(penguin 2) the future, boys. the glorious future. (vo) at&t and directv are now one- bringing your television and wireless together- and taking entertainment to places you'd never imagine. (rick) louis, i think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. right now on "andrea mitchell reports," heavy hearts. a day after two lives were cut short. the staff at a local tv station reaches deep to find the strength. >> this is a newscast like none other. we come to you this morning with very heavy hearts. holding hands here on the desk. the only way to do it. we will heal from this. thank you. >> this morning the father of one of the victims voiced his rage against the man who took his daughter's life. >> he's a coward.

he was a sick basturd and a coward. and, you know, i -- if there is a hell, i hope he's down there enjoying all the benefits. >> coming up, remembrances from those close to the two journalists. the decision, the vice president reveals what he's thinking as he considers another run for the white house. >> if i were to announce to run i would have to be able to a commit to all of you i would commit with my whole heart and my whole soul. right now both are pretty well banged up. katrina ten years later. we go back to the man who had to pick up the pieces after the levees broke. >> any plan to repopulate the city must be accompanied with a detailed plan on how the individuals will be notified, how they will be evacuated in time so they're not impacted by any time of storm.

good day. i'm luke russert. in for andrea mitchell on a somber day for an entire virginia community mourning the loss of two young people whose lives were cut short after a sudden violent act. allison parker and adam ward shot to death during a wednesday morning newscast by a former co-worker who died hours later from self-inflicted gunshot wound. this morning alison and adam's wdbj family observed a moment of silence in honor of their co-workers. alison's boyfriend recounted his last moments with the love of his life. >> i worked until about midnight. would come home around midnight and would stay up for her and would be there for her as she woke up and got started with her day. and yesterday morning i made her her favorite scrambled eggs and

a smoothie and packed her a lunch. i had never done that before for any woman, for anyone but i wanted to do it for alison because i loved her so much and i just took so much joy and something so minor as cutting strawberries for her to pack for her for a lunch and, you know, she was the most important thing in the world to me. >> ryan parkhurst was alison parker's broadcast journalism professor while she was a student at james madison university. he joins me now. professor, thank you so much for making the time. >> thanks for having me, luke. getting the word out about how alison lived is incredibly important. i'm happy to do it. >> absolutely. there is a "usa today" article, it quoted you just sort of about all son. she was a passionate person, a dogged attitude, never willing to settle for half of the story. bubbly, smart. you said you had all of these

superlatives of her that were cliche, but in this case were all true. >> yeah, absolutely. it's tough to put into words the type of person she was because she was incredibly genuine, very smart, a wonderful reporter and even better person if that's possible. and you know, it's rare that you have a special relationship with a student where you feel like you're learning a little bit something from them as they're learning from you. but i had that with alison. it's just devastating that she's not going to be able to share her personality and her craft with the world anymore. >> many are remembering her today. i want to play what her father said about her and her 24 short years. >> she was 24, but she lived a great 24. she had the love of her life of chris hurst and she loved her

family so much. and she was loved by everyone. i'm trying to get through these things but it's just very difficult to do so. >> professor, how is the james madison university community coping today? >> i think that's the word, we're coping. i spoke with professors and staff that i'm very friendly with and that knew alison just as well as i did. we're all -- we just can't -- i think still stunned and numb. can't understand how something could happen to someone who was that bright of a person and that much of a shining star. we all -- we all loved her. and everyone remembers something about her. and three years on, outside of jmu, we still talked about her and i still used her as an example in my class every single time i teach about the right way

to be a journalist and the right way to do your job and the right way to be a student. and i'll still use that as an example because she was just that good. >> and from my research i gathered that she gave back, that she was very involved with the school paper "the breeze" but even after she graduated she was more than happy to come back and help mentor younger students and give a little bit of what she learned in her short career as a journalist. >> yes. she was -- she would actually e-mail me unprompted saying usually we feel like we're soliciting, can you come back, would you mind coming back, we know it's a big hassle. she would e-mail and say, want to come back, what do you need me to do, i want to talk to students. even when she was in her first job in north carolina where it was a bit of a hike to jmu she came back a couple of times to talk specifically to my classes. she came back for basically an end of year celebration of our department and served on a panel

there talking to students about journalism and what it takes to be a great broadcast journalist and i was always so thankful that a lot of times students leave and you never hear from them again if but she wanted to come back and she wanted topaz on what she had land and the things that she had done. and that's amazing that a former student would give that much that early on in her career. >> absolutely. professor ryan parkhurst of jmu, thank you for taking time for us on what is a very difficult day for you. >> thanks for having me. >> take care. for more on the story i'm joined by nbc's halle jackson in virginia and our justice correspondent pete williams in our washington newsroom. you've been doing wonderful reporting down there in virginia. we've obviously heard from alison parker's father. he's very passionate about what happened to his daughter, specifically citing the role of guns. i want to play that for you. >> my grief, which is still

apparent and will be that way for a while, it's turned to anger because, you know, how many times are we going to see an incident like this happen? you know, newtown, charleston, you know, the movie theaters, you name it. it's got to stop. nationally, locally, we've got to find a way to keep crazy people from getting guns. >> filled with a lot of emotion but also now a sense of purpose. >> and he has talked about, luke, that this is his mission. this for him will be alison's legacy, this idea of promoting gun control, of pushing for better and stricter gun control laws. he told one of our deucers off camera that what john walsh has done, how john walsh has become a figure head. he said, you ain't seen nothing yet essentially with what he plans to do in focusing on and turning the conversation to gun control.

that said, alison's boyfriend, chris hurst, who we heard from here on msnbc, on nbc news, has said also if what happened at sandy hook didn't change people's minds, he said he didn't believe that this shooting here in virginia would do the same. so it seems though that is where the conversation is turning today. we've heard our political leaders talking about this. as for the investigation about the shooting here itself, you might notice the police presence has significantly diminished over the last maybe 24 hours as the investigation shifts into sort of a more desk or office mode. we saw, for example, the live truck that broadcast that shooting being packed up and driven out of here by some visibly emotional employees of wdbj, the tv station here. you talk about parker's father. clearly emotional. clearly very fired up, as is everybody. but one of the things that we've noticed here in southwest virginia is the support from people all over the community, people sending those flowers, putting the tributes outside the

station, the #westandwithwdbj. this hits home with a lot of folks in this tight knit town. luke? >> indeed, thank you so much for that report. i want to go to pete williams, justice correspondent. pete, what more do we know now about vester flanagan? i understand that he purchased his guns legally? >> you know, it's very difficult to watch the father interviewed, but these are the hard facts. according to law enforcement officials, vester flanagan bought two glock 19 .9 mill m t millimeter handguns. we bought them legally, law enforcement officials say, from a firearms dealer a couple of weeks ago in virginia. the weapon can carry a 17-round magazine, which is apparently the number of shots, 17 or 18 shots, that were fired, if you had an additional round in the chamber you could have 18 rounds

in that gun and that apparently is roughly the number that were fired. the difficulty here is that there's nothing in his background under current law that would have disqualified him from buying firearms. he was arrested in 2004 in north carolina, but that's a traffic offense. the charge was dismissed. even if he had been convicted that's a misdemeanor and under federal law the only thing that would disqualify you is being convicted of a felony or being involved in a misdemeanor domestic violence case. as for his mental health background, federal laugh, again, is very strict. the law says that you can be denied a gun if you are -- and i'm using the term of the law, a judged mentally defective. that means there has to be a court finding. what we know about vester flanagan's background is that he was directed by his employer when he worked there in roanoke

to seek in-company counseling. but that certainly doesn't meet the standard of federal law. we've seen this over and over again in these recent shootings. people who are unbalanced, depressed, hot tempered, but the federal law doesn't reach that. and as you so well know, luke, changing the gun control laws is a virtual impossibility in the current congress. so these, as i say, these are the hard facts. >> hard facts, indeed. nbc's pete williams. thank you for your time. hallie jackson in virginia, thank you as well. lisa gold is a clinical professor of psychology at the georgetown university school of medicine. she joins me now to put all of this in perspective. dr. gold, workplace violence, it happens a lot more than one would think. from 1997 to 2010, there were almost 900 homicides committed by a co-worker or former

co-worker. average of 63 homicides her year. what are come of the signs to look for in a co-worker if you are worried about them or think they are hot tempered and sort of unbalanced, as pete williams just said? >> okay. well, let me just say i'm a professor of psychiatry, just full disclosure. that's okay. but, you know, these are -- the issue of workplace violence, people who are disgruntled employees, who get into trouble, who have interpersonal relationship problems, they don't get along with others, they may ultimately be suspended or fired or, you know, put on performance improvement plans, and they feel mistreated. i think that one of the key things is somebody who constantly or chronically feels that they've been treated badly by their employer for whatever reason. and sometimes they may have legitimate reasons to feel that way. often they may not. they overpersonalize employment actions that are not personal.

but they become disgruntled. their behavior starts to change. sometimes even their dress or hygiene starts to change. these are people who sometimes start to devolve into developing some serious mental illness. but they don't always have to have serious mental illness. the really significant part about this, and again, speaking directly to this recent horrible incident, and by the way, my condolences and prayers go out to these families for this tragedy, is that these are angry people. they're angry and dangerous. and mental illness doesn't necessarily have to be part of that. there are p people who have angry and dangerous and don't have serious mental illness. the problem is that we frequently stereotype if people are angry and dangerous and violent, then they must have mental illness. and that's just not the case. people with serious mental

illness are rarely, rarely violent towards other people. they are much more hikely to commit suicide than they are to commit homicide, and particularly homicide of strangers or acquaintances. >> what more can businesses do to be on the lookout for this, because oftentimes you hear a large corps or a large business or what not, okay, there's a hemline here but it's sort of navigating a bureaucracy and it's not exactly like someone is going to do to their supervisor, hi, i'm not feeling well mentally, can you please take me through the 12-step process here internally? what can businesses do to be more progressive or understanding? >> i think it's bigger than just the businesses. i think there are social stereotypes we have to continually fight about people being able to acknowledge that they are having emotional difficulties, mental problems, and feel okay about reaching out for help. part of the problem is that

there are still tremendous amount of negative stigma attached. >> life is hard, play through it. >> right. and if you tell your boss that you're having problems with, you know, depression or thoughts of suicide or something like that, you know, that's going to have an impact on your career and your career may be one of the few things that's going well for you and you might not want that particular impact. there are also lots of laws about what, you know, your employer can and can't inquire about and it gets into the issues of discriminating against people with disabilities or illnesses. it becomes very complicated. i think it is a broader social issue where we have to make it clear to people that it's okay to ask for help and not stigmatize them. and unfortunately whenever one of these incidents happens, we all kind of jump to the, it must be a crazy person. >> no, it's more systemic though. you have to few it for the long point. dr. liza gold, thank you for your time. professor, thank you so much. >> it's okay either way. thank you.

we also learned last night from one of the anchors at wdbj that melissa, fiance of adam ward, received her wedding dress just hours after the deadly shooting. shortly after melissa shared her thoughts on facebook saying her entire world was flipped upside-down yesterday and adding, i'm not okay and won't be for a long time. she did continue on to say, quote, adam, i will never find a man so happy, selfless, protective, funny, or charming like you. you are the one. you understood me, my soul mate. i will always live you. please watch over me and keep me strong. enjoy the endless tech games in your heaven. i love you so much. go hokie, adam ward. we'll be right back. doers. they don't worry if something's possible. they just do it. at sears optical, we're committed to bringing them eyewear that works as hard as they do. right now, buy one pair and get another free. quality eyewear for doers. sears optical

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welcome back. we've got politics. donald trump is in south carolina today. one of many states where he's leading in primary polls, keeping constant pressure on his republican rivals. joining me now for our "daily fix" molly ball and chris cillizza, msnbc contributor and found irer of "washington post" blog. chris, i want to start off with you. have you here in studio. new quinnipiac poll shows donald trump ahead again followed by ben carson and then you have bush, cruz, and rubio all there at 7%. it seems that you're now sort of looking at this development of bush versus trump, bush versus trump. trump has gotten bush to play on his ground. they're exchanging barbs left and right. bush saying he's not serious. is this the sort of big fight or at least in the early stage? >> yeah, i think it is.

i mean, look, in some ways the fight we knew was going to plal out, establishment versus sort of call it what you want, movement, conservative, tea party. did we think it was going to be donald trump as representative of the movement and the tea party conservatives? no. but this is the fight that i think we expected. look at that poll, the thing that struck me, 40% right, 27% for truck, 40% are four people who have never held elected office. not haven't been in senate, not ever been -- never held elected office before. in carson's trace -- actually in trump's case never run for anything. that tells you something about the mood of the electorate. >> you have a fall falloff of scott walker there and it shows you the difficulty of jeb running this long campaign because you basically can say 40% of the electorate who is saying no thank you. >> i think look at head-to-head, nobody looks at this but look at head-to-head polls polls. trump versus bush or rubio versus bush. that will tell you overlapping

concentric circles. most of the ben carson and donald trump voters are never, to your point, going to be for a jeb bush like fig sglur correct. probably more on the cruz side. molly ball, let's talk about joe biden, all over the newspapers. he's pretty much been written up as going to run, definitely. the man himself though did say something a little bit more nuance, a little bit more different. let's play what he said on a conference call with some dnc folks. >> i've given this a lot of thought and dealing internally in the family about how we do this. if i were to announce to run i have to be able to commit to all of you that i would be able to give it my whole heart and my whole soul, and right now both are pretty well bapgnged up. >> new quinnipiac polls show biden doing better in a general than hillary clinton against some of the top tier republican opponents. the question though does is does joe biden have the energy? >> yeah. i mean, i think there's a bunch

of considerations that joe biden is weighing and the people that i've spoken to around him believe that he really hasn't made up his mind and that a lot of this speculation really is premature. so as you say, there is an emotional calculation for joe biden. not only the emotional calculation of how difficult it would be on him and his family to run, but i think it would also be really difficult for him emotionally not to run because that would be basically closing the book on his political career. this is his last chance. he's always wanted this. he's risen so far in his long career in politics, he's gotten almost there. there's also the political calculation and i think these quinnipiac polls that show him running well in a general election, better than hillary clinton, but also getting 18% of the democratic primary vote before he's even announced, that shows that there is room for joe biden hypothetically in this race. and so those are the things that he's weighing as he decides. >> chris, he does very well with numbers in terms of who is more trustworthy. >> yep.

>> the question i think needs to be asked though, is how much of these numbers are because of people's sympathy towards him after what happened and how much of them are real because, remember, you can go back to anita hill, you can go back to his comments about president obama being clean cut and articulate, about indian-americans in delaware. there's ample fodder for -- >> remember, this is a long time ago but he was drif ven out of the 1988 presidential race in 1987 because of a plagiarism scandal. there is a lot there. the answer, luke, is i don't know how much, you know, what's good will and what'ser hard vote for biden. what we do know is even aside from the sympathy which i think is quite clearly there among democrats is that we know that the candidate who is thinking about running is always the most popular. i always say it's like the backup quarterback. you know what i mean? the guy sort of not the guy out there slinging interceptions, we know this well in washington,

curt cousins is the most popular guy. if you step in and all of a sudden you're the starter, in cousins case question saw what happened there, he struggled. i would be wary. i think biden's best day pollingwise might be the first day he gets into the raise and see the slide that hillary has seen, which starts off popular and just fades and fades and fades as people see more and more political. >> chris cillizza, thank you so much. molly ball, take care. ten years ago today hurricane katrina was bearing down on the gulf course. coming up, we'll talk to the man who came in to clean up the government's botched response. this is "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. ♪ ♪

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the city forced to we build their lives a decade ago. u.s. coast guard vice admiral thad allen was asked to lead katrina two weeks after the storm. he appeared on "meet the press" ten days later. >> are you concerned that the levees may not hold if there's another storm? not a hurricane, but a storm. >> the fact of the matter is, the levees are in a significantly weakened state. any plan to repopulate the city must be accompanied with a detailed plan on how the individuals will be notified, how they will be evacuated in time so they're not impacted by any type of storm. >> and admiral thad allen joins me now from new orleans. he's a member of the department of homeland security advisory counsel in an executive allen hamilton. thank you for making the time. >> good morning, luke. >> have we now ten years later safeguarded against everything that could go wrong in a place

like new orleans if they experience a storm like katrina? >> luke, you can never drive risk to zero. there have been extraordinary things done. the pumping stations tas mouth of the canals at lake pontchartrain, food walls south of new orleans. a number of things have been done but you can't drive risk to zero. >> one thing we learned from katrina is the fault line of american society. the rich were okay. the poor not so much. many of them left to drowned. my father interviewed michael, the homeland security secretary at the time. my father got his irish up during thissish view. >> the only way to avoid a catastrophic problem is to have people leave before the hurricane hits. those who got out are fine. those who stayed in faced one of the most horrible experiences in their life. >> but that's the point. those who got out were people with suvs and automobiles and

airfares, who could get out. those who could not get out were the poor, who rely on public bus toes get out. your website says that your department assumes primary responsibility for a national disaster. if you knew a hurricane 3 storm was coming, why weren't buses, trains, planes, cruise ships, trucks provided on friday, saturday, sunday to evacuate people before the storm? >> thad allen are you confident the government would have those buses, those cruise ship, needed infrastructure in place to evacuate the people if another storm like katrina came? >> i don't think there's any question they're in a better response posture now than they were back then. i think we need to understand the response is a shared responsibility. first response is a state and local responsibility. the government comes in when the resources they need exceed their capabilities. it's the vertical integration, the preparation and the planning, and the creating of

unity of effort that gets this done. the second piece is the event doesn't create the preconditions. to the extent you have high density housing shs special needs populations or transportation issues they're going to be exacerbated and increase the consequences of these events. that's the reason preparation and planning and focusing on resiliency, integrated vertically from the first responders to the federal government is extraordinarily important. >> the way the media worked back then in 2005 during katrina was not nearly as wide spread as media is today with social media and smartphones. do you think the response would have been as bad in the social media age, meaning a lot of people did not know really how bad the conditions were until a few days after. in this day and age with information processing more quickly, do you think the response would have been better? >> well, i personally believe that social media is the sociological equivalent of climate change. i think it would make a very great difference. i think we saw it in the boston

bombings and the deep horizon oil spill. it was preface book and pretwitter and lat tense si involved in sharing the information. i think we all agree right now that crowd sourcing, understanding what's going on in the communication between the public is a very valuable asset when these things happens. >> thank you so much for giving us some of your time from new orleans today. take care. >> thank you, luke. up next, gun violence in the social media age. what it means for law enforcement and for us. this is "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. to folks out there whose diabetic nerve pain...

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nbc's craig melvin joins me now from new york for more on this murder that was carried out on social media. >> some folks are calling this a social media murder. again, let's wake you through the timeline here. 6:43 yesterday morning, this is when the gunman shot alison parker and adam ward. also shot local chamber of commerce rep vicki gardner. at last check gardner was in good condition. she was shot in the back, rushed to the hospital. she's expected to be okay. this is a freeze frame. that's actually not it. we've got a freeze frame of the gunman. we're not going to show any portion of the video, moments before he fired eight times. didn't utter a word. at 11:09, 11:09 a.m., the gunman soon starts to tweet about the shooting. that was the first tweet. his first tweet made mepntion o parker making racist comments. there was another tweet of made

mention of ward reporting him to human resources. then he tweets, i filmed the shooting. see facebook. at 11:14 he tweets two videos from the shooting and posts another to facebook. soon, shortly thereafter, facebook and twitter both rushed to take down the posts. they shut down his account but not before that video was clicked and shared thousands of times. around 11:30, the car used by the shooter to get away, this gray chevy rental spotted by virginia state trooper, shortly after that the trooper approached the car and discovered that the shooter had shot himself. at 1:26 yesterday afternoon the hospital an newsed that he was dead. this morning on "today" alison parker's boyfriend who is also an anchor at the same station talked about what he believed was at least part of the motivation for this murder. >> we are starting to see his continued boldness from people who want to commit murders in cold blood for notoriety and he

did it to my sweet alison and he did it to adam. >> murder for notoriety, luke. that is the only -- one of the only possible explanations for why you would post the video and the pictures right after. >> so shocking. craig melvin, thank you so much for that detailed timeline. appreciate you helping us understand this tragedy. this morning,with dbj general manager jeff marks recounted the moments following the shooting in his newsroom with "today"'s savannah guthrie. >> adam's camera caught a glimpse of the gunman. were there people in your newsroom who immediately recognized him? how is it that so quickly police were able to identify who this was? >> our chief photographer came over to me and said you have to see this. everybody gathered around it said that's vester.

and i wasn't sure. they were. around we immediately passed that on to the franklin county sheriff. >> lenny due paul is former chief inspector and commander. lenny, thank you so much for making the time. >> you're welcome. good afternoon. >> you heard our intro there, alison parker's boyfriend about what he thinks is an increased boldness in society, that people want to carry out murders like these for notoriety, everything we do now lives in facebook or twitter or instagram and people create these bubbles for themselves that they want to bring attention upon themselves. how is law enforcement handling this new found technology and this newfound phenomenon of people acting out in way to try and get attention in this case, criminally and committing a horrific murder? >> horrific murder. when they responded to the

scene, they were able to capture that video from the cameraman. they got a still shot. social media worked to their advantage. they were able to put this photo out, tweet it. they had people put it out to thousands of their friends on facebook. folks back at the station have recognized the suspect, and it worked to law enforcement's advantage. once somebody's identified for us, as u.s. marshals and our agency, of course, was assisting the virginia state troopers and franklin county, at that point it's, you know, pretty much over with respect to finding somebody. you know, he's identified at this point. we turned him upside-down, looked at everything about him. his history, twitter, facebook pages were firing up. i tip my hat to both of those networks. social media certainly cooperated with law enforcement. they were able to utilize that to their advantage in the world of technology. we bring a lot of state-of-the-art equipment to the table and, of course, forget her name, virginia state

trooper, she fired up her license plate reader and was able to suck in those plates. and she saw he went by him two minutes prior to that. she puts it out. the cavalry shows up and, of course, it was consistent to his mental makeup and how this whole thing ended yesterday afternoon. >> let's talk about the license plate locator because that is a piece of technology i would say is probably fairly recent in terms of how detailed it can be. it can get those numbers and figure out where the car is and what the make and model are. how wide spread is that technology and how successful has it been in terms of law enforcement? >> it's been a home run for us. we've deployed a couple of those within my task force a few years back. they're still using them. when you're able to bring in these license plates and these registrations into a database and share them with law enforcement, looking for stolen vehicles and, of course, in this case yesterday, he had a few vehicles in question. they were able to support or add that into the database and, you

know, look what happened. the state trooper fired up her unit on route 66. she saw the car -- didn't see the car but she saw it in her database that it captured it as it went by her and within two minutes she was able to catch up and, again, her back-up arrived and they were able to put this thing to rest. and thank god no one else was, you know, was killed or suicide by cop or whatever. >> indeed. lenny, thank you so much for taking the time. appreciate it. >> you're welcome. all right. let's touurn to politics of the day. donald trump is speaking in an event in greenville, south carolina. he just had somebody touch his hair to make sure that it was real. i'm not kidding. that just happened. let's take a listen to what the donald has to say right now as he's been reading from a newspaper. >> -- which was an amazing event. you know, i made my best speech the other night in iowa and it was live on all the networks but nobody talked about it because i had this guy getting up and ranting and raving like a

lunatic and that was all they covered nape didn't cover my speech. it was the best speech i've ever made. that's my opinion. it's true. they kept covering this maniac. in iowa when the candidate, that's me, erupted -- when i erupted. i never erupted. he erupted. front pange, "new york times." when the candidate erupted at jorge ramos, the uniinvestigation -- who i'm suing for $500 million. i'm suing them. they broke a contract. you know i'm really good at contracts. if you're a golfer you know what a plus 5 is? that's really good. that's like tiger or jack in their prime, plus five. i'm plus five at contracts. so i'm suing them. they're not happy. when they trade to ask a question without being called on. so he -- so they have me erupting. all i was doing is standing. they're saying, no, no, no,

because cbs was asking a question at the time. the room was packed. it was absolutely packed. it was packed with reporters. and it was a news conference. so i'm standing there and i'm saying, okay, go ahead, go ahead. then all of a sudden this guy gets up, start screaming at the top of his lungs. and it was unfair to the other reporters. and most of them have reported that. and i said, listen, you're going to have to stop because i haven't called on you yet. and he wouldn't stop. it wasn't questions. he was making statements. you all saw it. the problem is the media doesn't cover it that way. so here they have front page of "the new york times" that i erupted. i never erupted. i never even raised my voice. in fact, much of the media, the fair media, even some of the liberal media, said i really handled the situation well. can you believe it? i was shocked. shocked. so -- but now i'm on the front page of the "new york times" saying, number one, i wear a toupee, and number two, i erupted at this guy, and number three, they said hitler.

i don't like that. okay. so the news media -- here, you can have it. anybody want it? >> that's donald trump live at an event in greenville, south carolina, talking about his incident with the univision journalist jorge ramos a few days ago. we will continue this throughout the day here on msnbc. a bit of breaking news just came in to our political newsroom. vice president joe biden is having an official meeting today with the afl-cio's richard trumpka, the large uniyuunion hn the united states. influential politically especially on the democratic side. the fact that biden is meeting with them is leading some to speculate that perhaps he's taking a very, very serious look at 2016 and tried to amass a coalition. if you were able to get organized labor behind him out of the gate, that would be quite significant. but we can report to you today that joe biden, the vice president of the united states, is meeting with the afl-cio's

richard trumka. we will have more on this when we come back here on "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. american express for travel and entertainment worldwide. just show them this - the american express card. don't leave home without it! and someday, i may even use it on the moon. it's a marvelous thing! oh! haha! so you can replace plane tickets, traveler's cheques, a lost card. really? that worked? american express' timeless safety and security are now available on apple pay.

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news out of concorde, new hampshire. just minutes ago jury deliberations began in a trial of an elite prep school student accuse of sexually assaulting a younger classmate. owen labrie has pleaded not guilty to all charges. nbc's gabe gutierrez join mess now from outside the courthouse. gabe, what's the latest? >> luke, good afternoon. the defense is really tried to portray owen labrie as a high-achieving soccer captain on scholarship and planned to at tend harvard and become a minister. central to their case they sclam that labrie never actually had intercourse with his then 15 yerld accuser. prosecutors allege he sexually assaulted her last year on the campus of st. paul's, one of the nation's most elite prep schools as part of a ritual known as the senior salute. yesterday during his testimony

labrie acknowledged he had deleted 119 facebook message on the advice of his mother. in one exchange he told a friend he tried every trick in the book to have sex with the girl. n now, the defense says the crude jokes do not make him guilty. and today during their closing arguments his high profile defense attorney jay carney says that labrie is not a saint, he's a teenager. now the jury has begun their deliberations. a jury of nine men and three women will decide his fate. if convicted labrie faces up to 20 years in prison on each of the felony sexual assault charges. luke? >> nbc's gabe gutierrez, thank you for that report. more of "andrea mitchell reports" when we come back.

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welcome back. this does it for edition ofrepo"

before we do, as alison parker and adam ward's go on air today, use the #westandwithwdbj. and we stand with them here.

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today on "msnbc live" donald trump has new fighting words for jorge ramos and the "new york times." all this in south carolina as a new poll shows the gop brand gaining even more ground. any minute now we are expecting the donald to give a media availability with reporters. we will bring that to you live. plus, we've got new data giving vice president joe biden a competitive edge against hillary clinton in a potential 2016 match-up. but is he ready to run? the still grieving vp speaks out for the first time about deciding whether or not he and his family are ready for this race. hi, everybody. i'm thomas roberts. great to have you with me. we do start this hour with new

developments in the shooting of wdbj reporter alison parker, her photographer adam ward, the station's general manager and news directler be holding a briefing at 3:00 p.m. eastern. this as tributes to the victims continue to pour in with a memorial building outside the station growing by the hour. trying to come to grips with this tragedy happening just over 24 hours ago. this morning they held a moment of silence on air at the exact time their colleagues were shot. >> we are approaching a moment that none of us will forget. it was yesterday around this sometime that we went live to alison parker and photo journalist adam ward. we are ending this moment with our continued thanks and support for all of you at home. >> so the grief is truly evident in the words of those close to the victims, especially parker's father, visibly shaken. >> she had the love of her life with chris hurst, and she loved her familyo