My thought at the time was thats one, thats two, threes coming, maybe even four. And given what we know about what happened in paris i thought theres a good chance im going to start hearing rifle fire. In among the debris on the ground what you were seeing were people. Its tragedy, the blood, the destruction, that stuff i wouldnt wish on anybody to see. Good morning and welcome to morning joe. What is going to be a very, very big news morning today. Were following two big stories
this morning. In politics we got a big endorsement last night, jeb to ted. But first, the terror attacks in brussels. Breaking overnight, police have identified three of the suspects involved in yesterdays terror attacks in belgium. Two of the suicide bombers were brothers and a massive manhunt is under way for the third man. We go live to brussels for the latest on that. Plus, joe, we have the results in the president ial race this morning, donald trump is the projected winner in the winner take all arizona primary but ted cruz is projected to easily win the utah caucus on his way to crossing the 50 mark that will make that a winner take all state as well. On the democrats side, Hillary Clinton is the projected winner arizonas primary but Bernie Sanders answered in projected wins in idaho and utah, the caucuses there, joe. Mika, you look at the Election Results last night, it looks like ted cruz lives to fight another day politically, a huge endorsement coming up this
morning with jeb bush endorsing ted cruz, angering a lot of people in the marco rubio camp and then you look at all the politics that got mixed into the terror story yesterday and you couldnt help but look at the Television Set and think of the churchill quote that says americans will exhaust all other possibilities before finally deciding to do the right thing right now. If you look at a president strangely disconnected once again from terror attacks like he was with james foley in paris and now brussels, you look at ted cruz talking about orwellian presences in neighborhoods where muslims live. Its the exact opposite thing were supposed to do. Donald trump telling the Washington Post a few days ago we need to retreat from nato. It seems like United States leaders on both sides of the aisles have all the wrong instincts for what America Needs right now. Its distressing. Were going to sort through that
and much more all morning. And well do that with former Communications Director for president george w. Bush, nicolle wallace, veteran columnist in and msnbc contributor mike barnicle, managing editors of bloomberg politics, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann and in washington columnist in and associate editor for the Washington Post, David Ignatius is with us as well. Thanks to you all. Well begin with the breaking news overnight. Developments in brussels where police have identified three of the suspects involved in yesterdays terror attacks, shown here in security video at the Brussels Airport wheeling luggage carts. Nbc news has confirmed the two bombers in black were brothers identified as khalid and ibrahim el bakraroui. They are believed to have died when the bombs exploded. The brothers were known to police and had suspected links to the terrorist network responsible for the paris terror attacks last november. Authorities believe the other man in the picture identified by police as 24yearold ja jet
stream laachraoui fled the scene. He is now being hunted by police. Laachraoui is also suspected of involvement in the paris terror attacks and well. And believed to be traveling with accused paris attacker Salah Abdeslam before his arrest last friday. Laachraouis dna was discovered at an address in brussels raided by police last week. Police say he appeared to have been traveling with abdeslam on a fake belgian identity card. Isis claimed responsibility for the bombings at both the airport and subway yesterday that left at least 31 people dead and another 260 wounded and u. S. Counterterrorism officials said that claim appeared genuine. In the hours after the attack, investigators carried out raids across the country and counterterrorism sources described one site uncovered in the searches as a bombmaking factory. The Belgian Prosecutors Office also said one revealed an improvised explosive device
containing nails and chemicals as well as an isis flag. There is reinforced Security Threat but belgian media reports life will get back to normal quickly with schools reopening. Lets go live to brussels with Chris Jansing. Chris . I just arrived here but its been fascinating to watch. Youll recall after the paris bombings this was a city in lockdown, virtually a ghost town for four days now coming in and riding several miles in a car through the streets of brussels. Its almost what seems life as usual. People walking and driving to work. The buses were running. A very few visible science, frankly, of any kind of security. That may have been the most surprising thing. Only perhaps a mile from where we are here at the entrance to a subway. We did see an armed military and two people were standing at the
entrance and checking bags as people came in. As i went into my hotel, which is an american chain, they were checking people as well. We had to open our suitcases. But in terms of anything extraordinary, we certainly didnt see it. So while this is a city in mourning, its also a city that is clearly defiant. Now, the place, the entrance to the subway where the explosion happened yesterday is just down the street from where im standing and you do see in this area as we walked around a few of those subway entrances that are blocked. But i have to tell you, the few people ive had an opportunity to talk with in the hotel, our driver, they did not seem shocked by this. For the last four months they have been hearing about how this might happen, as you might imagine, mika, and then with the arrest of the one person who was at large, Salah Abdeslam, there were more warnings about the possibility of attacks here. So as tragic as it is, its almost as people are accepting
this as a new reality. Nbcs Chris Jansing in brussels, thank you very much. Joe . David ignatius, lets bring you in. Lets talk about ive spoken about americas failures on the political front. Lets talk about europe and their inability to do many things. One, their continued inability to integrate muslims into the fabric of european society, to make them believe they have a stake in whatever future theyre in in europe. The open borders ins, in europe, the refugee tidal wave in the past year and Law Enforcements inability when theyre hold iina suspected terrorist for four days, their inability to get information from that terrorist. Is europe woefully ill equipped for the challenge it faces . I think today looking at this terrible images of death and
suffering in brussels europeans would say and we would say with them that not enough was done. This is a 9 11 moment where people look at an attack that was so much larger than what they imagined and think why did we fail to connect the dots . The first real Islamic State attack in brussels was nearly two years ago. Since then, these networks have been growing and brussels Law Enforceme enforcement, belgian Law Enforcement has been unable to penetrate the muslim communities in which these people were hiding. We see a series of names who it turns out were known to belgian Law Enforcement. The two suicide bombers who detonated their bombs so terribly in the Brussels Airport have both come out of belgian prisons, these were people who should have been known to the authorities better than they were. It took the authorities more than four months to find the prime suspect in the paris
bombing, Salah Abdeslam, who was in effect hiding in plain sight. So as i talked to u. S. Intelligence professional, there were basic thoughts they had. First, somehow europeans in general, the belgians in particular need to lift their game and need to share information more. The french have been more frustrated with the belgians, im told, than anybody. Second, the u. S. Has to find a way to work with our european friends and allies so that our information, stateoftheart, the best collection of Information Available for people can be used, amplified with our key allies to make europe less vulnerable. There are more plots under way. Thats the final thing intelligence professionals stress. These are not isolated instances. More than 5,000 europeans went to syria and iraq as foreign fighters. Theyre now coming back. Theyre operating in cells that are very difficult to identify. They use very good Operational Security so the traditional ways of collecting information are really not so present. So these are huge challenges and i think the consensus the u. S. And europe have to work better together. You talked about waves of foreign fighters coming into European Countries, theres a very real possibility of them coming to the United States, not as great as europe. Of course yesterday donald trump took an extreme position about torture. Im wondering, though, is this a debate that western countries going to have about the possibility of some enhanced interrogation techniques. Is anybody in intel communities talking about the fact we had a prime snpt cuuspect in custody four days and all we could do is talk to his lawyer across the table . Take waterboarding off the
table. Lets talk about what western countries and american countries have been doing for decades. Is anybody talking about the possibility of an Interrogation Program in europe or america because we dont have one right now. I think its fair to say that intelligence professionals in the u. S. And europe were burned by the investigations that that followed abuses in the u. S. Spies dont want to go to jail any more than any other people do and so i think they have been cautious trying to understand what the legal requirements are. There are ways, as weve learned, to use interrogation clerly and picks what you learn in the interrogation not using waterboard i waterboarding but other techniques that match up with other things that you know. We are in a world of big data crunching where a lot of the intelligence professionals i
talked to say breakthroughs will come from using all the information we know so that machines are learning about these suspects and they can we can run the information at them and take is t interrogation to a new place. But the simple answer to your question, joe, is no, i do not hear people talking about torturing suspects in belgium. Mike barnicle hold on, david. Im not talking about torturing suspects. I heard a lot of talk about torture yesterday when you talked about enhanced interrogation techniques. There are a lot of people that have sloppily blurred the line there is over the past six months or a year over those two techniques. Many intel professionals would not consider sleep deprivation to be torture or isolation to be torture in means of gaining access. You can have enhanced interrogation short of torture,
can you not . There are technique, obviously, that enhance the role of the interrogator and make the suspect feel more vulnerable without a gross violation of suspects rights. The Technical Details of this im not confident to get into. My only point was in the aftermath of the investigation, theres scars for intelligence professionals there as here. Thats all. Mike barnicle. Lets bring in former assistant special agent in charge of the joint fbi nypd terrific task force, don borrelli. Mr. Borrelli, off of what David Ignatius and joe were just talking about, the intelligence we get that we pass on to our allies in europe, were told at least at a reporting level that its badly handled by different governments. Some governments are better. Germany, france, belgium, they handle it differently. How large an issue or problem is this in the fight against isis
within europe . Well, its a big issue because it really takes all of these countries working together to put the pieces of the puzzle and then figure out who these terrorists tcells and where they are and how theyre connected. In my experience, the United States is very good at sharing information with our partners. I mean, some of the highest classified information ive seen shared across the border. Now what happens with it when it gets into the hands of our counterparts in western europe is largely up to them. How they choose to use it or not use it so this is a problem. Sharing is also two ways. When we give expect to get in the return and its not always an equitable partnership. What is the way belgium has released in the last five or six years handled that high volume of classified information about people within their own communities and operates supposedly ongoing within their own country that they seem to
have an inability to take hold of. I cant speak exactly to the nuts and bolts of what they do with each piece of intelligence thats passed but if you look at the big picture, its not been enough. Youve had Salah Abdeslam missing for four months as after the french raids and its not like he was on some remote island. He was in the middle of the neighborhood where they expected him to be and where all his counterparts are so clearly there is a lack of a robust Intelligence Network there. Its not to say they dont have good professionals working on this but it doesnt appear theres enough resources being brought to bear on this situation. Don borrelli, thank you very much. Theres a lot of controversy to cover yet on the president s reaction to the tragedies as well as the candidates, the president ial candidates. Well get to that in a moment. Lets turn to last nights Election Results. Yesterday saw another strong
voter turnout, really strong. That wasnt the cause of the tieup in phoenix where some waited five hours to cast ballots after county officials in a costsaving move decided to open only 60 polling sites in a county with two million registered voters. By comparison, 200 were opened for the 2012 president ial primary. In arizonas winner take all race last night, donald trump is the projected victor. 47 to ted cruzs 25 . Trump takes all 58 of the states delegates and notice that marco rubio, who ended his campaign a week ago, is leading john kasich, a likely effect of early voting. But cruz answered back in utahs caucus where he is projected to easily clear the 50 threshold to claim all of its delegates rather than a proportional split. Kasich in a distant second at 17 , trump at 14 . Confidence emanated from cruzs
campaign manager jeff roe who called his not . A tweet we will get 50 plus in utah and all 40 delegates, babe ruth. Cruz has a big deficit to overcome. Each picked up a delegate from American Samoa and trump took away the most delegates on the night, trump stands at 744 delegates to cruzs 468. So ted cruz is feeling like hes in the game, joe, is he . Yeah. Its hard to say it was a split decision last night. The only number that matters is 1237. Mark halperin sort through this for us. How did last nights results fit in to the bigger question of whether theres going to be a contested convention or not. Well, donald trump like Hillary Clinton is on an inexorable march to a majority of the delegates. People who want to stop trump or clinton cant keep splitting contests, they have to start beating them decisively. Trump wins arizona, cruz gets jeb bushs endorsement, does very well in utah but the showdown is wisconsin now. Last flight only heightens the prospect of a trump clinton general election unless they can be stop independent too two weeks in wisconsin. If they cant be stopped there, its close to over. Thats what i was going ask you. If somebody wakes up this morning looking at these results and wondering whether this makes an open convention more likely or not on the republican side whats your answer . Less likely because another series of contests have passed with the frontrunners on a path to majorities and every contest that goes by that theyre not stopped theyre a step closer. Trumps loss in utah, you can explain in the a lot of ways. He finished third. But it doesnt matter if he keeps winning and neither cruz nor john kasich can argue at this point they have not just obviously to a majority but to stopping donald trump from the majority as he continues to
consolidate not just delegates but support within the party and the electorate. Nicolle wallace, what was your take away last night . I think trump every week, every contest has a Strong Performance and last night was no exception. I think we spend the intervening six days talking about his future weaknesses or his past weaknesses. Every time people vote he looks pretty darn strong and it think it renders slightly silly the number and volume of conversations about a brokered convention. That looks increasingly unlikely and i think the jeb endorsement of cruz today, the timing is strange to me. They their very Public Policy divides over intel, immigration, policing of the Muslim Community make it sit very much he did come out for someone but it feels almost like the sentiment that romney expressed when he came out and gave his stop trump
speech. No doubt about it. John heilemann, lets look at the overall week. Whats happened between the split. You had donald trump speaking before aipac, delivering the first disciplined speech of his entire campaign looking more president ial, actually putting policy into that speech. It seems to be d