What was your reaction when you saw the news. I saw bodies falling, screaming, the person next to me shot, i fell down, crawled out. He was mentally unstable and mentally ill. The divorce took a year and a half to finalize. This is a sobering remind er
that this is an attack on all of us. And on the fundamental values of equality, and dignity, that define us and a country. 50 People Killed and 50 injured in the worst mass shooting ever on u. S. Soil. President obama calling it an act of terror, an act of hate. Our coverage continues on morning joe with former Communications Director for president george w. Bush. Nicole wallace, fellow at the council on Foreign Relations and contributing editor at the atlantic, graham wood, whose march 15th. What isis really wants is one of the preeminent pieces of reporting on the terror group. And in washington, David Ignatius. It has just been 24 hours since the deadliest mass shooting in american history. And this morning, we know a lot manufacture about the gunman, but little about his motive. 50 people dead, another 53 wounded after Authorities Say 29yearold omar mateen opened fire inside the pulse nightclub in orlando. Fbi agents have descended on mateens home, about 120 miles away in ft. Pierce, florida, looking for anything that may explain why he carried out this attack. Sources tell nbc newss Pete Williams that before opening fire, mateen called 911, pledged allegiance to isis leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi and mentioned the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. According to authorities, gunfire erupted inside the club just after 2 00 in the morning. A hostage situation unfolded and by 5 00 a. M. , police decide to go in, driving an Armored Vehicle through a wall. A gunfight then broke out between police and mateen. Some of the audio of that exchange, you can hear in this clip. During the gunfire, one bullet hit an officer, his kevlar helmet likely saving his life. Mateen was killed in the exchange and police say 30 people were rescued from the club. According to the atf, mateen bought the two guns used in the shooting just within the past week or so. A handgun and an ar15 style rifle like you see here. Investigators say both firearms were purchased legally. Mateens father posted a video to facebook last night, saying he is shocked and saddened by what his son has done. And heres what he tells nbc news this morning. Was your son radicalized in any way that you know of . No. No, he was he was taking care of his family, going to work, he doesnt have even a beard. He doesnt miss his work. He was always on time. So i didnt anything different, with the way he was behaving himself before. And until yesterday, he was the same. So where did he get these crazy ideas . Thats what i said. I wish he was alive, i could ask him that question. One question. Why did you do it . Obviously, mika, thats what people across america are asking. Heres some of the headlines today. The boston globe, talking about the massacre in orlando. The Washington Post leads with a headline, 50 killed at a gay nightclub. The wall street journal talks of a night of terror in orlando. And the New York Times talks about a gunman praising isis. And you have right next to me, lets move over here, you have the usa today, massacre, and then the daily news, talking about the nra, and obviously, willie, a lot of issues, of course, came spewing out immediately after this from all sides ideologically. Its just as sick as usual, give it a day, lets mourn the victims and try to figure out
whats going on. But a lot of fingers pointing. But of course, what Everyone Wants to know most of all is why did this happen and how can we stop it from happening again . Yeah, i was on the air all day yesterday and it was almost immediate, people running to their battle stations. Before people knew any facts, it was about this or that, and this is why he did it. We dont know why he did it, except weve heard some of his claims. We know what he said about isis in that 911 phone call. Graham, you can speak to this better than i can. Were in an age now where you dont have to have any direct tie with isis. You can be inspired by isis. You can have a laptop or iphone and read something and feel some connection to isis and isis can retroactively claim that he was an isis fighter. Thats his claim, he did it in the name of isis and of radical islam. Yeah, i would even go a bit further. Isis in many ways dont even want him to have a connection before the fact. Theyve said, at this point, you should just attack in place,
where you are, when you can, and if you seek our approval in advance, then youre just exposing yourself to being foiled, your plot never coming to fruition. So theyve told their supporters, just do it. Do it now. Dont bother coming here anymore. Lets bring in nbcs Chris Jansing. Shes in orlando, florida, with more on the investigation into the gunman. Chris, what more do we know about him . Reporter you know, its remarkable how quickly this profile of omar mateen emerged, that he was someone who was filled with hate, who was violent. Mateens father told nbc news his son became enraged recently after he saw a samesex couple kissing in miami in front of his family. The fbi says it first became aware of the 29yearold back in 2013. Now, he made threats to coworkers, including what an Agency Spokesman called and im quoting here possible ties to terrorist activities. And then the fbi looked at him again the following year, because he contacted abu salah,
an american who traveled to syria to become a suicide bomber for al nusra. Abu salah, who also lived in first appearance, was the First American to carry out a Suicide Attack in syria. U. S. Officials said he tried to recruit some of his friends to fight in syria and then when he got back those hometown in 2013. One of them did alert the fbi, but by then, abu salah had already left the u. S. At the time, the fbi thought his contact with abu salah was minimal and it didnt pose any kind of a real threat. Law enforcement officials have told nbc news that there was no indication that mateen was in touch with terrorists overseas or that the attack was directed by someone else, to the point of what you were talking about. So meanwhile, were also hearing from mateens exwife. She talked to the press yesterday, and she described her former husband as unsound, claiming he was physically abusive and had in the past taken steroids. And that she actually left all of her belongings behind to
escape their life together. Instability, emotional instability, sickness, mentally, he was mentally unstable and mentally ill. Thats the only explanation that i could give. And he was obviously disturbed. When he would get in his tempers, he would express hate towards things, toward everything. So in that respect, you know, yeah, but he was at the moments you would see his emotional instability and turning totally different. Reporter in the meantime, we have these portraits of the victims emerging from 20 to 50 years old. And one of the most heart rending stories of the mexico messages that went back and forth between a son who was trapped in a bathroom and his mother and then he went radio silent. And sadly, we learned this morning that that son, eddie justice, was among the victims. Willie . That was one of the earliest stories we had, and one of the sound bites we had, eddies mother screaming, looking for
her son. Chris jansing in orlando, well be checking back with you throughout the morning. Thanks. This looks like, unfortunately, what happens all too often, where you just have a combination of all of these terrible things happening. Where you have somebody who may be mentally ill, in this case, homophobic, on the outskirts of society. Abusive towards women. Abusive towards women. Radicalized by islam, a radical form of islam. Radicalized by isis more specifically, graham. It seems to me that you could look not only at the people that are committing these heinous acts in america, but also, youve said before, the profile of the very people that go over and fight, that have gone over and fought, have been people on the outskirts of society, the mentally ill, the deranged, the outcasts, the losers, or the very people that are drawn to
isis. Thats definitely one of their big constituencies. If they can find people who already have this rage, already have agreement with some of their social views, of course, they kill gays in isis territory, as well. Then, yeah, those people are well primed to be mobilized. Lets talk about that. The weve seen sporadically through the years, not as much as i think we should, but the terrible treatment of gays by radical islam, by leaders of radical islam. Can you go into that, just a bit more, so people have more of a perspective, that this wasnt a oneoff and this isnt a that, you know because weve all talked about how women have been abused by, whether it was the taliban or whether its isis, but we havent really heard as much about how gays have been abused. Yeah, so the taliban had a practice where they would bury
gays up to their waist and then they would build a wall and push it over on them. And isis disagrees, not in whether gays should be killed, but the question of how. Theres debate over whether theyre to be pushed off a cliff or stoned or burned to death or pushed off a cliff and then stoned. And in fact, we see frequently, out of isis territory, these images of people who have been found guilty of being gay and who are brought up to the top of a six or sevenstory building and blindfolded and pushed. So, thats how theyve resolved the issue. But clearly, the view that they have toward homosexuality is, to say the least, a negative one. And David Ignatius, this isnt something thats fixed by tough talk on twitter or 10,000 new troops in syria. This is obviously something that is going to be haunting american policy leaders for years to come. Well, the question of how to
stem the radicalization, selfradicalization of people like omar mateen is a riddle that will be with us, i think, for years. The Intelligence Community was looking hard yesterday for any sign of chatter about this attack, that might indicate that people knew it was coming within isis. They didnt find any. Theyve looked carefully for social media links between omar mateen and people who would have been radical facilitators. They havent found those. So he seems to be a classic lone wolf, a troubled person with difficulty getting along with others. And isnt that what those some communities are most concerned about . The first thing they wanted to establish was whether there was direct links, so you could see this as a plot that was orchestrated by others, external to omar mateen. They looked hard yesterday, and i was told last night, they
hadnt found that evidence. Theyll keep looking, and we shouldnt prejudge how the investigation will go. Its interesting that in this case, this individual came to the attention of the fbi twice. The fbi had a chance to look at him, talk to people, conduct interviews, conduct surveillance, even, back in 2013, and concluded that this was not a person worthy of additional study. Im sure therell be some secondguessing of that. Its particularly troubling that a person who was the subject of two fbi inquiries, whose wife describes him now exwife, as mentally unstable, whose father says he was making extreme comments, was able, in the week before the killing, to buy whats the equivalent of an m16 Assault Rifle. The weapon our troops take into combat, in the most extreme situations, this young man was able to buy and take to that nightclub. Theres an easy answer to that. He had no criminal record. And your rights are not taken away partner more. But i think when you go and look for the footprints, you go look for the telltale signs, theyre not in the data mining that seems quaint by todays standards. Theyre in social media. I want to ask this also, mika. Weve been seeing pictures of this guy in selfies for the past three days. At what point does the and here he is, here. I mean, we saw it after boston. You know, one of the boston bombers, being glorified on the front page of rolling stone,
looking like, you know, latter day coming of jim morrison. At what point do we stop putting their pictures up . At what point do we stop putting their names up. I know people go, oh, oh theyre doing it for attention. So why do we give them attention . Why do the networks why the networks can stand shoulder to shoulder on a lot of things and decide not to do things. Its one thing if you have foreign fighters coming overseas, doing what they do. Its quite another if you have people here that are lone wolves, that are doing this for attention. Well, and i would think can you not just give their name and leave it at that. And move on. I would think that this is part of the plague of isis. You talked about and im confused to an extent, but i think what youre saying. They dont want anything to do with these potential attackers, that they can somehow recruit by their kind of cycle of hate that they spread online. This actually sounds exactly
like what isis would want. Untrackable, no direct ties, but then pledging allegiance right before. And this is why isis is something very different. Yeah, thats right. So back in the old days, if al qaeda were attacking, of course, they would want to be able to track and plan. They would want to be able to hatch a conspiracy that could be spectacular. And what isis has done is really turn that on its head. So theyve said, dont contact us, and they do that for security purposes. They want to be able to say that this could happen anywhere. Any american who can buy a gun can do this. If youre an isis supporter, do it. So its quite worrisome. And i know david brought up guns, but willie, we remember last year or two years ago, one of the top ten people on the most wanted list said, go to america. Go to their gun shows. You can get all the firepower you want. You can go out, kill as many
people as you want to kill as quickly as possible. Then he even went so far to say, they dont have background checks, they just give them to you. Well, we do have background checks and this guy passed them. How can you do a background check on that . He walked into a gun shop, the atf says, and legally bought the two firearms he used. And those two guns. Look at those two women, killed 50 people. And hurt 50 people. I mean, its incredible. One person. And to graemes point, think how easy it is right now. On 9 11, they had to recruit a group of people, they had to teach them how to fly a commercial aircraft. Like, all the years of training and thought that went into that. This was one guy last week walked into a store, bought two guns, and wreaked this kind of havoc. And airline security. Yeah. Lets go to former assistant in charge of the nypd Terrorism Task force, don borelli. Help us through this difficult question. Theres no easy answer to it, obviously, or else wed have it. You have a guy like this, who as far as we know, doesnt have direct contact with isis, simply inspired by it, goes to a gun store, legally buys two guns last week and commits the act of terror. What do you do about him . This was extremely difficult. We were speaking about it during paris and brussels and comparing it to the threat here. You have this toxic mix of people with Mental Illness and this violent rhetoric and isis messages on the internet that resonate with these guys. And mix that with the ability to buy weapons and it becomes extremely difficult for Law Enforcement to detect, you know, when these guys are going to go out and do something. And in this case, the window of time that Law Enforcement potentially had from when he bought the weapons, legally, and conducted the attack was very small, you know, a week. And so, don, what do you do
about it . Weve been wringing our hands about this for years now. But what can Law Enforcement do . What tools does it need that it doesnt have now . It has a lot of tools. I mean, one of the things that we always talk about is, you know, people coming forward. Chances are that somebody close to the person is going to be in the best position to try to predict an attack. But then again, you know, nobody has a crystal ball. If somebody keeps all these thoughts, you know, in his head, and basically plans this and then goes out and conducts an attack without any warning, without giving Law Enforcement any indication that something is going to happen, you know, its very difficult. And ill say one thing, because im sure theres a lot of people asking about, well, the fbi investigated him twice, you know, what happened . And there are Different Levels of fbi investigations. And, you know, when you get a nugget of information, something thats not super significant, but still needs to be investigated, you do not get as
many tools at your disposal. And this is a balance of, you know, protecting peoples Civil Liberties and, you know, being able to get information. And the more information you get, the more intrusive the investigation can be. So only at the highest levels are you allowed to do things like read peoples emails and listen to their phone calls and so forth. So, its my understanding that this investigation, both the investigations, never rose to that level. And yes, he was interviewed twice. And i think nobody expects to go into an interview and say, okay, yeah, you got me, im a terrorist, i confess. But when the fbi does these interviews, at least it puts these people on notice that, you know, youre on the radar. And hopefully thats a mitigating strategy. And like San Bernardino, this attacker has a wife and a small child an exwife who claims he was very abusive and mentally ill. Don borelli, thank you very much. Still ahead on morning joe, well go live to the hospital where so many are still
badly injured this morning. And later this hour, retired general Michael Hayden joins us live. Also, u. S. Senator bill nelson of florida, and the Ranking Member of the intel committee, congressman adam schiff. Youre watching morning joe, well be right back. Real is touching a ray. Amazing is moving like one.