deliberately targeted women in asian spas because, police say, he was having a bad day. >> he was pretty much fed up and at the end of the rope and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did. >> why reactions like that aren't happening as incidents against violence of asian-americans surge across the country. >> nurn of us should be silent in the form of any hate. then senator amy klobuchar and the new push for the violence against women act. congresswoman escobar on what's happening at the so you shall border. "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. there are eight people dead in the atlanta area after a horrifying spree shooting last night at three different locations, three different spas. the suspect is in police custody and we know some of the victims' names. delaina ashley yaun, xiaojie tan, daoyou feng, paul andre michels. seven out eight victims were women. six of the eight were of asian descent. south korean consulate in atlanta confirmed that four of the eight victims were ethnic koreans and don't know the nationalities. the rampage began around 5:00 p.m. yesterday at young's asian massage in acworth. four people were killed there. and about 45 minutes later, officers responded to gold spa in at least atlanta where they found three women killed. while officers were on that scene, shots were fired across the street at aromatherapy spa, found one woman killed there. police arrested 21-year-old robert aaron long following a manhunt yesterday evening charging him with eight counts of murder and a count of aggravated assault. this story you might recall breaking just as we got off the air last night and in the hours that followed many folks were watching this happen made the obvious connection between this tragedy and the horrifying in anti-asian hate crimes we have seen recently. stop aapi received reports of nearly 3,800 asian incidents. more than two thirds against asian women and that context hung over the news reports as they came out this morning and during the day and glaring as police held a press conference in atlanta this morning putting on frankly i have a say a strange performance sharing what the shooter allegedly confessed to them. >> he claims that these -- as the chief said, this is still early and claiming it was not racially motivated. he has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction and sees the locations as something that allows him to -- to go to these places and a temptation he wanted to eliminate. when i spoke to investigators that interviewed him this morning, they got the impression that he understood the gravity of it and he was pretty much fed up and at the end of the rope and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did. >> it was a bad day for him. a really bad day for him. to eliminate the temptation. as many people pointed out, what the understanding of the mottive or told police perhaps somewhat self servingly having been arrested after allegedly shooting and killing eight people or what the characterization it is, it is impossible to separate the context of these specific human beings who were killed, murdered where they worked and where they came from and what they looked like and the world inhabited and the violence committed against them by this individual. atlanta mayor keisha lance bottoms stepped out to the mic after officer baker to make that point. >> whatever the motivation was for this guy, we know that many of the victims, the majority of the victims, were asian. we also know that this is an issue that's happening across the country. it is unacceptable. it is hateful. and it has to stop. >> president biden echoed mayor bottoms this afternoon expressing concern about the violent trend in this country. >> the question of motivation is still to be determined. but whatever the motivation here, i know that asian-americans are in very -- are very concerned because i have been speaking about the brutality against asian-americans for the last couple months and i think it's very, very troubling. >> vice president kamala harris we should note the highest ranking asian-american in american politics offer third degree. >> i want to say to the community that we stand with you and understand how this has frightened and shocked and outraged all people, but knowing the increasing level of hate crime against our asian-american brothers and sisters, we also want to speak out in solidarity with them and acknowledge that none of us should ever be silent in the face of any form of hate. >> for the latest on the investigation we go to nbc news correspondent kathy park in atlanta. what is the latest? >> reporter: chris, good evening to you. it certainly has been a very difficult day for the people of atlanta as well as the asian-american community. you might notice the growing makeshift memorial behind me in front of one of the shooting locations, one of three in a span of about an hour or so. the suspect robert aaron long, 21 years old of georgia, said that these attacks were not racially motivated. however, officials are not ruling this out at this point but he did say that he was -- had a sex addiction and was targeting these establishments which he has visited in the past before as a way to lash out. as far as the victims, there are eight. one person is injured and still recovering from his injuries at this hour. but six of those victims were of asian descent and that's why it's been so painful for the asian-american community because there's a surge in anti-asian hate crimes, against asian-americans across the country. a nonprofit who's been tracking the latest numbers said that the number is around 3,800 since the pandemic kicked off around march. and you have celebrities, every day citizens here in atlanta and beyond who are now speaking out on social media saying enough is enough. chris? >> kathy park in georgia, thank you so much. i want to turn to nbc news correspondent jo ling kent covering the hate incidents against asian-americans and joins me now with more on that new report. jo, we have seen reporting on this. we have seen folks speaking up about it. starting to get the data, as well. >> reporter: that's right, chris. it is an understatement to say the asian-american community and asians globals are feeling so much pain over the 24 who 36 hours and past year when this is underreported and unacknowledged and we see the reports of hate incidents from all 50 states and washington, d.c. it is approaching 4,000. the pace is picking up according to stop aapi hate which is tracking these. i want to point out that this is -- these are people who are reporting these incidents, not the scores of individuals who aren't reporting. as for who it's happening to, it's happening twice as often to women as it is to men according to those reporting. 68% of incidents reported came from women. 29% male. we want to know where is this happening? what is the context here? we know now according to this data that 68% -- 35% of the time it is happening at businesses. on public streets. and that's reinforced by what we saw in atlanta and of course we don't have a causal link at this time. when you look at the context in which so many of these incidents have been reported, you start to see a pattern and why the asian community is feeling so much pain right now, especially asian-american women. >> jo ling kent who's been reporting on this throughout, thank you for making time for us tonight. i appreciate it. want to bring in democratic congresswoman judy chu of california. a lot of folks i talked to today, there is a raw sense of anguish and fear in the wake of yesterday, particularly because it comes on the heels of this past year. how are you thinking about what we're seeing here? >> we were shocked and heartbroken when we heard about the deaths of these eight people, six of them being asian women. we think that this is a culmination of a whole year's worth of hate that was stoked by the xenophobia of donald trump. and let me point out this man says that this was not a hate crime but he picked three businesses to deal with this sex addiction and all three of them just happened to be asian businesses with the first one being called young's asian massage. so what does that lead you to believe when the majority of the victims were asian-american? nonetheless it is something that you could have seen from this year and what has happened with the 3,800 hate crimes and incidents that have occurred. >> i want to ask you about the personal experience in terms of constituents because this is something that for the last year there's been a lot of focus on coronavirus, the president calls it the china virus, and increasing rhetoric from a lot of corners of american life of china as an enemy and in your relationship with your constituents how has that impacted the folks you represent? what's that meant over the past year? >> well, we first saw it in january whether the coronavirus was making the appearance but when donald trump started calling it the china virus, contrary to the voice of cdc and world health organization who said to call it covid-19 because calling it otherwise would only cause a stigma for those of different ethnicities and from different countries, donald trump actually doubled down and had the republican followers use the terms even more. hence what it caused was even more fear and terror in the asian-american community so we kept on hearing about stories after stories of people who were the victims of taunts and racial epitaphs, of people like -- that in the sands club in texas where a man stabbed all three of them, two being children 2 and 6 and said it's because to kill asian-americans due to the coronavirus. so this is happening all over. in my district, there was a chinese-american man who was attacked with his own cane at a bus stop causing him to lose part of his finger so it is happening everywhere including in my district. >> the house judiciary committee tomorrow will be having a hearing about this which you will be participating in. i guess the question is, what at a federal level of policy, right, what can be done? >> we have been pursuing many things. one is right after the president made his executive order we asked for a meeting with the department of justice and let me say how significant it was that president biden did that. we have been asking for a year to meet with the department of justice due to all these hate crimes and ins dentdss but totally ignored. president biden issued this executive order for the department of justice to meet with the aapi community and we met with them on addressing hate crimes. we called for the anti-asian hate crime hearing which will take place tomorrow in the house judiciary committee and calling for the passage of the no hate act to vastly improve the collection of data on hate crimes which right now is very spotty, toothless because the federal government relies on local law enforcement to report and many of them have great variants of how to hate crimes whether they report it or not and three states don't have a hate crime statute and calling for march 26 to be a national day to speak out against anti-asian hate. >> march 26. that hearing will be tomorrow. congresswoman chu will be participating. thank you for your time tonight. >> thank you. okay. so there's one part of the story to talk about more. and it's the explanation that the male shooter was having a really bad day. obviously i think that police officer if he could take those words back and phrase it differently probably would. a really bad way to explain why seven women and a man are dead this evening. we'll talk about why that is right after this. worth. and that - that's actually worth more than you think. don't open that. wealth is important, and we can help you build it. but it's what you do with it, that makes life worth living. principal. for all it's worth. ♪ for every idea out there, that gets the love it should ♪ ♪ there are 5 more that don't succeed ♪ ♪ and so are lost for good ♪ ♪ and some of them are pretty flawed ♪ ♪ and some of them are slightly odd ♪ ♪ but many are small businesses that simply lack the tool ♪ ♪ to find excited people who will stop and say 'that's cool'♪ ♪ and these two, they like this idea ♪ ♪ and those three like that one.♪ ♪ and that's 'cause personalized ads ♪ ♪ find good ideas for everyone ♪ it's moving day. and while her friends are doing the heavy lifting, jess is busy moving her xfinity internet and tv services. it only takes about a minute. wait, a minute? but what have you been doing for the last two hours? ...delegating? oh, good one. move your xfinity services without breaking a sweat. xfinity makes moving easy. go online to transfer your services in about a minute. get started today. i spoke with investigators, interviewed him this morning and they got that impression that, yes, he understood the gravity of it and he was pretty much fed up, at the end of his rope and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did. >> even if you take the accused massed murderer at the word that he was motivated to murder eight people at three different spas because of a sexual addiction on what police amazingly called a quote bad day, we're still talking about a suspect with an intense view of asian women specifically. blaming them, hating them for his own perceived failures before targeting and murdering them. police said he planned to go to florida to murder more people connected to the adult film industry. the other context for this mass murder is at least a year of rising anti-asian bigotry and acts. it was a full year ago at the very start of the pandemic niktd had this head line, chinese-americans spit on, yelled at and attacked. various groups and media outlets sounded the alarm, the data shows it intensified. margaret wong is president and ceo of the southern poverty law center and brittny cooper, associate profession or of women's and genders studies at rutgers university. margaret, it was a brutally horrifying act committed here. how have you been processing the aftermath of it? and particularly the way that the law enforcement spoke about it today. >> thanks so much, chris. i was outraged by what sheriff baker said in his press conference today. i think there's no question that this was a hate crime. it was a hate crime against women. it was a hate crime against asian women. and it's clear to me that the georgia law enforcement agencies needs some traning on what hate crimes are and how they need to do the types of invests. >> britney, your response? >> you know, one of the problems we have with white supremacy is many white people don't believe it's racist unless a racial slur is used but this is a targeted attack on asian-american folks and women. rhetorical violence always proceeds physical violence and president trump himself created a violent environment for asian-american folks, blamed them for this pachd, ginned up the public and created this context for things to be unsafe and now folks are acting surprised it led to this violence when it was predictable. >> margaret, spencer akaman has reported about the war on terror and has a book coming out making the point today that like, you know, when post-9/11 when the u.s. and u.s. officials mobilized against the threat out there, it led quite clearly right to increased severals of bigotry and hate crime and persecution against muslim-americans and you can see in the last year the rhetoric of the trump administration and america's foreign policy leadership, increasing rhetoric of china as a big enemy for the next century. how much do you think that matters? how much does that reverberate through the society? >> i think there's no question, chris, that is a main driver of the anti-asian violence we have been seeing across the country over the last year. it is the president's narrative, president biden's narrative about the chinese virus, about kung flu that has driven so many incidents of hate and discrimination and violence against asian-americans and that rhetoric is still being perpetrated by members of congress today. you will still see members of congress making the same references using the same narrative on the floor. we need elected officials to own responsibility for contributing to this problem and we need a shift in the narrative around these issues. >> you know, britney, it is a very sick and disturbing part of life as an american journalist that accrue a library of mass shootings with different details over the course of your work, which is true for me. i have covered a lot of them now. i thought about this piece today from "the new york times" from august 2019, a common trait of mass killers, hatred toward women. this has cropped up time and time again which is, a man with access to guns and hatred in his heart and often hatred toward women that ends up in this kind of situation. that's a not just limited to mass shootings but violence in america every day. >> one of the challenges we have is that we don't speak intersectionally enough so we always think that because this is a white supremacist crime it is also a gender crime. its has to do with the way that white men in particular think that their owner particular challenges should become adjudicated through public violence. it is not just about whiteness. it is also about a particular brand of violent masculinity which also reached heightened levels in the trump administration. this man-made into the presidency after learning about specific acts of jendser violence he committed and bragged about but we had seen it with white men angry and often kill girlfriends and then go out and commit mass acts of violence against other people. this time it's come booned but we have to be calling out pay tri ar i can, too. many professors, activist thinkers and the general public said this is a session julization of women that's as part of a violent fantasy that's being played out here, too. and it is a problem. >> margaret, i was thinking today of getting details about the victims here and the establishments but these are not -- these are places where folks are if not at the margins of society far from the centers of power, establishments targeted by law enforcement depending on not specifically about these ones eveningly but as a group that's the case in the past and folks that don't necessarily, the people who are working there, have a lot of power in american society. >> absolutely, chris. i think what's important to realize is that as you know these are low wage workers. these are people who are struggling already to survive. and what's critical is that you want those people to feel safe in coming forward when incidents like what happened yesterday occur. and instead, we have seen an incredible focus on the perpetrator of this violence. his photo is used in stories. we don't see the stories of the families about how this has struck them. i think it's critically important that we start to shift that narrative and lift up the voices of those who are most directly affected. >> yeah. this is something i think that all of us in the media are getting better at, again, through the awfulness of the fact that this is a reoccurring phenomenon in american life. margaret and britney, thank you for being with me. >> thanks. the house today voted to reauthorize the violence against women act but over 172 republicans voted no. senator amy klobuchar is a fierce proponent of the bill. she joins me next. guy fieri! ya know, if you wanna make that sandwich the real deal, ya gotta focus on the bread layers. king's hawaiian sliced bread makes everything better! ♪ (angelic choir) ♪ and here's mine! need a change of scenery? 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