bill bratton, frank figliuzzi, thank you both. if you take a look at some of president trump's rallies over just this past week, many of his go-to targets have received these suspicious packages. >> crooked hillary is a great unifier. >> maxine waters! do you get that one? you get that? good old maxine. low-iq individual. low iq. >> do you ever see when the fake news interviews them and then they try and cut it? but they'll go to a person holding a sign, who gets paid by soros or somebody. right? that's what happens. >> by the way. by the way. [ crowd chanting "cnn sucks" ] don't worry. i don't like them either. okay? >> for more we welcome in our political panel, phillip rucker, a pulitzer prize-winning white house bureau chief for the "washington post." jill colvin, white house reporter for the associated press. and robert costa, national political reporter for the "post" and moderator of "washington week" on pbs. thank you for your patience. welcome to all of you. and phil, this correlation between critics of trump, targets of

bill bratton, good to have you on. appreciate your expertise in all of this. if you are just tuning in, president trump appearing at an event right now about opioids, a previously scheduled event. did make some comments about this rash of suspicious packages. here's what he had to say. >> i just want to tell you that in these times, we have to unify. we have to come together. and send one very clear, strong, unmistakable message that acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the united states of america. [ applause ] >> our chief white house correspondent, hallie jackson, joins us now from the north lawn. the elephant in the room, of course, is that the president has vilified many of the people on this list and potentially providing an awkward moment there. >> reporter: and lester, there is a common thread, as you point out, between the people who have received these devices and they are all people who the president has personally attacked, who he has criticized or who has been critical of the president. and that is worth noting here.

bill bratton, the former nypd commissioner is with us now from new york. and bill, go through the procedures that the all of these wonderful nypd people on the streets there around columbus circle are going through right now as they also try to protect those who try to evacuatet any secondary device outside of the building? >> well, a lot going on at the scene, the evacuation of the building, the creel sealing of the area, and the bomb-sniffing dogs there check out the vehicles, and concerned is pulling people out of the low case, and the secondary device looking to take the advantage of those crowds outside of the facility, but no indicationf that as an actual threat. precaution. the bomb device as i understand it looks to be removed. my understanding out to the rodman's neck facility which is out of the city area of the bronx is heavily escorted vehicle on the way out to the location. out there, they will first attempt to examine the device through robots, et cetera, before detonating to one, determine if it is an active device, and is it capable oof deto

>> and someone who could help us with that question, thank you so much, bill bratton, the normer nypd commissioner. what would the nypd and the fbi be doing in new york which was the locus of so much of the activity, bill? >> andrea, coordinated by the joint terrorism task force and the largest in the country. and has probably been the lead element in this investigation. they've already talked about bringing a lot of this back up to the u.s. attorney's office in the southern district. so, you saw some of the earlier video at the van. the multiplicity of law enforcement agencies at that van including a nypd officer and nypd jacket. the effort that paid off so quickly in terms of now the arrest of the apparent suspect could not have been accomplished but for the joint effort. reinforces the importance of that. >> and, commissioner bratton, former commissioner bratton, your experience as well in boston, l.a. in big city police departments, how concerned would you be about copycats and about others who might be out there? >> we already are starting to see that in the sense of the signific

. >> bill bratton standing by. i want to go to hans nichols first. hans i understand you've also gotten some response from members of congress as well to all of this. what are they saying? >> you're seeing several republican members of congress condemning these acts of violence. you've heard from speaker ryan, mr. scalise, i'm going to read you mr. ryan's speech. those behind such reprehensible acts must be brought to justice. we cannot tolerate any attempt to terrorize public figures and i'm grateful to the secret service, capitol police and all law enforcement who guard against these threat. mr. scalise, he himself was a victim of violence at that baseball game last spring. he's saying that the violence has no place in our society. you saw earlier this morning the white house quickly condemning it. now you're seeing congressional republicans quickly condemning these explosive devices that are being sent through the mail. i suspect we'll hear more of that throughout the day. just a quick note on john brennan being the target or the recipient that pa

first i want to bring in bill bratton, nbc news senior law enforcement and counter terrorism analyst. he joins me now on the phone, i believe. commissioner, we have watched all of this unfold here, and pete noted this a few minutes ago, are you at all surprised by the speed with which investigators have been able to make an arrest? >> happily surprised. the speed considering the come ple comeplexty of this case is no indication, certainly as recently as two hours ago that they were moving in on somebody. first off, it's great news if in fact, this is the individual that they obviously was shipping those devices. watching it unfold as to the circumstances, et cetera, but i am -- this is really great that this has come to closure so quickly. it put a lot of people's mind at rest. also just how many of these devices might be floating around out there. was there a total of 12 or did he actually mail more? >> commissioner the speed with which all of this was done, is that because there was just so much evidence that this guy allegedly left behind? >> i think a combination of things. the co

bill bratton from new york city police department joins us.onsidering what the new york city police department will do in the wake of this, it is my understanding you have deployed uniformed police officers to synagogues around the city. that what n.y.p.d. does when you have a swaying like in in neighboring pittsburgh? >> one of the benefits of the n.y.p.d. is that it is a huge department and during my time, the three years there, we created two units, critical response command, 500 or 600 officers designed to deal with corporate terrorism issues. and a 600 unit response group. all of them with long article and heavy equipment. they are are the police you see responding to these incidence with the helmets and the long guns. in addition, pretimpgts are aware of special locations such as synagogues, mosques, schools. when something like this happens the department immediately, without even thinking about it they have policies and procedures in place will start dispatching. on a normal saturday there is very frequently coverage at many of these j

city police commissioner and msnbc law enforcement and counter terrorist analyst commissioner bill brattontwo more found this morning, one to de niro what do you make of this? >> there's enough being initiated to create fear which is certainly has. >> yes. >> the good news is the fbi has a number of these devices that they are going to be in a position to disassemble to determine their functionality. were they ifr ever intended to actually function? if so, how? in terms of how they were supposed to be detonated? if not, that changes the focus of trying to cause bodily harm to effectively creating fear. so my sense is by hopefully the end of the day, with the expertise they have, the multiple devices they get with, significant step forward as to were these things ever capable of functioning? also the design of them. the idea of where did the idea for the design come from, similar to what he was just describing. they have the ability to go back to who is putting out designs for this type of device, who has basically been subscribing to that site. the building back, and potential for a slip-u

joining us, former nypd commissioner bill bratton, former homeland security adviser michael balboni and reporter tom winter. what's the latest you have heard? we have heard from pete williams. do you have more reporting? >> yeah. so i think the best to do is recap what's going on and then these gentlemen who have resumes about 20 times longer than i to explain what they might be doing if they were back in their shoes. so what we know is this. on monday a package that was addressed to george soros was found at his home and the packages what have been subsequently found sent to hillary clinton, barack obama, john brennan via cnn, to eric holder and as pete told us the package was returned back to debbie wasserman-schultz and her name was the name on the return address for all of these packages. so that's something that we have been tracking since this morning and that the devices that -- there's a high level of commonality of every single package. whether every single component is the same we are not quite sure but they're pretty much identical and allowed investigators to conclude this i

i was speaking with commissioner bill bratton before and he said even down to the stamps.re these stamps purchased? they're all the forever stamps and the american flag type. when you look at the totality of this and you're looking at it on your screen right now there's a lot of evidence on your screen that should help investigators get to who is responsible for this. right now we don't have any sort of indication of who that person or persons may be. so that's something that they're working on right now, hallie. >> tom warner, i know you'll keep us up to speed as you work your sources up there in new york. thank you. >>> president trump pointed at the media, saying that the news media is a very big part, in his words, of the anger we're seeing today. john brennan is firing back. he's tweeti intweeting, stop bl others. look in the mirror. your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies and encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful. clean up your act. try to act presidential. the american people deserve much better. by the way, your critics will not be intimidated into s

and somebody who knows quite a bit about where this vehicle, where this bomb truck is headed a bill bratton. ghigs n commissioner, thank you very much for being with us. we've learned that in roughly 30 minutes, we expect to hear from new york city police, they will be giving a briefing as to what is going on in midtown manhattan at that postal facility where the package addressed to jamgs cl -- james clapper has been found. the other package addressed to cory booker was found in florida. and you are looking at the total containment investigational. commissioner, tell us about what happens thousannow. when the truck arrives at the facility, what are they doing to figure out what this is and who is behind it. >> that bomb vehicle that you see is one of several that the department has. we've seen several different styles of them over the last several days. the at the facility where the bomb squad has their detonation capability, that device will be removed from that vehicle and moved into an fbi vehicle, similar type to get that then down to quantico where it will be analyzed. the initial lab

tremendous reaction against bill bratton saying this report is racist. bias, thef implicit idea that everybody is subject to bias because it is in the water in american culture. tohas enabled police recognize that is a problem that everybody has but that they have to deal with it more seriously because they arrest people. departments have started addressing the issue of implicit bias through stronger policies, through training that make officers aware of some of the issues that we have talked about. is there isroblems no evidence-taste training that is out there that can say, you take this eight-hour course and no more bias. >> i don't think we can ever be there. -- this has to continue because of the social conditioning that helps to create that bias is continuing. it will never be let's figure it out and fix it and we are done. shows that a one-off only does so much. you want to plant ac the end allow that seed to grow. -- a seed and allow that to grow. one of the things we have been doing at the university of maryland is we develop a virtual reality s