Good morning. I'm James Holman from the Washington Post and this is the Daily

2002 for Wednesday, September 12th. In today's news, Mitch McConnell is growing more nervous about holding the Senate.

China and Russia align more closely in opposition to the United States, and Donald Trump cancels his trip to Ireland to avoid protests.

But first the big idea. President Trump warned Tuesday night that Hurricane

Florence is looking really bad but he says the government is absolutely and

totally prepared for it. Florence continues to barrel

towards the East Coast, packing 140 mile an hour winds and threatening the

Carolina coasts with a storm surge that forecaster say is highly likely to be life-threatening.

By Tuesday evening, almost 10 million people on the East Coast were under a storm advisory.

Florence is on track to crash into the southeast coast Friday and then slow to a

crawl. That might mean rainfall measured in feet rather than inches. The eye of

the storm will most likely make landfall during the middle of the day Friday

on a stretch of the North Carolina coast between Wilmington and Jacksonville, home to the Marine Corps base at

Camp Lejeune. The Hurricane Center warns that the storm is getting better organized

and increasing in size and predicts that despite some modest weakening before landfall, it would strike

the U.S. as a major hurricane, category three or stronger.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office about preparations, Trump praised himself

for his administration's response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year, even though nearly 3,000 Americans died

in the months following that storm.

But Trump called it, quote, an incredible unsung success, and also incorrectly suggested that Puerto Rico had no

electricity prior to the storm. He said it was quote one of the best jobs that's

ever been done. Trump's description of Florence this this new storm, as, quote, tremendously big and

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