race and you look at what's going on now in Texas, the question is how did they handle the evacuation? How are people treated? Who got treated, in terms of are they dealing with illegal immigrants at this moment? Is not an issue? How are they dealing with poor folks, the elderly? Are they making sure everybody gets out or certain people being left behind? We don't know that story.

GUILFOYLE: So much of the separation and planning, to make sure the catastrophic damage -- it looks like people heeded the warning.

BOOTHE: And we certainly pray for everyone. In Texas right now. Stay right there. More on Fox News' continuing coverage of Hurricane Harvey. Please don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GUILFOYLE: And this is the Fox News alert. At the request of the governor of Texas, the president of the United States has just released the tweet saying I have signed the disaster proclamation, which unleashes the full force of government help. That is all for us tonight, our thoughts and prayers are with everyone in the path of hurricane Harvey. Stay tuned to the Fox News channel for continued coverage of Hurricane Harvey throughout the night. We will have our team reporting with Steve Harrigan, Rob Schmitt, and Matt Finn and Fox News Extreme Weather Center. "Hannity" is up next with an exclusive with Sheriff Arpaio. Keep it here on the Fox News channel for all your weather updates. Good night.

END

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