transported to the hospital and are deceased have been identified. thank you. >> have you spoken with the president? >> i have spoken with the president, the governor and everybody has lent their support to this. the president offered any resources that the federal government could possibly provide. the fdla has been tremendous, the fbi, so no complaint about our state or federal partners and their help. >> [inaudible question ]. >> well, the waiving of the hipaa laws so that the doctors and health care personnel can communicate with family members was probably the most important but a we've got on the ground what we need from the federal government right now which is the fbi and all of their resources and the coordination with fdle and opd so there's not too much more that i can ask of

them. they were here immediately in response. they have done a lot of research into the shooter that they will be prepared to update you on. the next press conference is probably going to be around 2:00. thank you. >> thank you. >> i am state senator geraldine thompson and the pulse nightclub is in the senate district that i represent and i just had an opportunity to speak with the governor about the state of emergency in a he has declared and to thank him for making sure that the resources that are needed come into this community, and we know that there are people donating blood and while they are making that fenway park size we're calling on the community to support them by providing water, providing food and the governor and i are going to have a serious discussion about reform because the families not only lost members of their families to this tragedy, but they lost a feeling of safety and so when we talk about safety we have to talk

about how guns come into the hands of violent and unstable people. how is it that assault weapons that are used in military operations get into the hands of a single individual and how is it that magazines, of weapons and bullets that are usually used in military combat come into our community, and so we can't feel safe until we address those issues and those are some. things that i'll be talking with the governor about. >> [inaudible question ]. >> well, every time we have one of these mass shootings we talk about reform manned nothing is done and this has brought it home to our doorstep, and as i said i'm going to be talking with the governor about what we can do with regard to some of our laws. we have people who buy guns at gun shows and they are not required to have background checks. they can buy guns from private individuals and they are not required to have background checks show these are some of

the kind of things that can put -- that can be put in place. i'm heartbroken for their families. we're working to address that problem so that hopefully we won't see this as something routine that happens in our communities time and time again. >> and you have been listening there. state senator geraldine thompson, express iing their thoughts on the mass shooting that took place in their community. we had governor rick scott addressing the crowd there, reporters there. the main thing that buddy dyer, the mayor of orlando has said, they have waived the hipaa laws so that doctors and families can communicate freely, and also it

struck me that governor rick scott, he made it quite personal, eric. i felt he came there to let everybody there know that their leader is there with them. you're not alone through this. we'll get through this and cooperate with all. levels of authority necessary and that he made sure that he declared a state of emergency so that everyone can get all necessary tools to complete this investigation to find why this happened and how this happened, but mostly it struck me that he made it personal to himself and just to let everybody know that he was there with him. that's what struck me when he got there and almost breaking down. >> and what's so amazing, think about the families and showing up at the hospital in the emergency room when you haven't heard from your son or daughter all night and the hospital officials can't tell you anything about it because of those hipaa laws, because of the privacy laws. it's been a situation with parents and colleges for years.

there's been legislation to try to overturn that and thankfully the white house today somehow overruling and overriding the hipaa laws to let the families of those who were shot and wounded who are now in the emergency room and being attended to by the physicians at the hospital and can share the information with them and this at the same time. we're learning that stark and horrendous site of the bodies of the victims who still remain inside the pulse nightclub right now with some family members clearly not having heard from their loved ones, sons, daughters or brothers or sisters at this hour, so many hours after this happened. >> because of those questions i think it's very crucial that the hipaa laws have been waived so that doctors can communicate with the families freely. this is, of course, an ongoing investigation. we're going to continue this coverage here on fox news channel. we're going to bring you the very latest up to the minute and stay right here. >> as we've been reporting this is the worst mass shooting in our history this time with alleged radical islamic leanings

from the suspected gunman identified as omar seddique mateen. from port st. lucie, florida. reports that he was investigated by the fbi twice in 2014 and 2015 but those investigations were likely closed. we'll hear more about those later this afternoon. he struck at the pulse nightclub in downtown orlando and newer next guest has been following this, joe kell, morning news host of loredo's morning news, the main news station in orlando. our condolences and our prayers are with you and your city right now. the dimensions of what happened overnight. can you start with what we know in terms of the timeline. at 2:202 orlando, you have off-duty police officers who

worked security at that event and the officer started to exchange gunfire. >> the first call went in at 2:02 a.m. and maybe by coincidence, maybe not, but weave just wr57d up the annual gay days celebration in orlando and it's often something that's witnessed and seen and it also talked in the communities and some of the night clubs and pulse is a gay nightclub and on top of that it's a puerto rican cultural weekend. there in new york and it was a latino themed party. a very international crout and the man comes into the club with what is a long rifle, ar-15 and handgun, and is seen by an orlando police officer. whether that was an on duty or

off duty officer we're still not entirely clear on that. either way the officer engages with the gunman at 2:02, and it wasn't until 5:00 a.m. that the orlando s.w.a.t. teams entered the building and put an end to that ended up being a hostage situation so for three hours the gunman was holding 30 people hostage inside that building. >> when this was ongoing, a lot of confusion, people there, just like the bataclan. when you hear shots you don't know what's going on. could be part of the show and eddie justice is 30 years old. he was in there and his mother said he was tweeting or textings. his mother saying, quote, he's coming. eddie went into the bathroom and they were in the bathroom. he has us and he's in here with us. sadly we don't know at this

moment, what happened with eddie. what did police do then and why did this continue, you know, for a three-hour long period. they were having discussions, we understand. there was some discussion with the police and what can you tell us about that? >> what we're hoping to find out and the next briefing is coming up after the president makes his statement from the brady press briefing at the white house and we're hoping to find out exactly what went on in that situation during that hostage standoff. we were told early on. let me rephrase that. we weren't told on early on that there were deaths and we don't know if all. 50 people who were killed were killed before the 2:00 a.m. call or during the hostage standoff

so obviously there's a lot of questions that have to be answered and the police themselves may not know the answers to these questions just yet. >> it will take a long time. not only for the suspect and the motives and the potential ties to terrorist activities and groups but also how this went down. we've all been to orlando. wirl, universal, you know, church street station, the whole downtown area is pulsating and lively with a lot of activity. what has this done to your community? it's just an outpouring right now of prayers and there will be vigils and lines of people donating blood because there have been dals to donate blood? >> i've got to tell you, you know, this is not the community that i know, this shooting. the community that i know is what's happening right now and there are literally hundreds of people people link up at dozens of centers so much so that have

been lining up to donate blood for all those wounded and are in the hospital right now that secondary call has gone out for people to help those who are standing in line to donate blood, so there's a call out now for water and for chairs and for umbrellas. it's hot today. it's sunny. it's 90 degrees. there's a call out for additional food to be brought in to help those who are donating blood. i mean, it's really a spectacular uprising and people who are gathering together and getting together and it's not exclusive to any one community. yes, it happened at a gay nightclub but gay and straight and christian and muslim and jewish and everybody is getting together and banding together as a community to help out in the aftermath of this dread full criminal act. >> finally, joe, omar mateen apparently had to drive in 125

miles from the coast from port st. lucie so why do you think he picked this nightclub? it a widely known, most widely known as, you know, a gay nightclub and one of the owners i understand has been very active in this moment with this sort of thing. is it the center in orlando. a beacon? is that why, do you think? >> well, just like i would suppose with straight night clubs. there are gay nightclubs in upscale communities and there are seedy night clubs that are in disreputable communities. of the two the pulse was in a very nice neighborhood. it was a really up and coming newly redeveloped community with nice houses and nice businesses and nice restaurants. i cannot imagine what in a million years would have brought him specifically to this charge

at this time to commit this criminal act other than if he was drawn here by gay days, highly publicized. a big draw for not only people around the state and people come from around the world to celebrate here in orlando and his father anger that had he saw two men kissing in miami, his father indicating this doesn't have anything to do with religion. again, our her the fault condolences and i know thoughts and prayers from all americans around the country and we're all sharing. an attack not just in omero and florida but against our values, our freedoms and what we mean as americans. this is another attack against us. joe, thank you. >> thank you, erik. >> thank you, joe. >> and as law enforcement sifts

through the aftermath of the mass shootings there in orlando, the area hospitals are in high gear. they are treating 53 people who are wounded in this horrible attack. meantime, hundreds of people are link up to donate blood. you've heard the cry out to police to come and donate blood. that will be very helpful because there they are in the trauma centers. dr. samadi is here, dr. marc siegel is here. i'll go with dr. samadi, because you as a surgeon, what is happening in those surgery rooms there. give us an idea. >> so what really is happening you're getting a lot of triage calls for what's going on on the ground and the paramedics have a very critical role to find out and really tell us what kind of injuries we're look for. obviously this is in a nightclunightclu nightclub. you're talking about the gunshot done in a short space of the nightclub and looking high velocity penetrating injuries so

you could have a lot of vascular injuries, bowel injuries so we're waiting in the hospital in the entire trauma booth and the backup team are always there. the difference between level one trauma hospital and regular hospital is you have in house 24-hour surgeons that are available but the scope of this is way beyond any hospital that can take care of this so you need a backup and the backup team needs to be there. backup surgeons are there and everybody get them, triage them and blood products are absolutely vital because one case, if they have gotten any of the iliac vessels you may go through 30, 40 units of blood. >> what iliac ves else? >> aorta, vessels, fresh frozen plaza, iv fluid, so if people can go out and donate and help out, that's the most critical thing people can do. >> dr. siegel, you were an e.r.

doctor for years so you saw this firsthand. tell us what happens when they get all the blood supplies. the there's scentrification. >> there's the golden hour, the amount of time when you get hit by a bullet and the time you get stabilized in an emergency room, it's called the golden hour. with assault rifles, people do not usually survive that because the bullet fragments. once it fragments you've got to follow all the path, the liver becomes damaged and the spleen which can explode. what you have to do is think about severe blood loss. once you stabilize the airway and make shuart patient is breathing, get them to the emergency room and try to get fluid and blood. sometimes you have to drill down to the bone to get fluid in if you can't get an intravenous in.

try to get blood as fast as you can. we have five liters of blood in our body, five liters total. if you lose more than two and that can happen very rapidly in a situation like this you go into what's called. you go into shock and then it becomes really hard to bring you back so on the scene you apply tourniquets and compression dressings and if you're lucky enough to get to the hospital and operating room you don't always take the bullet out. you try to stop the bleeding. >> so the key is the time. time is of an essence and there's 10 to 12 people, res territory doctors, trauma centers, we're all at the booth waiting for it. we're getting calls of someone with not great vital science and they are breathing and we are calling for blood. what happens is the entire process of the hospital shuts down. there's no elective surgeries

and nobody going to the operating room and the cat scan machines, two or three of them have to be freed up, and as far as x-ray team and even cleaning people because when you get people out of the trauma the room has to turn over within a minute or two because another patient has to go in. what's really interesting about this kind of trauma is the entire team works like an orchestra meaning that everybody has to work, in and they usually rip all the clothes off and look at the entry of the bullet wound and look at the exit. if somebody is not stable you get control of the airway which is important. we intubate the patient, operating room is ready and the surgeon goes in and then they are ready to go. >> someone gets shot in the leg, can you stabilize them but get to the people who are shot in the chest first, if their lung is down, get a chest tube in, get the lung back up, shot in the abdomen, those are the people that need emergency surgery and hospitals are expert at that triaging and the other

factor is psychological. they are waiving hipaa laws and people are coming forward with information. there's a mass gathering of people. you know, you have to be calm in these so things and you have to be calm with any victim of a gunshot wound that leads to a much better prognosis. >> i think what happens, all the hospitals, this is really interesting, a lot of times, this hospital works a little different. this is a time that there's a central communication going on between the police, with the fireman and with the triage and all the hospitals and once one hospital is maxed out and you can't take care of it the overflow goes to the second area and this is when not only spiritually but like the strength of american doctors and surgeons and hospital come together to say this is a lot of casualty. when you talk about 50 deaths and probably the numbers will escalate over the next few hours this is a lot of work so it doesn't matter whether you're a urologist or orthopedic surgeon or vascular surgeon you have to be involved in doing blood drawings, transfusing, pushing the patients and everybody will come together. that's really, really the key in

a given crisis like this. >> one more point. this is orlando regional medical center, number one on the front lines of this. they are the only number one trauma center in the central florida region. that's been said again and again by you and the reporters. that's important because there's nothing they are not equipped to handle. >> that's very good news to hear. dr. siegel and dr. smaldy, thank you as always for your expertise. >> thank you. >> as we continue this massacre coverage, 50 people were killed and others were wounded. we're also learning the gunman was armed with an assault rifle and a handgun he was killed in a shootout with police. now investigators are focusing on his possible ties to terrorism. steve is following this story for us in orlando. steve, what is the very latest there on the ground? >> reporter: let's go over the timeline of the facts we know now on the ground.

all this started at 2:00 a.m. this morning, about half mile from where i'm standing 234 front of this trauma center where most victims have been brought. it started with a shootout between one shooter and one police officer at the pulse nightclub. it was latin night at the pulse nightclub. about 320 people inside of that gay nightclub. those shots were exchanged and three hours later, a s.w.a.t. team breached the door of that nightclub and rescued at least 30 hostages. as far as the shooter goes, he's a 29-year-old man, u.s. citizen. parents from afghanistan. his name is omar mateen. as far as the number of dead and wounded go, 50 people killed, 53 wounded. many of those severely wounded. they've been brought to the hospital here at the trauma center behind me. and many of the relatives we've been speaking to, who are gathered at one hotel for newless, are really in the agonizing position now, some of them, of not knowing whether their relatives are dead or alive. they are searching and waiting for some kind of news. we just spoke a few minutes ago to a man who is still looking

for his brother. here's what he had to say. >> he said he was in the club with three of his friends and he made it out okay and they lost him. they don't know where he's at. i'm trying get information from the hospital or somewhere. >> he told us he's been calling his brother's cell phone since the early morning hours. it's been ringing and ringing. suddenly that cell phone no longer ringing. a lot of people in a real position of agonizing, uncertainty here. surgeries behind me have been going on all morning. they brought in six trauma surgeons here. the blood line is now blocks long. people trying to do what they can to help out. become back to you. >> of course, people will come together as a community, steve. speaking of that, we got that same sense of community in paris. you were there. at the paris terror attacks, covering that. does this feel in any way similar to you, now that you're here in orlando covering another horrific mass gun shooting?

>> a couple similarities do really poke right out. first, it's a soft target. in paris it was the bataclan theater. people were listening to a band at night. again, it's a soft target, a nightclub, young people inside. the second thing really that stands out is just the brutality. in paris, innocent people, out for a night, gunned down with automatic rifle fire, really slaughtered. here again it seems to be at this point, the same thing. a hard brutality of slaughtering innocent young people. this time, though, not in paris. in orlando. back to you. >> very sobering. steve harrigan, thank you so much. eric? >> authorities now investigating the influence and possibility of radical terrorism. as we've been reporting, omar seddique mateen, part of an fbi

investigation according to the daily beast in 2013. the case was closed. as it happened before, brussels, paris, syria, kenya. how do we stop it? we're joined now, president of the american islamic forum for democracy, co-founder of the muslim reform movement and author of "the battle for the soul of islam." thank you for joining us today. americans all over the country right now are asking, how does your religion, how can you stop this perversion, the ideology of terrorism that has struck this country since nosar back in 1990. we've been living with this here in our country for 26 years. >> well, eric, my prayers and especially in this month of ramadan are with the victims, the families, orlando and our country. words cannot express every time this happens, we keep telling ourselves, at which point are we muslim going to look in the

mirror and begin to declare war on what has declared war on us as americans? that's what really needs to happen. this is not violent extremism, it's not lone wolfs. i beg of you to stop using the term lone wolf. this is an ideology, a global ideological movement that is political islam. that has its different shapes. it attacks free speech. it attacks free secular countries. we saw it with "charlie hebdo" and now. we need to confront it, be real and stop the denial. muslims need to be part of it. we can't get past it without real reforms. to get our shariah islamic law out of the 13th century in which it's stuck. we need to have -- look, they said this individual declared allegiance to isis as he was being shot by the police officers. that allegiance is the enemy, which is islamopatriotism.

we need to fight that. >> we haven't had that confirmed yet, but clearly that will come up with the investigation. you have a good point. a few hours ago in florida during the news conference, they brought out a local imam with good intentions. but at the news conference the imam said no one could have predicted this. it shouldn't be sensationalized. but as you said, it's happened in bataclan, san bernardino, paris. this is just the latest of these attacks. >> i know he called on muslims to help police, et cetera, but they almost talk about this as bystanders and they have no idea how this would have happened. in chattanooga, the killer, the terrorist declared he wanted to establish islam days before he committed the act. san bernardino, they were part of the hooda school. we as muslims in orlando need to realize we need to counter the ideology before they become militants, violent extremism and change the mantra from violent

extremism to violent muslim. i'm not seeing enough anger from muslim ideology. in this month of atoinment, we should look in the mirror, and say, what is it about the ideas we harbor with us in the countries we live in? this radical clearly divided the world into islam and the land of war. he believed gay bars, et cetera, aren't part of iran, aren't part of saudi arabia where muslims are supreme and he wanted to establish that here. we as muslims need to stand and declare intolerance on that extremism and hate. >> they have declared war on us, our values and freedom and what we represent. they've been doing that for a generation. we thank you for your analysis and insight today. >> thank you. >> eric, we're awaiting remarks from president obama on the orlando nightclub shooting. christian fisher is live inside the white house press briefing

room right now. we're expecting the president at 1:30 eastern time. do we have any idea exactly what the president might say, kristin? >> reporter: president obama should be speaking at this podium in the white house briefing room in about 30 minutes. this is where he spoke after sandy hook. this is where he spoke after the charleston church shootings. this is where he will speak today after what's now the worst mass shooting in u.s. history. now, the president was briefed this morning about what happened in orlando. he was briefed by his assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, lisa monaco. shortly after that briefing, the white house then released its first statement and it reads in part, quote, our thoughts and prayers are with the family and loved ones of the victims. the president asked to receive regular updates as fbi and officials work with orlando police to get more information. and ask the federal government to provide any assistance necessary to pursue the investigation and support the community. now, vice president joe biden has also been briefed. he was actually scheduled --

already scheduled to be traveling tonight to florida for a private fund-raiser with debbie wasserman schultz, chairwoman of the democratic national committee. the vice president has cancelled that event. he will be staying in washington. so will homeland security jed johnson. he was supposed to be traveling to china for talks about cyber security issues. it's just been announced he, too, will be staying in washington. >> thank you so much. again, we are waiting for president obama to address the nation at 1:30 eastern time. as we cover this horrific story here coming out of orlando, florida. the pulse gay nightclub there, 50 people killed. 53 people wounded. the deadliest shooting on u.s. soil in modern history. >> it surely strikes at the heart of us in this country. so many questions continue right now, whether it was -- was, indeed, radical islamic terrorism that motivated him, it

was hatred of gays or a combination thereof. all of this part of the investigation. we, again, sadly have seen the latest mass shooting that has struck an act of terrorism with the leanings of radical islamic terrorism at its heart. i asked the fbi if there was any connection to islamic radicalism. there appears to be. but they are naturally cautious and waiting throughout to see if this is the facts emerge. >> according to local police, he made a pledge of allegiance to isil, was heard praying in a foreign language. and i don't know if this was at some point during the course of the shooting. >> florida senator bill nelson and congressman adam shift, who democrats a short time ago saying it does appear