to carry out multiple attacks because it has an added demoralizing factor. >> cal perry, are you seeing any evidence of other coastal cities in france that are taking precautions or creating unofficial curfews or anything like that? >> no, but i am seeing major cities in europe starting to ramp up their security, not just in france, but germany in particular. >> bob franken, you heard that description -- okay. i just lost bob. i have cal. cal, you heard that description of a show of force that was on the street. what are you seeing? you're saying other cities are preparing. what have you seen in retrospect where people are saying well, we had this extra security here today or there? >> yeah. keep in mind also in europe, i'm working the phones trying to make my way back to the office, but keep in mind they were waiting and they were on alert

for the europe cup to begin with so they have security personnel in place in many of these cities because they just had a very large international football event. >> right. >> i think there was a relief when that ended and this didn't happen because everybody had their eye on major events but certainly places like germany are going to go on high alert after today's attack. >> cal perry. you will stop hearing from me but stick on the line. i'm going to hand coverage over to brian williams. brian, as you heard from christopher dickey, nice, not -- it's not uncommon to hear about jihadists or extremists being in nice and launching various ways out of that country into hot spots from there. so not a surprise to some close watchers of what goes on in france. >> indeed. chuck todd, thanks. as we transition from "meet the

press daily" into breaking news coverage here, just after 6:00 p.m. on the east coast, it's late at night of course in france, the 14th of july is their july 4th, bastille day, and it is normally a national holiday. it was being celebrated in the seaside city of nice tonight with fireworks. you see these pictures immediately after the incident and in the background, in fact, you see a small fireworks display. it looks like somebody setting off bottle rockets or a roman candle still while people are running away. the truck we have seen in photographs, the truck all we know is a truck plowed into a crowd, a crowd of people of all types and ages gathered on a beautiful summer night for fireworks. this happened along the major seaside promenade in nice, as has been established so far in

our coverage. as countries go, you see a lot more public security in paris, especially these days, especially since the loss of 130 souls at the hands of terrorists back in november. nice especially, you will see police, you will see soldiers and you will see automatic weaponry out in public to give people more security, at least a feeling of it, as they walk around. the mayor of nice as our graphic has reported, bottom of screen, has been saying that dozens of deaths are being reported in his city. the people of nice have been urged to stay inside and you saw people scattering, again, along that major seaside promenade. bob franken was reporting that people were urged down on to the

beach with police feeling that perhaps that was the safest place if there were real fears of a second vehicle pulling another sort of an attack. again, fog of war rules apply in the early moments after anything suspected of being a terrorist attack. there was a report of an exchange of gunfire, unconfirmed. we have an unconfirmed number of deaths and injuries. bob franken is a long-time veteran television journalist known to many of us, and he is on the ground tonight in nice. bob, at the risk of some repetition, as we have started the top of a new hour here in the u.s., tell us what is known there. >> okay. again, information is tough to get as you might imagine. but we have watched a fireworks display, it's bastille day which

is comparable to our independence day, and nice was crowded over this long weekend. there was a fireworks display. shortly after it was over, people started screaming, a truck according to witnesses had come on to the pedestrian walkway alongside the promenade des anglais and started mowing people down. i personally saw over a dozen who had been mowed down, some of them obviously were dead. others were injured. and the truck then sped away and according to other reports was spotted and stopped somewhere down the road, not within my line of sight, by the way. meanwhile, police were urging people or ordering people down on to the beach. there was certainly an impression that they were worried there would be a second attack. after awhile, people who had run

from the area by the thousands had evacuated and people were obviously very shaken and the tragedy was unfolding as we could see along the walkway, alongside the promenade des anglais. >> i was in that city recently, though not since the attacks at the bataclan. tell us about the public visibility and public stance of both police and army personnel. how many automatic weapons would you see, for example, as an american tourist visiting nice? >> well, quite a few. obviously over the years, the police presence has increased as it has everywhere, certainly in the united states. on this particular evening as we were walking around quite frankly to go to dinner, we saw a very, very heavy police presence. in fact, they closed down the

roadway so pedestrians could use it. there was supposed to be [ inaudible ] throughout the city this evening. obviously that has not happened. there was a heavy presence. it's the kind of thing you have gotten used to so quite frankly, i didn't particularly take note of it. but that is of course sympt symptomatic of the times we live in. >> we are at the mercy of what we are reading off social media and the wire services, and good people like you, especially in your case, as a veteran journalist. this doesn't appear to be the case where the brakes simply failed on a truck. >> nobody -- speeding down the road certainly makes this seem like an attack. they use the word terrorism a

little bit. that's a word of course you don't want to throw around but it certainly seemed to be an attack. again, this is a matter of judgment. i don't have official word of that. but it doesn't look like this is some sort of horrible accident. >> and we are correct in assuming as i said that fog of war rules apply. on a night of fireworks in nice, we should not assume that reports we're seeing about a quote, exchange of gunfire with the driver to be gospel truth, at least initially. >> not at all. i would not say so. some people said they heard gunfire. others of course -- >> despite the heroic efforts of

bob franken to assist us in our reporting, what's happening, bob, is just what normally happens after something like this. band width among cell phones is coming at a premium and cell phone service locally in nice, where bob is, on the ground, is tightening up and we are experiencing more drop-outs, we are losing the call. bob, thank you. should it clear up, we will go back to you. malcolm nance has joined us. sadly, as one of the contributors we seem to only talk to following an attack. he has spent at least 30 years as a counterterrorism and intelligence officer for u.s. government special operations and homeland security. he is an honorably retired field interrogator and importantly, author of the book "defeating

isis." having said that, malcolm, what do you make of the evidence presented from nice so far tonight? >> well, i thought we would be getting through a rather quiet day, rather quiet bastille day, but it appears someone else had other plans in mind. on the face of it, of course we have to wait for more evidence to come in, but on the face of it, it clearly looks as if this is a terrorist attack. i have actually been to nice quite a bit, and the promenade des anglais, the main promenade along the beach area, you cannot access that on a major holiday. the police would put up barriers and all sorts of blockades and to go up on to the sidewalk would take a deliberate act. the size of the vehicle, a tractor trailer, the apparent ease at which that trailer continued down the middle of the crowd and then as you said, there hasn't been a confirmation that there's been a gun battle

but certainly the police appear to have shot the driver or at least engaged the vehicle with some form of weapons fire based on the photographs that are coming from nice. as of right now, we can pretty much say that it's going to lean terrorism. >> malcolm, after 9/11, we became familiar with the term of art in your business, a spectacular attack. this appears to be another reminder that something as pedestrian as a lorrie, a truck, the european version of a narrow 18-wheeler, can cause terrible death and dismemberment and deliver the definition of terrorism. >> absolutely. even worse is that there is actually a technical term for this type of attack which we have seen mainly concentrated in israel, where palestinian attackers would take a car, personal vehicle, and drive it

on to a sidewalk or drive it into an individual to kill them, and it's called suicide vehicle as weapon system attack. in this case, it appears that someone who didn't have access to explosives, who may not have had access to guns, we don't know yet whether this is actually true, whether there was gunfire, but they decided the most expedient weapon they could find is a large vehicle and a mass crowd and carry out a very simplistic attack on holiday revelers on a national day. >> and it is the very definition of terrorism, is it not, because after this you are worried about the rest of nice, worried about the rest of the evening, the rest of the holiday weekend and the rest of the cities in paris. >> yes. yeah. the way -- after 9/11, we were all afraid of looking at airplanes in the sky for the next few days. people are going to be looking at trucks and lorries and wondering is this going to be a

spate of simplistic suicide vehicle as weapons attacks that are going to start cropping up to form -- used as a form of martyrdom. as of right now it doesn't look like it's an accident on its face, but the terror has been complete and it is now in the minds of the population and certainly those people who were at the fireworks display in nice. >> so who do you look at as a suspect in something like this? >> well, you know, it's clearly going to be someone from the jihad movement. this is a mimicking attack in which again, if you were to look at it from the operational level, they couldn't get weapons or they couldn't get sophisticated explosives and they devolved down to the most simplest type of terrorist attack, improvised weapon that we see every day on the highway, that you wouldn't give two thoughts about. apart from arson which is the simplest form of terrorism, a

truck heavily laden truck driven through a crowd is certainly not something that you plan for in law enforcement and counterterrorism apart from the basic barriers. but it's almost impossible to defeat until of course, the attack is carried out. so perhaps it will be isis. we'll see over the next couple of days whether they make a claim, or an al qaeda affiliate but it doesn't matter. right now, the speculation will start even as we speak and the effect of terror internationally is now complete. >> malcolm, forgive the interruption. i want to go to our london bureau, where we are taking in reports from france and all over europe and kelly, what have you learned that can add to this conversation? >> reporter: well, we are still trying to get confirmation on a lot of these facts that we are hearing out of bfm tv primarily,

french media station there. i have been monitoring their reports as you have been talking. they are reporting some very dramatic numbers, some very high numbers of wounded, dozens, perhaps up to 100 wounded and dozens dead. we have to remind people that these numbers have not been confirmed by nbc news, that of course as we say always in these situations, this information is preliminary. we are really trying to get an idea of what's happening on the ground, as are officials there. but from what we understand from eyewitnesses, this large white truck jumped the curb in the middle of these bastille day celebrations, actually sort of toward the end of the celebrations, as fireworks were going off, hopping the curb in this famous promenade des anglais along the waterfront in nice, and plowing into a very packed crowd. you can imagine the kind of damage that you could do with

that kind of a vehicle in a crowded holiday celebration. there are reports of gunshots fired. we don't have that confirmed yet. that could have been the sound mistaken for fireworks instead of an actual exchange of gunfire. we simply don't know yet. but we are hearing these very, very tragic reports, if true, of perhaps as many as 100 wounded and dozens dead. >> kelly cobiella, in the london bureau, where they are receiving the feeds of all of the french media covering this. kelly adding to the voices of caution early on in any big breaking story, and that is that numbers can inflate because of duplication of reports and just pure adrenaline and excitement and it's always some time before we really get our arms around the scope of something like this. we are getting, as you are seeing some of these pictures

are new, some of them have been repeating on a loop, but we are trying to get them off of french media. you see the chevron gold and red chevron striping on the back of the first responders' vehicles, fire, first aid and police. chris dickey is with us on the phone, an american living for many, many years overseas. former paris bureau chief for the daily beast and "newsweek" magazine, now foreign editor of the daily beast based in paris and someone whose coverage we relied on heavily during the last attack in paris. in the previous hour, you were talking about what a visiting american, for example, would see in public, the security that is visible in france that isn't always visible in this country. >> well, yeah. we have gotten used to having

soldiers walking the streets, patrolling airports, patrolling around the eiffel tower and the mo monumen monuments, guarding synagogues and such. it's common to see soldiers in full battle dress in the city of paris and in any other city in france where there are likely to be or where it's thought there are likely to be terrorist attacks. i don't know if that kind of presence was in place in nice tonight but i'm sure there were a lot of police around because in a public celebration like this, it's one that's a potential terrorist target even though in this case it seems they were unable to stop whoever it was driving that truck for whatever purposes other than killing a hell of a lot of people. >> for folks perhaps getting home from work or coming in and tuning in, let's be honest, we have been in rolling political coverage here most of the day

because of the ongoing speculation about the vice presidential choice coming tomorrow morning from the trump campaign. very simple question that people don't follow the terrorism business wouldn't know. why france? >> well, there are a lot of reasons why france. first of all, it has a very large muslim and arab population so even if you recruit a tiny percentage of those people, you can get hundreds who are involved with jihadist activities. france has also gone on the offensive in a number of different countries fighting terrorism with its own troops, in places like mali, a war that has very little coverage in the united states but was very important to al qaeda. it's part of the coalition in syria and fighting against isis there. so there are a lot of reasons why france would be a target. and it has been hit many, many

times over the years, even before the rise of isis and al qaeda, when there was a were going on in algeria in the '90s, france became a terrorist target. this is something that everybody has -- you would think everybody has gotten used to but the level of violence has gone up so dramatically, especially with the "charlie hebdo" attack and the bataclan and other attacks on november 13th, i think everybody is really tremendously on edge here. >> let me read from the associated press, reading this now because this is the kind of news in the form that will end up going to a lot of folks' computers and devices and make it on to television. dateline nice, france, associated press, an eyewitness has told the associated press he saw a truck driver slam a vehicle into a crowd of revelers in the french resort city of nice and then emerge shooting,

killing many. a nice native who spoke to the a.p. near the promenade des paillon in nice said he saw a truck drive into the crowd, then witnessed the man emerge with a gun and start shooting, quote, there was carnage on the road, he said, bodies everywhere. that would sure match before we lost communications with bob franken in nice, that would sure match the visual that bob was painting for us over the telephone. >> well, yeah, i think we do need to be very careful about this shooting question. remember, this is a night of fireworks in france, it's bastelle day. a lot of people have fireworks, they have firecrackers, and once you have a situation like this, where a lot of people are injured, where there's a lot of violent scenes going on in front of you, people will hear and

imagine things that may not exactly exist in front of their eyes. i'm seeing reports from people on twitter feeds and e-mails about bombs in train stations, all kinds of things going on. i don't give them any credence until there's some kind of official confirmation because frankly, people often don't know what they see. what we know is that a truck ran over a lot of people on the promenade des anglais and it has the earmarks of a terrorist operation but we're not even sure of that. could be an angry truck driver who has some other sort of grievance and it's not what we think it is. a lot of people are dead and france is very much on edge. >> absolutely. as we said at the top of this hour, any report of gunfire on a night intended for fireworks to be shot off across france needs to be cautiously reported.

chris, thank you. steve clemens has joined us by telephone, another voice we turn to at times like this, washington editor at large with the atlantic. steve, first of all, your initial reaction to what we have been covering. >> well, to put it in context, this is something that security officials in the united states feared would happen on our july 4th. to give people a context, this is a day of celebration and joy in france, and it reinforces the notion that people aren't safe anywhere and it's a frightening thing because it's something that modern western liberal societies have kind of taken for granted for a long time, at least in the u.s. case and i think until the set of horrible attacks you have seen in france. in countries like england and

whatnot, they have developed a resilience over time to this kind of horrific terrorism but i would say even after bataclan, even after some of the horrific things in france, you are never used to this kind of thing and it's horrible to watch and see. >> steve, i say this all the time. this kind of thing is the very definition of terrorism. this is a vehicle that -- the type of which we co-exist with. we all see them and pass them and some of us will drive alongside of them on our way home from work tonight, as we go on about a weekend in america. this is part of life. they are our fellow drivers on the road, just as if we all lived in nice, we would have been down at the waterfront with our kids as people flock to in new york and chicago and elsewhere watching the fireworks. this is what makes it the definition of terrorism along with the feeling of unease now

around that entire country. >> exactly. i think one of the things that has unfortunately evolved in the kind of terrorism it is, if this is in fact terrorism of the sort i appreciate the cautionary words both malcolm and chris have offered on that front, but it seems to have the markings of a terrorist attack. in the old days of al qaeda, those experts that watched al qaeda noted that there was an odd kind of pride of hit that al qaeda had, that it was after trophy targets, waiit was aftere world trade center. these kind of attacks we are seeing isis call for and precipitate were things that al qaeda itself would not have done. and as you reported at that time, when we were seeing al qaeda terrorism, it was something that was hard to imagine a group being worse,

doing worse things, and making the fear and social trauma worse than we were seeing. we are seeing an evolution in terror in ways that are really quite remarkable. it used to be if you were in kansas or oklahoma or iowa, you would not worry about someone hitting your local mall. but that's no longer the case in the u.s. and it's certainly not the case in france and in many other parts of the world today. i think that is a very different and horrible track that this kind of terrorism we have been commenting on for, you know, nearly 15 years now has evolved in such a nasty, virulent form. >> imagine communities like aurora, colorado and sandy hook, connecticut. >> absolutely. >> who never imagined they would end up on that list or come to mind quickly in terms of terrorist attack. cal perry always has a difficult job in the hours following something like this.

we task him to monitor especially social media feeds coming in and yet at the same time, we also task cal with the appropriate warnings on things like fog of war, being careful that early reports are often wrong. so having said that, cal, what have you been able to gather and witness? >> what we know officially first. french authorities both here in the united states and in france telling french tv that this was quote, an attack. they are now classifying this as an attack. we are also hearing that the truck moved quote, purposefully and maliciously through the crowd in what is being described as a zigzag fashion. there are helicopters landing on the promenade, we are working on getting that video right now, taking away some of the wounded. to your point about sort of not trusting and verifying everything that we see, the video that is coming from this

scene is nothing short of horrifying. there are many people with sheets covering them and a large number of wounded. so the scale of this attack isn't really reflected yet in the video that you are looking at of people running. the video of people running is about a block from where this truck plowed through what i can only describe as a very, very heavy crowd. we have been comparing it to holidays here in the u.s. and i think that's a fair comparison. this promenade was absolutely packed. >> yeah. not unlike we would see fourth of july along the east river in new york for the fireworks display. and in other cities, navy pier in chicago and so on. the french police, i'm just looking at a statement they put out, advising people to not propagate rumors, not to broadcast shocking photos or

videos. something we are also adhering to. we are monitoring the pictures we turn around and air, especially for those where little ones are at home so that even though this is a terrorist attack apparently that we are covering, we are trying not to broadcast the worst of it. french police are telling people in nice emergency operations are in progress, people are being asked quote, keep calm and avoid the downtown area and follow official counts to be informed. the chief fear often and certainly in this case is that this was the first of some multi-part act that was planned. good people everywhere are hoping and praying that's all there was, awful enough as it is, in nice, france.

those just joining us, you see the graphic at the bottom of your screen, emergency operations are in progress because a truck has driven into and through a crowd in nice, france. it appears that our initial fears that this was somehow a minor accident, that this was somehow a brake failure on a big truck, a small version of the kind of 18-wheel tractor trailer we have in this country, you see the truck where it came to rest there, but sadly, from official accounts, they are using more and more the word terrorism to describe what has happened in nice tonight. chris dickey, aeteran journalist who has been living overseas for many years, east n americans not familiar with nice and the southeast portion of the country, we have kept the graphic up, along the

mediterranean coastline, what is your one paragraph primer on the city as we see new video coming in of what appear to be helicopters? >> it's a beautiful mediterranean coast. nice itself is an old city, a port town as well as a resort. it has a large immigrant population, large italian population. it's a little bit infamous for having sort of a mafia connection. it's very close to places like cannes or antibes or monaco that you have heard about all the time. a great romantic, luxurious place to spend your time in the south of france. >> and again, because we have people joining us every moment perhaps alerted on their devices to the fact there's been an attack overseas, we have gone through the question of why

france but what changes would we see visiting france say post-bataclan attack? >> you would see more police. you would see more security generally. you would see more soldiers in the streets guarding potential targets, particularly in paris but also elsewhere in the country. but you know, the government tries not to make these things too onerous. after the brussels attacks, for instance, at the airport in brussels, really only a couple months ago, you want to shut down the entryway, keep people from coming into the arrival and departure halls, that hasn't happened in france and i don't think it will happen many other places unless there's another attack like brussels. you are always trying to deal with what just happened but you don't want to create panic and too much discomfort and inconvenience for people trying to lead their daily lives.

that ultimately plays into the hands of the terrorists. how can you be safe? ultimately the only way to fight terrorism effectively is with really good intelligence, the kind of thing the cia and nsa and various european and other services try to do all the time, because it's only by finding out what the terrorists want to do next and preventing that, that you can stop them from doing this sort of thing. you can't stop every tractor trailer truck from driving near crowds. you can't stop everybody buys a gun from using it. you can't stop every lunatic with a knife from killing two police officers unarmed in their home in front of their 3-year-old child which happened just a couple weeks ago outside of paris. you can't stop all that. you have to use intelligence to penetrate these organizations, disrupt them, arrest people and in some cases, kill them. >> chris dickey, an american in

paris and someone sadly we have turned to a whole lot in the past few months for coverage of stories like this. back into the newsroom here in new york and cal perry has an update. >> the french army has deployed on to the streets of nice. that's something that is probably not unexpected at this point. just the man power issue, if nothing else, to try to keep people sort of calm. to that end, the government in france is putting out word on french television, they would like people to stay off the phones. the phone system is being overloaded, something that we experienced for ourselves, and the key here i think from french tv is that they are classifying this as an ongoing situation. you heard the statement about wild rumors. the computer is full of wild rumors. but officials are saying that it's ongoing. i don't know what that means, whether it's ongoing in nice or if they are just concerned about a wider security situation, but they are asking people not to speculate and they are asking people specifically in and around nice to stay in their

homes and this is from the prime minister, stay in your homes and remain calm. >> cal perry in our newsroom. as folks have been watching, we are seeing the updated video. again, we are adding into the queue, into our mix, new pictures that come in. we saw briefly a couple of helicopters landing there on the seacoast. we were told earlier, there would have been restrictions on traffic along this sea shore promenade just because of the sheer number of crowds, families, pedestrians, coming down late at night on the bastille day in france to watch the fireworks. as we keep pointing out, even in this picture, of people running from the scene, you can see a minor fireworks display on the beach. someone's bottle rocket or roman candle that is still going off

because they are reacting to the crowd before them and people running from something obviously terrible that happened. i also can't tell you how horrific the descriptions are of the actual scene of this, the description of this driver of this lorrie going back and forth in a zigzag pattern through the crowded street, promenade, as if to hit as many people as possible. such is the grisly business of terrorism. here in new york in this studio, ayman mohyeldin is watching this coverage with us. what comes to mind as you do? >> i'm thinking how much france had just as a matter of a couple days ago breathed a sigh of relief that they had gotten through an entire month of the biggest security challenge they faced since the bataclan attack. they were obviously very prepared for that but if you

would have asked french officials and certainly in the runup to it to our reporting, the concern really was about a lot of the venues, a lot of the fact you had tourists coming in for the soccer tournament that unfolded there including in the city of nice that had some of the final games in which hundreds of thousands of spectators were on the streets watching the french play. so there was that moment right after it just this past sunday when the french had played and authorities may have felt that they had made it through what was going to be a challenge. obviously not when you are seeing it today on bastille day, the national celebration, you had folks out in the crowd. what jumps to mind is how tight of security was in place. this is an area we knew fireworks were on display. it's full of hotels. i have been there myself. very much like we would see in new york on the fourth of july all along the i hariver banks, streets are closed. it's only foot traffic. it would be curious to see how this truck managed to get in the area where there were so many

pedestrians walking. a point we brought up earlier, this seems to still be a very dynamic situation. it seems to be far from over in the sense that french officials have not given the all-clear as we are hearing from cal and others. >> for a host of terrible reasons, as you reference, the french have learned way more than they had hoped to learn about terrorism and specifically more recently, counterterrorism and it has swallowed up much more of their budget, their time, their worry and their effort. >> absolutely. they are learning within a short span of months some very difficult realities. counterterrorism has now become one of the major issues. couple months after the bataclan attack there, you also saw the french parliament debate, what was the equivalent of their patriot act in the sense that it gave french intelligence officials, counterterrorism officials, security officials, much more power in working on counter terrorism intelligence gathering. that was something that was very much lacking in terms of french

capabilities prior to what we saw in paris in november. so this is a new reality for france. the war that had been taking place abroad has very much, again, it's still a little bit early to definitively say this is terrorism although early indications are, but what french officials, what french society is now dealing with, is a new reality for them. i think that they are going to look at this situation as it continues to unfold with a lot of questions, particularly in light of the security measures they had been putting in place since november. almost eight months since those attacks. again, it's just going to be shocking for french officials who on one hand as chris dickey was saying, exude a sense of confidence that they are trying to get this situation under control but then acknowledge there is still a major problem, lots of hurdles to deal with. what makes this also very difficult is in the course of what france has gone through, we are seeing attacks of so many

different kinds. you cannot say there is a certain style or a certain tactic that french authorities can prepare for. you have seen everything now from the massive, well coordinated attacks as we saw in november at the stadium and theater, multiple attackers, explosives involved and at the same time, something as crude as knife attacks going into the homes of police officers, executing them in barbaric styles to this, car rammings. this isn't the first time france has had a car ramming incident linked to terrorism. in december of 2014 or 2015, 2014, there was a wave of car attacks in which individuals were rammed by vehicles. so they are seeing a spectrum of attacks that country has not seen in recent memory. >> for viewers joining us as we approach 7:00 p.m. eastern time,

this has become the dominant news story in just the past hour. we are also aware of a good many folks who are tuning in because of the political story of the day and our ongoing coverage of the so-called veepstakes and the countdown to the debut tomorrow of donald trump's choice of a running mate. we are aware of the interest in the story. we were coming on at 6:00 eastern to report what we knew and that is despite reports to the contrary, no official choice had been made, though the speculation certainly was zeroing in on mike pence of the state of indiana. and again, our attention as so often happens is torn back and forth between foreign and domestic. foreign in this case, apparently the latest terrorist attack in the world.

to spend a moment on our domestic politics, however, katy tur, who has covered the trump campaign for the past year is with us at trump tower, where katy, apparently a day's worth of rumors and reporting has turned into a confirmation at this hour? >> reporter: yes. sources close to the candidate and within the campaign tell nbc news and tell me that donald trump has made his decision tonight and it will be indiana governor mike pence. he did not make this decision until late this afternoon. it was down to his final three. former house speaker newt gingrich, new jersey governor chris christie, and mike pence. ultimately, donald trump decided he needed somebody to balance out his ticket. the other two were seen as very adept attack dogs but ones who do have baggage. christie with bridgegate and gingrich from his stint as house speaker in the '90s going after the clintons and the potential fatigue with him as a running

mate. ultimately, governor pence proved them wrong. they thought that he was going to be quiet, they thought his personality was not going to mesh with donald trump's. the other night in indiana when he introduced donald trump he did the exact opposite. he was loud, he was forceful, and he played the role of attack dog in a way that did impress donald trump. they ultimately believe they will want somebody who can balance him out and somebody who has legislative experience. governor pence has been governor of indiana for one term now. he's up for re-election right now and it is a tough re-election battle. before that, though, he did serve time, spent time, in congress and he has a lot of friends there as well. paul ryan, speaker of the house right now, saying he has nothing but respect for pence, that they aren't close and that is certainly what donald trump and his campaign needs right now, somebody who can go to capitol hill and find a way to smooth things over and if he gets to the white house, somebody who can go to capitol hill and help him push through legislation. sources within the campaign confirming that donald trump does know that although he knows

a lot about business, that's how they describe it, he doesn't know much about how things work in washington and he's going to need an expert in that arena. now, governor pence is facing a tough re-election battle in indiana right now partially because of a bill he signed, religious restoration bill that seemed to give businesses the right to discriminate against lgbt people based on their sexual preference. he backed away from that after liberal and lgbt groups criticized him for it and then he was accused of turncoating by religious conservatives. pence is an evangelical, a social conservative and for many, he was seen as the great champion for that. but analysts and experts in this arena say that ultimately, this is not necessarily going to affect this run for the white house, that these local issues, stuff that's in indiana only, will fall away once he starts his national bid. i can tell thyou that this was tough decision by donald trump

and it is not one he took lightly. it came at the last minute. i would caution, make one note of caution. donald trump himself is very unpredictable. even those who are closest to him warn that he could change his mind. but right now, all the signs point to governor pence and that is now what the campaign has confirmed. >> there is even some video and we showed it in a glancing fashion, the way we find out about these going back several cycles now, is so often by tracking the tail number on private jets, private air travel, and we were able to get an aerial shot of governor pence going from an aircraft to an suv at teterboro airport outside new york. that is not -- that does not settle it, of course, in that it's also conceivable that the nominee would want everyone on the team at said event tomorrow.

to your point, there is this unpredictability hanging out in the air as well. >> reporter: yeah, but you know, it would seem a little inconceivable to fly governor pence in and to have him stand behind donald trump onstage only to not pick him later. it certainly would be a show of unity, saying they are all going to work together, but it would be likely pretty humiliating for governor pence to come out here and not be chosen to fly in, whereas newt gingrich and chris christie are able to drive up to new york city. it's a much easier trip for them. so i understand what you're getting at and that is certainly what people warn against, but right now, from everybody that i have spoken with, pence seems to be the person that donald trump has made his final decision on. they do expect to be announcing him tomorrow. and they expect to be going forward with what they are calling a balanced ticket. >> katy tur, thanks. donald trump has weighed in on this. the terrorism story we have been

covering from his twitter account. quote, another horrific attack, this time in nice, france. many dead and injured. when will we learn? it's only getting worse. laura heim was very, very helpful to us in november after the attacks on the bataclan nightclub. laura is a white house correspondent on the french television network canal plus. she has talked to witnesses in her own reporting of what has happened in nice tonight. laura, what can you tell us? >> reporter: i can tell you, brian, that it has been absolutely horrible. you have people watching the fireworks when this truck arrived. it was a white truck. he was zigzagging among the crowd and people panicked. some people, some fathers began

to try to stop the truck and with their hands, they were grabbing the truck, but the truck was speeding so the police arrived, there were gunshots. we don't know exactly how it happened, but according to our sources, the driver was killed. however, a few minutes ago, some police officers went to another place nearby in a restaurant and arrested a second man. police at this moment think the driver of the truck was not acting alone. the city is under siege at this moment. the mayor of nice, he's asking people to stay at home. the french president is canceling everything and is on his way back to paris.

the french prime minister. as you can understand well, the french people in the middle of the night, it's almost 1:00 in the morning in paris and in france, are looking at the news and are thinking oh, my god, another attack happened today in france. >> that is -- that was our reaction as well. sympathy after what they have been through, laura, and the last time the news put you together with us as we asked you for the benefit of your reporting. laura haim, thank you very much for that. to cal perry we go. he's in the newsroom behind us here in new york. cal? >> so we have seen that photo which was sort of what i was referring to when we talk about the potential death toll that we could be looking at.

there it is again. the president of france has gone into an emergency meeting with the interior minister and fine line that ayman was walking earlier. so far this is an attack. they are not using the word terrorism. they are not there yet. they are not ready to. but it's so very clearly an incident that was one that was carried out on purpose. this was a purposeful attack. french officials are now saying that french tv is now saying that. the french emergency national police have declared this now an emergency operation under way, not just now in nice, but across the country. so the country has now basically gone on what the equivalent would be of high alert for us. >> yes, i can imagine so. ayman mohyeldin is with us in the studio. i'm giving folks who perhaps don't have a layout of france in their minds a little geography lesson by leaving this graphic up in the lower right.

nice, mediterranean, beautiful coastal city, quite a distance from paris and couldn't be more different as cities go. >> absolutely. you talk about tourism. we are in peak tourism season, if you will. the significance of the national holiday today, it's not too far away from cannes. a lot of americans will know about cannes in the southern coast of france for its lifestyle. it's a very popular tourist destination. that particular area full of hotels, a lot of folks and apartment buildings as well, would be on their balconies watching the display of fireworks. so again, in analyzing this, when we look at this, one of the most important things in the initial stages is looking at the location, looking at the symbolism of the location. in so many of the previous incidents and attacks that we have seen, you try to understand about the motivations of the attacker or the perpetrator by considering an airport location, a theater, areas of, you know,

public display of all kinds of activities. particularly things that people here in the west enjoy. but in this particular incident, that cannot be lost as well on understanding the motivations of this. when you look at the vehicle there, the truck that is, you know, on the upper right-hand side of the screen, you look at the windshield, it appears there are bullet holes there. that is consistent with some eyewitnesses' accounts that gunfire was heard in the vicinity of the truck. some even saying that police opened fire in the direction of the truck. obviously in due course we will learn more about which way the gunfire was coming and how that vehicle got to the point where it did and how it was stopped. you bring up the point of the significance of nice, the symbolism of where it is. the day of national holiday, all of that cannot be lost on investigators and certainly officials as they continue to try to piece all of this together. >> as you paint a picture of that promenade along the coast, even these initial, this video

we ha we are seeing of people running the other way, that is shot from a rest ran bar, you can see the awning flapping and a table in the foreground with people having a drink and a snack while watching the fireworks, presumably. >> this actually, i have been to this part of the promenade. it's a two-tier, almost three-tier level promenade. what you have, where you can kind of see the top there, the bars, the restaurants, it overlooks the street. then to the left of the street, you have the actual beach. that in itself dips below a little bit, a few more feet as it makes its way down to the water. so that area from the very beginning of it would have been closed off. it has been in previous celebrations of bastille day, closed off so there was nothing other than pedestrian traffic during the fireworks display. so again, setting the scene for our viewers, this is their fourth of july. fireworks are on display,

hundreds much people are on the street enjoying a nice summer night, tourists are enjoying a meal, drinks, the display, then obviously this tragedy struck. but you can imagine how crowded it is. i wouldn't be surprised if the numbers of those that have been affected by this grows by the hour. >> i was also curious to hear that the police instructions were for people to run on to the beach depending on where they started out because that's actually very quick thinking. all you knew is we have this truck doing a zigzag pattern through the crowd. we had sadly dozens of killed and injured. someone thought very quickly to tell people what where we think is the safe place is down near the water and you are dealing with a lot of people. >> a lot of people and one of the most important things is that this is a very dynamic situation. i hate to say right now, but we don't know what's in the back of that truck. that is certainly something that is going to be on the mind of french police, french experts.

you talk about the perpetrator, the person that was driving that vehicle, are there others, were there others that jumped out of the vehicle and managed to get out. but by some images we are seeing and some of the live feeds we are seeing, the police have not moved in yet on that truck. obviously, the major cause of concern for them is going to be to secure area around it, get people as far away from that truck as possible, keep people away from the beach, keep people away from the vehicle but also to evacuate some of the buildings. the size of that truck and what is in the back of that truck is going to be a major cause of concern for officials. i can assure you right now, french police and as we were hearing from cal earlier that the army was called in. so, too, will the explosives ordnance teams. they will definitely make their way down to that road to make sure that that car, that truck, is secure before anyone can move towards the vicinity of it. >> at the heart of this, of course, it's so very sad, you

are absolutely right. another point we discussed earlier, the french have way more practice and way more expertise in all of this than they would like to have because that means they have had way too much experience in terrorism and its terrible toll. ayman mentioned this picture of the truck. we have left it in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. it doesn't take too much imagination to picture how that cab differs in the front from the way it looks normally. we can guess that if reports are correct, there was gunfire aimed at that cab and sadly, we can also guess it ran through a lot of things and individuals in its path. there are greatly differing guesses as to the death toll in nice, france tonight.

all we know is the world has suffered another tragedy on a beautiful night on in effect the july 4th celebration, as celebrated in france on july 14th, bastille day. our coverage will continue of this and the main political story across the u.s. right after this. (guy) oh man, the show's

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i bought all the framework... wire... and plants needed to give my shop... a face... no one will forget. see what the power of points can do for your business. learn more at chase.com/ink we are back and on a night when we understand a lot of americans are tuning in to this network and the news in general for news about domestic politics, this instead is what we are covering and let's back this up so we can explain what we are going to show to people here. this is hard to watch even though it doesn't show any of the carnage that followed. the new video we have just received right here,he