♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: tonight we examine the attack that took place in orlando, florida. 50 people died, including the gunman who was shot by a swat team. 53 more were wounded. it was the deadliest mass shooting in american history. about 2:00 a.m. on sunday, the assailant opened fire inside of a crowded day nightclub. the gunman was a 29-year-old american citizen of african descent.

he called 911 and claimed allegiance to isis as the assault unfolded. shortly thereafter isis used social media to claim credit for the attack. in a speech this morning, president obama spoke about the challenges of homegrown extremism. president obama: as far as we can tell, this is certainly an example of the kind of homegrown extremism that all this have been so concerned about for a very long time. charlie: mateen was a subject of two fbi investigations. 2013 and 2014. fbi director james comey said no stone will be left unturned in the search for answers. we will continue to look forward and backward. we'll leave no stone unturned and we will work all day and all night to understand the path to that terrible night. we'll also look hard at our own work to see there was something we should have done differently. so far, the honest answer is, i do not think so.

i do not see anything in reviewing our work that are agents should of done it differently. but we will look at it in an open in and honest way and we will be transparent about it. our work is very challenging. we are looking for needles in a nationwide haystack. we are also called upon to find which pieces of hay might come needles. if we can do that better, we will. charlie: joining us right now is a former police commissioner and frank bruni of the new york times, matt olson, the former director of the national terrorism center and josh elliott of cbs news from orlando. i'm pleased to have all of them on this program. let me begin with josh, you are there on the scene. you were there all day. we were together this morning. tell me what we know at this point and what are the questions that are remaining? josh: charlie, you did mention that we didn't know, of course,

upon being forced back inside, the shooter would take refuge in that bathroom where he then took hostages. that hostage crisis lasted for a bit of time. in speaking with the orlando police chief john mean that meena today, i asked him what it was that led officials to make the decision to go in and a storm the building. he said in part that it was the lack of demands on the part of mateen. he was not looking for anything. he made oblique references to having a suicide vest. they believed he might have forced his hostages to wear them but his calm demeanor and a lack of interest in any further discussion left them, rather, no choice. they made that decision to storm the building shortly after 5:00 a.m. i can also tell you, the orlando

sentinel, the paper of record in the city, house now spoken to several eyewitnesses who said they had seen omar mateen frequented the pulse nightclub. as many as a dozen time. at times he was insulting and at other times he was drunk, loud and belligerent. he would talk and say awful things about his father and he would tell his patrons that he had a wife and child. so, again, as officials here dig deeper into a portrait of omar mateen, we also know what he -- why they made that fateful decision to go into the pulse nightclub into the deadliest mass shooting in u.s. history. charlie: do we know it they found when they went to his house and searched his house? evidently he was not someone that removed everything from his computer and his cell phone. josh: we know only that the materials in question,

computers, cell phones, had been -- have been removed. although they have not been forthcoming with exactly what they found. again, we heard that director directorng they -- comey saying they would leave no stone unturned. we were told repeatedly today that it is too early in the investigation to have any solid answers with regard to what they may have found regarding him. i also talked to the police chief about possible radicalization on the part of his father. his father was the host of essentially a cable access show on a california-based channel that allowed him to express a strong political abuse including -- his strong political views, including strong support of the afghan taliban. perhaps a theory that the fathers belief influenced his sons in possibly murderous ways.

charlie: thank you. what are the police looking at in a situation like this? greg: the question is why did they go in when they went in? that is what we're talking about. going into the bathroom by taking a bearcat and smashing through the wall. i think with the chief says is ballot. this individual, we are told, talk about having a suicide vest. he talked about having explosives. the fact that he did not make demands indicated he knew he was going to die. all things considered, i think they made the right decision. i would like to know with more specificity what happened during the two to three hours. what types of conversation. all we have is a report that he said he had a suicide vest, that

sort of thing. charlie: eric from the new york times, tell me what you see and what you know at this moment about what they are investigating and what they are discovering. eric: the main thing the fbi is looking at is whether or not he had any help. was he just a lone wolf, as first indications appear, or could there have been tactical support to either from a overseas or from others in florida. so far the answer today was that they think he might have been inspired by isis overseas, but he was acting alone. charlie: inspired meeting also, -- inspired meaning also, though, that he could have accessed some kind of plan, some kind of guidance as to how to go about this kind of murderous plot. eric: not so much tactically but more social media, anti-american rhetoric online from isis, ideology more than tactical operations.

i mean, what they are finding is that his ideology went across the board. isis on the one hand, has the -- hezbollah, al qaeda, it groups with different and sometimes competing interests. at various times he aligned himself with all of them at different times. and director ci said that at different times they had investigated him. what should we have expected from in investigation like that? matt: in 2013 this started with a tip or a report from coworkers about statements that mateen had made. perfectly appropriate and i think justifiable for the fbi to take that seriously and to do the things they reportedly did which included looking at some of his contacts, talking to other people, actually interviewing mateen. you know, generally the fbi is

instructed to take the least intrusive means based on the information they had had and they did that it sounds like, up to a point where they no longer had information that indicated he was a threat and that would justify a continued investigation. it appeared at that point they close the investigation. charlie: ok. about whyt do we know he chose this place? frank: we have information he looked at other gay clubs. he clearly chose this because there were lgbt people in there and he hated what they represented, he hated them in particular. he was targeting them, this is someone who was clearly targeting all of the diversity in america, all the freedom in america. there have been some extraordinary interviews with his ex-wife, coworkers, a former coworker is that he was constantly ranting about women. religious minorities. this is somebody who really hated diversity itself. he seemed particularly set off

by lgbt community. there was a comment by his father in which he said he was disgusted by two men kissing recently. i think it lgbt people were particularly in his sights. he was looking for a place to make a statement, not just pulse, but that was one of the places in consideration. and ultimately where he ended up going. charlie: when you see him and read about him, what else does it say about him? frank: i'm going to be as news as almost everyone know the next couple days because they have been able to access his home, we're going to be able to see computer and cell phone stuff, i think we'll -- annd enormous think we'll know about him atmount

the end of the week and will have a much fuller picture about him. at some degree he is just purely mad. how that madness transited into the deadliest mass shooting in american history, we have more questions right now the answers. charlie: it is also been reported that he went to saudi arabia in 2011 and 2012. it doesn't suggest anything radical or terroristic, but at the same time when someone does this kind of act, you look at everything he had done, just as we did in the boston case. matt: they would have looked to any information they had about his travel and they would have worked with, for example, saudi intelligence. said, we arei going to learn a lot more about this individual over the next couple weeks. but right now it looks like his radicalization was really based on an incoherent set of influences. it is not clear that it really was isis-inspired as much as at the end there he claimed his allegiance to isis. he had associations with other ideologies as well. so we are going to learn a lot more. charlie: when you look at this, does it look like, by

definition, something he'd carefully planned, in terms of the weapons he used, in terms of how he approached it, and terms of the number of people he killed? josh: if he had gone to the bar before, it it looks like an element of planning. he bought the ar-15, then a handgun from the same store within a week's time. clearly it is something that was in his head. hopefully we find from his e-mails or whatever more information about the run-up to this event. but the fact he was able to go into this club and shoot and hit 100 people is amazing. in a relatively short. of time. -- in a relatively short amount of time. and he killed 49. it is amazing he was able to do

that. we know he had training as a shooter, as a security guard. did he go to a range? did he this before he did this? -- did he practice before he did this? we do not know. horrific, the number of hits that he had in a relatively short period of time. charlie: eric, what we know in terms of the information about him as to motive? eric: the biggest question mark seems to be the anti-gay hatred. we asked the fbi director about this today and he said a obviously that appears to be a motive but they do not have a lot of information so far about where exactly that stems from. it seems to be a scattershot hatred, as frank suggested, of diversity in general. whether or not he had it particularly in for gays, as his father suggested with seeing two men kiss, or could it have been anti-hispanic because this was

latinate night at the bar. -- this was latin night at the bar. >> i want to pick up on something ray said. it is amazing the number of people the gunman had. it is not so amazing when you have in assault weapon at your disposal. we sometimes skip over this because we've had this conversation so many times will really need, once again as a country, to ask the question of why it is so easy for people like this man to end up with assault weapons? and we talk of the right to bear arms and defenders of, whether we are talking about civilians that every american being able to access assault weapons as opposed to being something else. it is amazing that many people were killed, horrifying. amazing and horrifying that many other people were shot. is it not directly related to the type of weaponry at his disposal? ray: this type of weapon has an external clip. nobody has spoken about the clips but let's assume he had

five. he had to have had at least 100 rounds of ammunition. you can reload very quickly and that is what really stands this weapon apart from other weapons. a hunting rifle or whatever. you load it from the bottom and you can have a 30-round clip. it is a semi automatic rifle. you can pull the trigger very quickly and that is obviously what he did. that is worth pointing out the ar-15 has been a weapon of choice in almost all the recent mass shootings in america. we saw in washington again the familiar debate over whether or not there should be increased gun restrictions and we will see that over the next few weeks as a result of this. charlie: matt, tell me what they are saying in terms of on the websites of terrorist

organizations, or in the chatter that we may know about in social media? matt: we know that isis, through its news agency, essentially claimed credit for this almost in the immediate aftermath of the shooting calling mateen a fighter. it is interesting, they referred to other attackers using similar terms. the paris attackers as soldiers, san bernardino attackers as supporters. this is the isis playbook, especially what appeared to be attacks that really are not linked back to isis in terms of isis controlling or directing , where they basically take credit for it and then that spreads out on social media through twitter into the many twitter accounts where it is associated with isis and isis dollars a plot this type of violence. so that is what is happening on social media today. charlie: do we know any more information about what he said

when he called 911? >> we know a little bit more from the fbi director. the tapes themselves have not been released but the chronology was that he called about 2:30, about a half hour after he went in. after he began shooting, he called 911 and hung up. then he called back and spoke briefly with the dispatcher affirming his allegiance to isis, the islamic state. hung up again fairly quickly. the dispatcher called him back a third time, spoke for a bit more and then hung up again. so, there were a total of three calls in which he pledged his allegiance to isis and two l to l baghdadi, the leader of isis. of course, we will be waiting to see if and when those tapes are released. charlie: there seems to be a different case. help me to understand if i'm wrong. we'll have more information and

understanding of the mind of and the inquiry of, in terms of social media -- he seemed in no interest to wipe out his record. >> apparently not, no. a lot of attention is being paid right now to what the fbi looked at and then moved on from the whether there was a flaw in that procedure. there were a lot of other people in this man's life who heard the way he talked, who observed his behavior. charlie: two wives, a father. people who worked with. >> and coworkers. people he worked with who said he was continually lodging complaints. i think we should all look very carefully at what we learn and ask ourselves questions about whether we are all paying the proper vigilance. whether we are listening carefully to and observing things around us. charlie: you are the police chief in los angeles, chicago, san francisco, or anywhere else in america and you know this happen. part of the work is intelligence.

part of it. respecting constitutional rights. trying to figure out who the suspect. what else? ray: part of what you have to do is raise the comfort level, particularly with certain communities. obviously, the lgbt community -- charlie: you have people saying i'm almost scared to go out. ray: you have to meet with them, you have to put additional resources at key locations and i think you have to meet with other communities as well. obviously, the muslim community. in new york city there is an advisory board of leaders that the police commissioner will meet with, other members of the department will meet with. ready and new york, you see a significant uniformed presence on the streets that is unlike other cities, because new york, quite frankly, can afford it. it is the biggest police department in the country. so lots of communication. plugging into

intelligent channels, the nypd here and in other cities work very closely with the fbi and the joint terrorism task force construct. that is where most information comes from these days. so you get any information you , can but you have to try to comfort those communities more specifically concerned. charlie: josh, everybody who is in the media in orlando this morning, yesterday, tonight, and tomorrow are talking to the victims. what are they saying about how they saw in what happened and the experience, the horrific experience of having someone with the kind of firepower he did shooting as fast as he could? josh: we have heard variations of the same theme over and over again today, charlie. that this gathering place for lgbt, specifically lgbt youth had become a second home. it was a very popular club here. it was a place where we had several people describe it as a

second home to us. when the shots rang out, because human nature i suppose does not demand that we think the worst in that first moment, everybody processed the sounds of the initial shots being fired as music thatart of the was still playing in the club at the time. but that shortly after the first volley of gunfire, the power was cut and i can only imagine how exponentially more chaotic that scene became as people scramble that 2:00 in the morning, perhaps having been there for hours, for exits that they could or perhaps could not see. moving todescribed the light. doing whatever they could to do it. whether there were crawling through what they would later discover as they looked down at their own clothing was the blood of others.

or scaling walls in the back of the club and ruling complete strangers to safety and having to run, as you know, the five blocks north of orange on their way to the hospital. the closest hospital, which in fact was on lock down into had to turn away a lot of people initially. so it was a chaotic scene to be sure. and it struck close to home. a literal description on the part of many others. i want to talk about one other thing. once again, as frank said, this is a conversation we have had so many times. illness mayt mental have played her. we have heard his ex-wife's big and say he was very bipolar. again, that is her opinion. i had a chance to sit down with a childhood friend of his who called him from the very first, when they were just friends, as a young boy. he said that he was definitely odd. he would go through periods of

silence, severe reticence, and suddenly exclaim -- there were violent streaks with in him, although his friend said he did not see at that time violence in his makeup. that is also a discussion that is being had here today. charlie: this is the worst mass murder in our history. but there have been others at different locations. we know the names of those other places. will anything change as a result of this? >> god, i hope so. i really, really hope so. i hope we revisit the question of gun control. i think we must. there are sensible measures we used to take. there are sensible measures we can take if we could just find the political resolve and we fought through the obstacles. things need to change. what was just said about mental illness, that goes back to what

i said about being observant. there are people around us who may need attention and help. it is not a matter of a vilifying them. it is making sure that we don't have people unraveling before our very eyes. hopefully that will change, too. >> it is unlikely anything is going to change and you can hear the resignation in president obama's voice. tragedy after tragedy, there is a push for, for instance, a renewed band on weapons and it is inevitably blocked in congress with the backing of the nra and i do not think anyone expects that to change after this. charlie: what you make of the presidential candidates responses to this? eric: you see the total political polarization over this issue with donald trump blaming the president for this and suggesting in some vague way that he was involved in some

bizarre unspecified way. hillary clinton is firmly on board, behind president obama in terms of the gun restrictions. everything breaks into political camps. charlie: there is the sense of the president knowing how hard he tried after newtown and it came to nothing. eric: i think there is a feeling here in washington that if the sandy hook massacre, as horrific as that was, was not enough to change anything that perhaps nothing will. >> you know, charlie, when i was at the national terrorism center, we would see people on the no-fly list, this the highest level of watch listing among the watchlist, and somebody on the no-fly list cannot get on an airplane in united states, they can go out ant same day and purchase assault weapon. for those of us in the

intelligence community, watching this happen, watching this happen with these individuals, it was pretty disconcerting to know that was something that could not be stopped. it seems to me that there is an opportunity to reraise that, at least among the other regulation gun control issues. charlie: by simply saying, if you are on the no-fly list, you cannot buy a gun. >> seems pretty simple and straightforward to me. we have raised it and re-raised it over the past years. seems like something that ought to be able to get done. eric: that was proposed after san bernardino and was voted down by republicans in congress. regarding the so-called terror loophole. >> i think you will see changes may be around the edges. james comey is a good man, he said he will re-examine the process. 10 months is a relatively short period of time. there should be another category, pending, or whatever,

when one of these preliminary investigations are done. if, in fact you have been investigated by the fbi, they should be some notation in the database as far as this individual has been investigated, even though the case has been closed. i think it would warrant at least an inquiry or a notice to the bureau before the gun itself is given to the individual. eric: that is about as far as the justice department was willing to go today. maybe they will look at whether someone like mateen, after he went into the store to buy the ar-15, whether that would ping the fbi. saying, and a, somebody who was on your fbi watch list is trying to buy a gun. even that is not done now and they said it was look at doing that but of course that purchase could not be stopped. charlie: why is that not done? eric: it gets into too many difficult second amendment issues. even that would, of course, cause opposition from the nra.

>> let's remember who was targeted here. one other thing that should change. this was in lgbt nightclub. these were lgbt people. and let's be careful in our , political discussions and debates about the way we talk about lgbt americans. let's not when we are talking , about his religious freedom laws, quote unquote that legitimized the germination. -- discrimination. when candidates real debt against same-sex marriage as somewhat unnatural. let's think about that and what it says about grouping people together. let us remember this massacre and who died when we are having those conversations and people who speak in a way that offer and stro sizes and d means and demains and

lgbt americans. i hope that gives them pause for consideration. charlie: how do you create a pause other than looking at the horror of this incident? what can be done other than some kind of education process? let's understand what it can lead to, that kind of hate. frank: that is exactly right. you and i both know that they are doing it for political gain and in their allies they do not feel that way. pause before you put words like that out into the public square. charlie: i will throw this out to all of you. will this have an impact on the presidential campaign? people have said if some terrible terroristic act came along, and i think they meant at that time when the expressive, -- when they expressed this, it could somehow affect the presidential campaign in the way we used to talk about "october surprises." >> what makes it so difficult to answer is the timing. i heard people stopped talking already about san bernardino.

one of the things that is so chilling and galling about this is so often four weeks after something like this, a receptor something like this, it has exited the conversation and we had moved on. the timeline between now and november, becomes an impossible question. charlie: will this simply in the politics they already had about guns and hate? or will they stay the same as they are today? eric: we have certainly seen donald trump trying to claim the mantle of the stronger candidate and national security. he doubled down on that today in terms of banning muslims. whether that will work is debatable. but certainly it will become a question for the next month or two. whether or not that carries over

into the fall we have yet to know. charlie: the president refusing to call it islamic radicalism. eric: and hillary clinton was asked about that and she said you can call it radical islam and she is fine with that, she was not going to let trump bully her with that label. and, she seems to be taking it a bit further than obama is comfortable with the terms of the semantic debate. charlie: in fact, donald trump said obama should resign if the -- if he keeps continuing to refuse to call it "islamic radicalism." eric: correct. charlie: the sea change in terms of hillary clinton on that idea of what terms we use? eric: i think you have seen a slight shift, yes. charlie: final comments? josh in orlando? josh: in speaking to people here today, but really listening to this very important discussion,

i return to newtown, and i feel like a social decision that what happened at sandy hook elementary school was somehow bearable as a nation. i fear, i guess, that once that was accepted, as frank was saying -- the mass shootings that have followed have entered the discussion and left it with alarming frequency and speed. i think we perhaps i'll have to -- we all have to stand back empty the side really, truly, what do we accept as bearable? matt: this issue of homegrown extremism, this is a threat we have been talking about for several years. we talked about some of the things we could change for the better. there is also some danger that we overreact.

and, particularly in this political season, rhetoric that blames muslims as a whole or seeks to bar muslims were people from arab countries from entering this country really alienates those countries that we need to rely on in this country and engender their trust so we can stop because of -- these types of attacks. there's real danger there is something we need to guard against. eric: this is a big test for the fbi. you see here, once again, as you did after the boston marathon bombing, you have a suspect that was on their radar. as the brothers were before the boston marathon bombings. and, the fbi was unable to build a case under our judicial system to deter an attack and it raises questions about this whole counterterrorism model that has grown up since 9/11. frank: i think the federal government has done a good job in protecting us. you look at the number of successful events since 9/11, very small.

unfortunately we are going to see more of these. and if we see another event like this between now and the election, it is going to have a significant impact. unanswerable question about what the political impact would be. i would just say the last 24 hours have been very instructive and illuminating. we have two candidates who reacted in very different ways and in very considered ways. it tells us a lot about what they are and gives americans a very clear choice of who they want. charlie: one thing i keep saying is, we have to do more in understanding how people become self-radicalized. what is it online, what is the connection between an individual here and an ideology there that brings them together? an idea and a person, and it leads to tragedy. the second point is simply, if not this, what in the world will bring us together in terms of

trying, with great urgency, to do more? thank you for joining us. we will be back in a moment. ♪ charlie: here is the cbs report this evening. toll would have been much higher if not for this. the busiest trauma center in all of florida is two blocks from here. just three months ago, orlando regional medical center practiced and at the mass casualty drill. and today we spoke to six surgeons who saved lives. they saw 44 gunshot patients at once. >> they brought a first patient in and then they brought in another patient in and then they brought up another patient in

and they said there were possibly 20 more gunshot wound patients coming in. >> at that point i called my backup. >> it was very chaotic. there were patients that were in pain, patients that were crying, there was staff that was very busy but very task-oriented. >> we had gunshot wounds to the chest, the abdomen, the extremities. most fairly severe because of the high velocity projectiles. interviewer: what do you mean by that? >> this was an assault rifle. it was a military weapons of the bullets have a lot more energy to them, a lot more speed so they cause more tissue entry. -- injury. >> there was an individual who required multiple operations in 24 hours because of active, ongoing bleeding. he actually got operated on twice in the operating room and in the icu. interviewer: but you saved him? >> we did.

interviewer: are these different from the typical saturday night gunshot wounds you typically see? >> they are different from what we used to call civilian bones, typically smaller bullets. but increasingly we are seeing gunshot wounds from high velocity military weapons almost on a daily basis. and so, the injuries, these type of injuries are something we see every day, just not 44 patients. interviewer: were the patient's saying anything? >> some were crying, some were confused. the more critical patients obviously were not saying anything. many people were asking where their friends and loved ones were. interviewer: of the surgeries you performed, does any patient stick in your mind? >> they also can your mind. after something this horrific, going from operating room from operating room, patient to patient, i do not think any of us will ever forget this. this is not something that goes

away. >> we had hundreds of family members of the lobby of the hospital all clamoring to know how their loved one was. i think the thing that struck many of us was just, the devastation to these families in not knowing for hours and hours because so many of the victims were still inside the club. >> i was trying to put myself in their position not knowing if their loved one was in the hospital or their loved one was still at the nightclub. and, i just want to say that i'm proud that we were there to be there for them. it is very humbling. ♪

♪ charlie: when an horrific event like this happens, people around the world pause. interrupt what they are doing and they think about what has happened and ask themselves the questions we have been asking. it happened last night at the tony's. here's what james corden, frank langella, and lin-manuel miranda from hamilton said at the 70th annual tony awards on sunday night broadcast on cbs. video] >> good evening. all around the world people are trying to come to terms with the horrific event that took place

in orlando this morning. on behalf of the whole theater community and every person in this room, our hearts go out to all those affected by this atrocity. all we can say is you are not on your own right now. your tragedy is our tragedy. theater is a place where every race, creed, sexuality and gender is equal. is embraced and loved. hate will never win. together, we have to make sure of that. tonight's show stands as a symbol and a celebration of that principle. this is the tony awards. [applause]] >> i'm not free styling, i am too old. i wrote you a sonnet instead. my wife is the reason anything gets done. she nudges me towards promise by degrees. she is the perfect symphony of one. our son is the most beautiful reprise. we take the melodies that seem to find us until they are

finished songs and start to play. when senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised, not one day. this show is proof that history remembers. we live in times when hate and fear seem stronger. we rise and fall and light from dying embers remembrances that hope and love last longer. and love is love is love is love is love is love is love, cannot be killed or swept aside. , she tells symphony her story, now fill the world with love and love and pride. thank you so much. >> when i first came to new york in 1960 from school, i consulted an astrologer who told me my greatest successes would come late in my career. i thought she meant 30. [laughter] >> the fact of the matter is

there really is no "late" in an actor's career, there's just the journey and there is just now. so, it is rather ironic that i should be awarded for playing a man who is losing his now, losing his reality, as indeed my dear brother andrew is at the moment. i am -- there are so many names i wrote down today to thank you, but i hope they will forgive me if i bring in a dose of true reality. what happened today in orlando. and i found some words that i think will mean more to you than a litany of names. when something bad happens, we have three choices. we let it define us, we let it destroy us, or we let it strengthen us.

today in orlando, we had a hideous dose of reality. and i urge you, orlando, to be strong, because i am standing in a room full of the most generous human beings on earth and we will be with you every step of the way. thank you. [applause] ♪ ?c+sv

♪ charlie: finally this evening, here is what the president said today. he spoke to the terrible tragedy, spoke about the efforts to do something, and he spoke about the pain that so many feel at this hour. president obama: i just had time to get the latest briefing from fbi director comey and the rest of my national security team about the tragedy that took place in orlando. they are going to be doing a more extensive briefing around noon, a little bit after noon, over at fbi headquarters so i will allow them to go into all i thought itbut

was important for you to hear directly from me. first of all, our hearts go out to those wounded it and to those killed. our hearts go out to those wounded. this is a devastating attack on all americans. it is one that is particularly painful for the people orlando, but i think we all recognize this could have happened anywhere in this country. and we feel enormous solidarity and grief on behalf of the families who have been affected. the fact that it took place at a club frequented by the lgbt community, i think, is also relevant and we are still looking at all the motivations of the killer. but it is a reminder that regardless of race, religion, faith, or sexual orientation, we are all americans and we need to be looking after each other and protecting each other at all

times in the face of this kind of terrible act. with respect to the killer, there's been a lot of reporting that has been done, it is important to emphasize that we are still at the preliminary stages of the investigation and there is a lot more that we have to learn. one thing we can say is that this is being treated as a terrorist investigation. it appears that the shooter was inspired by various extremist information that was disseminated over the internet. all those materials are currently being searched, exploited, so we will have a better sense of the pathway that the killer took in making a decision to launch this attack. as director comey will indicate, at this stage, we see no clear

evidence that he was directed externally. it does appear that at the last minute, he announced allegiance to isil, but there is no evidence so far that he was in fact directed. there is also at this stage no evidence that he was part of a larger plot. it appears to be similar to what we saw in san bernardino we do not yet know. this is part of what is going to be important in terms of the investigation. as far as we can tell right now, this is certainly an example of the kind of home-grown extremism that all of us have been so concerned about for a very long time. it also appears that he was able to obtain these weapons legally because he did not have a

criminal record that in some ways would prohibit him from purchasing these weapons. it appears o of those weapons he was able to just carry out of the store. an assault rifle. a handgun, a glock which had a lot of clips in it. he was apparently required to wait for three days under florida law. but it does indicate the degree to which it was not difficult for him to obtain these weapons. director comey will discuss the fact that there had been some investigation of him in the past that was triggered, but as director comey will indicate, the fbi followed the procedures they were supposed to and did a proper job. at the end of the day, this is

something that we are going to have to grapple with. making sure that even as they go after isil and other extremist organizations overseas, even as we hit their leadership and go after their infrastructure, even as we take key personnel off the field, even as we disrupt external plots, that one of the biggest challenges we are going to have is this kind of propaganda and perversions of islam that you see generated on the internet, and the capacity to that to seep into the minds of troubled individuals or weak individuals, and seeing them motivated then to take actions against people here in the united states and elsewhere in the world that are tragic.

so, countering this extremist ideology is increasingly going to be just as important as making sure that we are disrupting more extensive plots engineered from the outside. we are also going to have to make sure that we think about the risks we are willing to take by being so lax in how we make very powerful firearms available to people in this country. this is something obviously i have talked about for a very long time. you know, my concern is that we start getting into a debate, as we have in the past, which is an either/or debate. the suggestion is either we think of something as terrorism and we ignore the problems with

easy access to firearms, or we say it is all about firearms and we ignore the very real role that organizations like basil have in generating extremist views inside this country. organizations like isil have in generating extremist views inside this country. it is not either/or, it is both/and. we have to hit these organizations and hit them hard. we have to counter extremists. but we also have to make sure that it is not easy for somebody who decides they want to harm people in this country to be able to obtain weapons. my hope is that over the next days and weeks that we are being sober about this problem that we let the facts be determined by our investigators we also do reflection on how we can best attack what is going to be a very challenging problem. not just here in this country,

but around the world. again, my final point is just to extend our deepest sympathies to the families of those who were affected and to send our prayers to thoseho are surviving and are in hospitals right now, their family members, hoping they get better very soon. but, in the meantime, you can anticipate that sometime around noon that director comey will give you more. along with deputy attorney general yates. >> "indiscernible -- [indiscernible] president obama: well, i think -- we do not yet know the motivations but here is what we do know. organizations like isil or organizations like al qaeda or those who have perverted islam

and created these radical, , viciousc organizations -- charlie: thank you for sharing your time with us. i think our guests to share time with us here at this table. we will see you tomorrow. ♪

>> i am mark crumpton. you are watching "bloomberg west." obama is rejecting describing -- he said it would validate groups like the islamic state and imply that america was with war at the entire state. pres. obama: miss treat our fellow citizens. it has been a shameful part of our history. presidential remarks came following a meeting with the national security council. french officials say a