Morning Joe - Morning Joe 7/5/22

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

Person of interest apprehended in July 4 parade attack that killed 6, authorities say

Fourth of July celebrations marred by gun violence in suburban Chicago, Highland Park, Illinois. Six people killed, dozens more injured after a shooter targets the crowd enjoying a parade. In Philadelphia, two police officers injured when shots rang out during the July 4th events there. This video shows people on the ground scattering against the backdrop of fireworks. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Tuesday, July 5th. I'm Willie Geist. With us, we have White House Bureau Chief Ed Politico and the host of Way Too Early, Jonathan Lemire and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson. And we do begin with the latest developments in yesterday's mass shooting in Illinois. Six people killed, 38 injured when a gunman opened fire at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park.

That is an affluent suburb of Chicago. This video shows a band playing as people begin to run. Other footage caught the jarring sound of gunfire. You can imagine the shock and confusion. Maybe that was fireworks, they could rightly think. No, those were gunshots. And that series of shots you just heard, followed by a second round of shooting that lasted about seven seconds. The gunman was on a rooftop with a high-powered rifle. Parade goers scattering in all directions once they realized what actually was happening. You see a band running there. The crowd left behind chairs, toys, baby strollers, and blankets. Here is one witness describing that scene. Maybe a few minutes into the parade started, like the

marching band had just passed. I heard a subsequent pop, pop, pop, all in quick succession. And I thought to myself, that's not, that sounds like gunshots, but like, there's no way we're sitting in Highland Park at 10 o'clock in the morning. There's no way that's gunshots. Must be fireworks. And a few seconds later, people started to run past us. I grabbed my daughter at that point and just started running. The victims range in age from 8 to 85 years old. Police say four or five children were treated at the hospital. A 22-year-old person of interest was taken into custody

about eight hours after the shooting. This video appears to show his arrest after a brief chase with police. Man has not yet been charged. Police say they're not ready to call him a suspect, but they do believe he is responsible for the shooting. The 22 year old reportedly has a history of sharing violent social media posts. More on that later. More though now on the victims. We've learned the names of two of the at least six people killed in yesterday's mass shooting. The family of Nicholas Toledo confirms to NBC News he was killed at the parade. Toledo's grandson called him a funny guy, always playful, always cracking jokes and playing with his grandkids. Nicholas Toledo was sitting in his wheelchair along the parade route when the

shooting began. His son and his granddaughter's boyfriend also were shot, but we're told their injuries are not critical. Toledo held dual Mexican and American citizenship. He just moved back to Illinois a few months ago because his family wanted him to have a better life. Jackie Sundheim, also now we're told, identified as a victim of yesterday's shooting, her death confirmed by the North Shore Congregation Israel. Sondheim was a lifelong member and part of the staff there. The synagogue says she leaves behind a husband, Bruce, and a daughter, Lee. All victims who died at the scene have been identified and families still are being notified this morning. Joining us now from Highland Park, Illinois, NBC News correspondent Shaquille Brewster.

Shaq, what's the latest on the ground there? Good morning. I'm standing about a block away from where that shooting took place, and it's a street that is still full of bicycles, of chairs, of Fourth of July celebrations that were left or decorations that were left behind as people fled that gunfire that began about 10, 15 yesterday morning. After the shooting, there was not only the chaos that you had there, but you had situations of people who are nurses, doctors on the scene immediately springing into action, saving lives. You know that it took the lives of six people who were killed and also put about 30 people, 38 people in the hospital. We also know that there was a large manhunt yesterday, a manhunt for that person of interest, someone who is not being described as a suspect at this point, has not been formally charged, but who police have said is the person they believe is responsible

for this shooting. We do know later today there will be services available for, counseling services available for members of this community, as this is a grieving community that was shattered with this shooting, another mass shooting in this country. And that was the message that you heard from the governor, J.B. Pritzker, who was at a nearby town, at a parade at a nearby town yesterday and said that if you're angry about another shooting in this country, he said he was furious about it. This is another scene that we're going to see and we're going to continue to see where the

investigation takes place. The scene is being processed still as we speak, and it's likely going to be closed for some time, Willie. And Shaq, to say gun violence is rare in Highland Park, Illinois, is an understatement. It's an affluent suburb, the northern suburbs of Chicago, not far from downtown Chicago. This looked like so many Fourth of July parades we saw across the country yesterday that we've all seen for our lives and for generations. You had Little League teams and marching bands and just a small town, America, obviously totally, totally shocked and stunned by what happened yesterday. An affluent suburb of Chicago, you mentioned it took about 45 minutes to get from downtown yesterday when I arrived on the scene. But, you know, this is not something that just impacted Highland Park. We do know neighboring towns, their Fourth of July celebrations, their parades, their firework shows, they were canceled last night.

We do know some of the hospitals were put on lockdown out of an abundance of caution as the police and local officials and even with assistance of the FBI as they looked for this person of interest. It was an hours-long manhunt that we saw yesterday. People in this area were told to shelter in place. We also know that when that person of interest was eventually identified and captured in Lake Forest, about 15 minutes away from where I'm standing right now, he did lead police on a brief pursuit and then he eventually surrendered. You had three different active investigation or scenes of investigation in this area. This is something that impacted not only people of Highland Park, but really it impacted the entire region. And what we know through analysis, NBC analysis of crime data, federal crime data, we do know 4th of July, unfortunately, is one of

America's deadliest holidays. We don't usually see it like this. NBC, Shaquille Brewster and Highland Park, Illinois. Shaq, we'll be back to you again shortly. Joining us now, NBC News investigations correspondent Tom Winter and law enforcement analyst Cedric Alexander. He's former public safety director of DeKalb County in Georgia. Gentlemen, good morning to you both. Tom, let me begin with you with some reporting about exactly how this happened, how they tracked this man down after the shooting and what we know about him. Right. So what we know is that it's Robert E. Climo. The third is the person of interest has not been charged, has not been officially named by law enforcement as the shooter yesterday goes

by the nickname of Bobby. He's 5'11", 120 pounds, numerous face tattoos, numerous neck tattoos, as we've seen. He's posted a tremendous amount of material to pretty much every social media platform I can think of. YouTube, Facebook, Spotify, Twitter. This is somebody who was named yesterday afternoon, approximately six hours after the shooting began, which was around 11, 14 a.m. Eastern time. I think, Willie, when you look at this, it was clear from the FBI seeking information poster yesterday that his vehicle was captured on some sort of a perhaps a toll camera, something along those lines, because it very clearly had the license plate visible. And that's the type of image that we see. So, you know, did that play a part in them eventually getting onto this person? Were they able to track his cell phone? That's something that they have the ability to do in these types of incidents,

either through directly through the telecommunications companies or also through different devices that police and the FBI can put into their police cars. We do know that a North Chicago police officer apparently spotted the vehicle, called it in. They were able to arrest him apparently without incident. Shortly afterwards, we had a helicopter overhead from our NBC station in Chicago captured the FBI SWAT on scene. So obviously they were working in the area. Law enforcement was at the time of this arrest and were clearly coming close to capturing him. They did. And now the question is whether or not this person of interest turns into a suspect and whether or not that person is charged. Presumably we'll know the answer to that in the next couple of

hours. So that's something that we're going to continue to track closely. Cedric, you've seen a lot in your long career, hopefully nothing like this, a man taking up a position on a rooftop and shooting down into a celebratory 4th of July parade this last month or so between Rob Elementary School, a supermarket in Buffalo, and now a dark, dark new chapter where a target can be this joyful, joyous celebration of our country in the northern suburbs of Chicago. Yeah, I mean, it's really sad, William. First of all, let me say good morning. You know, when we keep hearing these reports and they just seem like they're so frequent. And this one, quite frankly, struck me pretty close because my brother and his wife and family lived just a few minutes away. Even though they weren't there, they know people who were. Unfortunately, they weren't

injured. So every time these events occur, it just seems for all of us as Americans to strike closer and closer to us personally, regardless of who we are or where we are. So in this country, I still think we got a lot to do around the whole idea around guns. And at the end of the day, it still comes back to that. You know, we're going to have some great legislation that's going to be passed by both sides of the aisle. But reality of it is the accessibility of these weapons and being in the hands of those that it should not, they should not be in the hands of. It's going to be a continuing, ever plaguing problem for us in this nation. It's going to put our communities at risk and put our police officers at risk.

We're out there trying to protect us. And there's some heavy duty firepower that's out there. And it's just really concerning for me as a former law enforcement official, the safety of this nation and being able to keep each other safe. But let me say this one thing and and I'll stop here, to the American people. Keep going to these events. Let's continue to exercise our rights of freedom and having the opportunity to go out and join ourselves. We're not going to let none of this stop us. We have to continue to be free and we have to continue to go out and enjoy ourselves. We just be mindful, be watchful and take care of each other. Tom, it feels sadly appropriate that in 2022, our nation's birthday is marked by a mass shooting since gun violence so defines American culture. These days, it seems images there from the parade, just heartbreaking.

American flags left on the ground, stuffed animals abandoned by children. Strollers. Strollers left there. Some kids last night still separated from their parents, police trying to reunite them. Obviously, investigation in its very early stages, but had two questions as to what we know so far. Is there any sense of motive? I know there was some initial chatter. This is a community with a very high Jewish population. Is there any sense that this was potentially anti-Semitic in origin? And then secondly, we were commenting as the video was playing about the gunfire and how quick it came. What do we know about that weapon and how we got it? Right. So with respect to, and you bring up a

great point about the composition of that community, it was something that we were certainly tracking and keeping an eye on early on. Based on an initial analysis, and there's a lot of material from not only myself, but our colleague Ben Collins here at NBC, there doesn't appear to be anything overtly anti-Semitic in the postings of this person of interest, who, again, has not been charged with a crime and has not been officially named. But we haven't seen that so far. Now, does that not mean that that material doesn't exist somewhere else or on his person or perhaps doesn't exist at all? That's just something that time is going to bear out with respect to the weapon. A police have said it's a high powered rifle. I can tell you just from listening to the

bullets, that's not grandpa's shotgun. So this is probably going to be an AR style or an assault rifle type weapon, whether or not it was modified at all for to shoot that quickly or whether or not he was somebody who had practiced and was that good at firing that weapon that quickly or not. Again, is there details that we're going to figure out over time as far as when it's when it was purchased? I mean, the fact that he left it behind, there was at least one rifle that was left behind at the scene, may have been the thing that allowed police to get onto or at least name him as a person of interest so quickly because each weapon has a unique serial number. And so perhaps there were fingerprints left on it, but they could at least have tracked the initial purchase of that weapon or even maybe some follow on purchases of that weapon.

And that could have gone a long way to figuring out who is behind this and what was going on. Certainly the fact that if it is the person of interest that is, in fact, named the shooter, that person has a has real roots in this community, would have known perhaps the best place to be. But it does indicate to me, at least initially and in my discussions with law enforcement experts, some sort of a planning that occurred. This does not appear to have been something that just happened, you know, kind of out of the blue. Last thing I'll say, you know, you talked about the scene left behind at this and Shaq talked about it as well and showed some images of it. You know, this was just one of several scenes that we saw across

this country yesterday. Last night in Philadelphia, two police officers were hit with grazed gunshot wounds. Luckily, they're both going to survive, we're told by police in Philly. But that was an incident where you had people fleeing a Fourth of July celebration, you know, one of the one of the centers of American democracy. So that was some really tough video to watch last night. And it's still not clear who did that shooting. So that was just one of several scenes. Cedric, I want to get back to something that you said earlier. You said we should keep going out, live our lives, but be mindful. And I'm confused as to exactly how. This happened, you know, in a wealthy suburb of Chicago, maybe the quintessential American city in the heartland

on the 4th of July at a parade. If you're not safe there, where are you safe? And how do we cope with this? What does being mindful and being careful mean at a time when you can go to a celebration of our nation's freedom and have it end in this kind of carnage? You know, Eugene, you know, that's a question I ask myself all the time, because it appears that every week, virtually every week or every other week, we're here at the same place we are right now. And we keep asking ourselves that question, but it doesn't matter where that neighborhood may happen to be. A neighborhood there just outside of Chicago or rather than Buffalo, New York in a middle-income African-American community, regardless of where it is, we continue to see this trend. We've been seeing this trend for some time now, but are we really still addressing a larger social issue in this country in which we really may have to begin to spend some time talking about.

Look, I think there's experts and researchers out there who certainly probably have better answers than I do. But I know this, and this is what 40 years of experience tells me. This is what continues to watch this and read about this and write about this occasionally tell me, Eugene, is that as a society right here in this country, things are beginning and it has this feeling of things beginning to break down because we're beginning to sense and feel this more and more. Here you have a shooter, 21 years old, posts himself in an elevated position, shoots down on people. It don't matter if it was there. It could have been in any city, USA.

We can go back a few years to Las Vegas, elevated shooter, shot and killed over 70 some people, I believe, there during an event in Las Vegas. But we got to begin to think about much more deeply than what we have in the past. What is happening in the environment, what is going on in our communities and our neighborhoods that is causing people to act in the manner in which these events are taking place. I think it could be a culmination of a lot of things, but here's what I won't let us simplistically get off on, is that it's COVID. COVID may have exacerbated many of the social ills and some of the mental health and maybe a lot of the mental health issues that are beginning to emerge in our society.

But I still will encourage very strongly, Eugene, and to the rest of the country, the only way we got to fight back is to continue to exercise our freedoms, continue to have to be a voice and speak up when we see something and hear something, because that's the only thing we can do other than shelter in place. And who wants to do that? We want to be Americans that feel like we can go out. It's a familiar story, as you say. Yeah, I think you're breaking up a little bit there, Cedric. I'm sorry. The familiar story of a young man with a high powered rifle. And we go back now and we'll dig into this in just a moment and look through so many signs, a trail that was left online that no one picked up. Law enforcement analyst Cedric Alexander,

thank you so much for your insight. Tom Winter, you'll be back with us shortly. Thank you. As Tom mentioned, the shooting in Highland Park was not the only case of gun violence during yesterday's 4th of July festivities. In Philadelphia, two law enforcement officers now have been released from the hospital after both were shot at an event last night. Police say the officers were working security for a concert and fireworks show near the city's Museum of Art when shots rang out around 10 o'clock. The chaos sending a crowd of thousands running away from the area while fireworks lit up the sky behind them. At an overnight press conference, the city's police commissioner said investigators still are unsure where the gunfire came from or whether it even

was a targeted attack. Here's the response from the frustrated mayor of Philadelphia. We have to come to grips with what this country is about right now. This is a gun country. It's crazy. We're the most armed country in world history, and we're one of the least safest. So, you know, until Americans decide that they want to give up the guns and give up the opportunity to get guns, we're going to have this problem. There's not an event or a day where I don't lay on my back and let you look at the ceiling and worry about stuff. I'm waiting for something bad to happen all the time. So I'll be happy when I'm not here, when I'm not mayor. That's the mayor of Philadelphia. So, Gene, in these two incidents yesterday,

these two horrifying incidents, you have this tale of America right now in terms of guns. You have inner city gun violence, which is a plague and getting worse and expected to get even worse this summer. And then you have this mass shooting where, again, a young man with a high powered rifle, access to it, will learn how he got it, how easy it may have been for him to get it, could go out and create havoc and change a community and kill children in Uvalde, Texas, or grocery shoppers in Buffalo or people marching through a parade, a 76 year old man sitting in a wheelchair at a Fourth of July parade who was killed yesterday. This is, as you say, the story of America right

now. It is, Willie. And what all these incidents have in common, the gun, the gun. We will never, ever solve this problem. We will never, ever stem this tide of violence until we deal with the common element, which is the gun. There is mental illness and alienation. There are unattached and unmoored young men in every nation on earth. But in this nation, we have the potential for them to act out in this fatal, this tragic way, because we have more guns than people in this country. It is incredible. It is like a national suicide pact. We have to address the gun. We have to keep weapons of war out of the hands of civilians who are liable to use them in this way.

We have to. And until we address that, until we look at that honestly, I don't see how we get anywhere. And Jonathan Lemire, after Uvalde, after Buffalo, we had this big conversation. And yes, there was some progress. There was legislation that made it through the United States Senate, that made it through the House, that was signed by President Biden. Now, critics say it sort of nibbles around the edges and gets at the margins of the problem and not the heart of it. But it did speak to it took the death of all those kids, the murder of all those kids in an elementary school classroom just to get us there. So what will this do? What comes after that now? Optimists hope that that piece of legislation that was assigned into law would break the log jam.

The first piece of gun legislation passed in decades. Maybe more can follow. But I think most recognize that that was all that, frankly, Republicans are willing to do. Something around the edges. And yes, of course, it is good that something got done. But it was incremental. Even those who were cheering its support, including Senator Murphy of Connecticut, its fiercest advocate, acknowledged there wasn't that much there. And it was immediately eclipsed

by a Supreme Court decision that make it much harder for governments and police agencies to prevent people from carrying guns, concealed weapons on them. And gun advocates across the nation fear that more shootings like this will now happen because it will be that much easier to have guns. We've heard from mayors of big cities, mayors of small towns worried about this. Police chiefs, big cities, small towns worried about this, fearing that gun violence is only going to increase. And it is, to Gene's point, an American story. It is sadly fitting that on the nation's birthday, we'd have another mass shooting with people ranging from eight to in their 80s, shot, wounded and killed. And we talk about red flag laws.

Boy, were there some red flags with this person allegedly involved yesterday. We're going to get more on that details about the person of interest in the Fourth of July parade shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, just outside Chicago, including his violent presence online. NBC's Ben Collins has been digging through that. He joins his reporting next. Plus, we will speak with a Chicago Sun-Times reporter who was at that parade in Highland Park yesterday, called it a, quote, bloodbath. We will get her eyewitness account. Plus, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois also will be our guest this morning. He was in Highland Park last night meeting with law enforcement and assessing what happened at that parade. You're watching Morning Joe.

We'll be right back. So you picked up your kid and you put him in a garbage can. Yeah, my little my little brother was four. Him was five. And my puppy, I put them all three in the garbage dumpster. And then I asked them to watch him and I ran back. And when I ran back, there was the bodies on the ground. My God, putting kids in a garbage dumpster to protect them from a mass shooting.

Oh, that was a witness to yesterday's shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, describing the moments after a gunman opened fire during a Fourth of July parade. We are learning more today about the man police are calling a person of interest. Join us now with those details. Senior reporter for NBC News, Ben Collins. Ben, you've been digging through this man's online history. What did you find? Yeah, so Bobby Crimo was on the Internet known as Awake. He was a rapper on the Internet. And this wasn't a small time kind of thing, like usually where you see these mass killers, they sort of appear in the public for the first time at their mass killing that was not the case with this killer

he had music videos where he graphically depicted school shootings and being in shootouts with the cops um there were cartoons of him being in shootouts with the cops he had a spotify account uh with uh tens of thousands of plays between that and youtube um he had his own discord server which is basically like a message board or a chat group where people in that server talked about political nihilism about about political murder and things like that this man was part of a much larger community that ties back to places like 4chan that are obsessed with mass death and nihilism in general. And the idea that the only way out of life in general, if you're a young man, a disaffected young man, is this sort of thing, mass death, to contribute your name to this culture of mass killing. So, Ben, help me out here and help our viewers out. You're describing explicit stuff that was up on YouTube, that was on Discord, that were on other prominent social media channels.

Ostensibly, they say, they always tell us that they're checking these things and they're taking down violent imagery and all those other things. They've got algorithms that can look for it. How does this stuff, number one, stay up? And number two, nobody take notice of it and alert someone. How does that work? Yeah, I have a hard time believing anyone in his life that didn't see the red flags in real life. This man made a music video where he, you know, he had a set of a of a classroom where he did a school shooting. He was dropping bullets within the classroom and things like that uh if you were someone in that person's life uh you probably want to step in there i'm just saying unfortunately this is you know not a thing that's easy to

predict or protect there are a lot of people making uh school shooting art or uh you know graphic depictions of violent imagery on the internet he was a power user on a specific website that was you know entirely devoted to videos of gruesome death things like beheadings his last post was a few days ago where he posted uh a beheading video on an internet website where thousands of people use it. Those thousands of people are not all going to go and commit a mass killing on the 4th of July. So that's the issue here is that, you know, we are, as Americans, we are allowed to make these graphic depictions of horrific things that should not necessarily put you on the radar of the feds. The problem is when you start collecting ammo and people in your life start

to see this, they really have to step in. And that did not happen here. So, Ben, it's Jonathan. We had a similar tale with the Buffalo shooter who also had an extensive social media and online presence, which he talked about, talked about violence and warning signs that were so blatant, but yet missed. And your point is well made. There's only so much law enforcement can do. But can you tell us what efforts there are underway, like what sort of surveillance or monitoring they might have on these sites, on this discourse? And is there a certain thing that would trigger intervention? Is it a direct threat? How does this work? Because I think right now you probably have a lot of people watching this so deeply frustrated that these signs are so out in the open and yet

nothing was done. Yeah, this is a new kind of thing. You know, does this fit in the idea of, you know, a terror group? It's really unclear. You know, it's not like Patriot Front, those neo-Nazis that, you know, march, they get out of a U-Haul, they march en masse to protest specific things they don't like. These are people who describe themselves as lone wolves, people who describe themselves as having no real life community that meet together on the internet to talk about how horrible things are for them and how the only way out is to try to one-up the previous mass shooting i am sure that there is some sort of uh you know fbi or law enforcement response to this that is ongoing but it is

probably not as advanced as traditional terror cells you know he he pushed things that were closer to like an aesthetic than a traditional group i would say um you know he put he made these music videos to fit in this larger thing called like the fash way of aesthetic which is like fascist uh you know you would say like retro wave or something like that kind of music whatever that's what he was trying to fit into that community he was trying to fit into like the fascist online uh spaces on the internet with these music videos, what I would call black pills, which is the idea that death is really the only way out, that to them society is a joke, death is the only way out.

How do you exactly drill that down to who exactly is going to commit a mass murder? It's really difficult, but it's a completely new set of problems here that we've had in the last couple of years as people got more and more deeply into very specific subcultures in the Internet. And some of those are incredibly violent. Ben, what is even feasible in terms of trying to get advanced warning of something like what happened yesterday. I mean, if you tried to even surveil every young man who has at some point a violent fantasy or who says something or posts something with some violence on the Internet, you'd be completely lost.

That's millions and millions of people. How do, is there any technology, is there any way that the social media companies can get their arms around this? I can't imagine that we would tolerate government surveillance of that sort of magnitude. Who can do this and how? It's a really it's a new challenge. I will say that. And there's no other way to put this.

The one thing that combines all these things is ready access to weapons. And this guy had ready access to weapons. That's just that's the one thing he had ready access to a machine that could kill a bunch of people in a short period of time. You're not going to be able to stop this on a rhetorical level. This guy, he posted on Spotify, on Discord, on a bunch of websites that you and I would never hear of. He posted on Twitter, he posted on YouTube, he posted on Instagram, he posted everywhere you could post it. So even if there was this consortium of people who worked at these private companies who were monitoring this stuff, you couldn't get them all.

Like, there's no way to get them all necessarily. And also, I want to say, like, you can't drill this down to one specific traditional political subculture. I know a lot of people want to point out that this guy was a Donald Trump fan. He had there were pictures of him draped in a Trump flag or, you know, at a Donald Trump outside of a Donald Trump voter cave. This this is part of a much larger, deeper subculture that Donald Trump is in the past of. Like this guy grew up as a child. If Donald Trump is president, he is trying to advance the accelerationism well past Donald Trump. This guy is part of a new wave of terror. And that's something we have to get our brains around right now.

This is not this is not tied to one guy um this is tied to a much larger cell of people who think they're loners who are really acting in concert um uh to express their disaffection with the world by murdering a bunch of people we have to stop that i don't know how else to stop that the one thing that you can stop it at the very end is the gun parts um but we have to at least you know try to start to learn how people are getting to this point otherwise we're not we're just going to come here every two weeks guys like every two weeks we're just going to be on this show talking about what's going to happen and how we can't stop this thing we have to wrap our brains around this very

new reality where there are a bunch of different subcultures that are extremely violent and they think the best way to get their message out or they think the best way to show that they can't live in this world is to murder a bunch of people at a parade. We have we have to start adapting societally to this, not just as a law enforcement perspective. We have to start recognizing the signs and working in our communities in real life to stop this stuff. No, Ben, I hear your frustration. I think everybody watching shares the frustration. Here we go again. And as you said, just to go back to the beginning, this all was out there. This all was online. And there are people in his life who knew about it, who could have intervened and may have stopped this. And then the other stuff that you talked

about, that trail online, that gets into what does a red flag law do? It applies right now to criminal convictions, criminal complaints. It doesn't apply to a bunch of stuff you may have said or written online. So it comes down in the end to people in the shooter's life. NBC's Ben Collins, great reporting as always. Thanks so much for bringing it to us today. We appreciate it. Coming up on Morning Joe.

We came from Kiev. And then we went to... Our mother died, so we went to Italy. And then we came here. Those twin boys back in 1985, Alexander and Yevgeny Vindman, familiar names now in America, featured in a Ken Burns documentary about the Statue of Liberty. The Vindmans now revisiting the role of America

as a safe haven for immigrants as the war in Ukraine sends millions of refugees looking for a new home in Europe. The Vindmans join us next on Morning Joe. We came from Russia. My brother and I were too young to remember much of our refugee experience. But our father watches today as cities and towns in Ukraine that he helped build are being torn down to the ground by the same evil forces that pushed him to bring our family to the United States. He sees himself and our family in the images of the Ukrainian people. So today, the Statue of Liberty is more complicated for us than it was that day on the boardwalk 37 years ago. Those are the twin brothers, retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman

and Colonel Yevgeny Vindman in a new opinion video published by The New York Times. Both, as you know, were born in Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union. And in the new short piece, the Vindmans say the refugee crises in Ukraine and elsewhere demand a stronger response from the Biden administration. And Alexander and Evgeny Vindman join us now. Gentlemen, it's great to to have you with us. I think before we dig into what you're talking about in this opinion video about the refugee crisis in Ukraine, it's important to take a step back and remind people, Colonel Vindman, Alexander Vindman, I'll start with you,

of your own story of how you came to this country, what drove you out of the Soviet Union, the Ukraine of today, and why this issue of refugees is so important to you. Yeah, we came here as four-year-olds because our father believed in the American dream and the promise of an America with unlimited opportunities. In fact, the video itself is a little bit of a representation of where we are today in 2022, a Janus-faced American society where there is still a huge amount of promise that I believe in deeply, but also with deep challenges, including what we've been talking about this morning with regards to gun violence, kind of a nihilistic death cult being enabled by the former president,

Trump, and far-right parties. And it's a mixed story of that kind of tragedy, but also the promise of a more perfect union represented by, you know, our kind of our hopes for when our father brought us here, but also certainly for our children and the kind of America we want to live in. That's that's what we committed to public service for for two decades or more. And you have Kenny, you came here, as your brother says, at a very young age at four. But as you grew up, what was your experience as a refugee? What was your experience as an immigrant in the United States? And how do you believe that is a different experience for a refugee trying to come here now? Well, first of all, Willie, thanks for having us here today. It's a real treat for me

to be on the show with Alex. And, you know, our refugee experience, 30, 42 years ago, we came very young. Our dad bore the full brunt of the refugee experience, not speaking the language, having to come to a brand new country with a young family, hauling furniture for $20 a day until he learned enough English to become a New York City engineer and really start a new life. For us, we were very young. We were very resilient, just like many of the young refugees and immigrants that come to the country. And we are really able to build a future for ourselves on par with anybody else that grows up in the country. The situation today is really not in many ways, not any different than it used to be for refugees. It's a difficult process, but it's one filled with

hope. And it's about a new life and a new beginning. And the climate perhaps back then was a little bit easier. I think the year that we came, 240,000 refugees were accepted into the country. Now the refugee ceiling or under the previous administration was reduced to 15,000, raised certainly by the current administration, which is fantastic. But a lot of the infrastructure to support refugees was eviscerated. And so that's the part that really needs to be rebuilt. Yevgeny mentioned his father. Here's another short clip from that video talking about the journey that the Vindman's dad made to America. The Ev and I were four years old. Our father had $759 in his pocket when he arrived in the United States. He held furniture for $20

a day, learned English, and soon enough he became a New York City engineer. He worked to support his three sons, and each of us would go on to serve our country in the military. Alex and I have come to see immigrants and refugees as a source of strength, bolstering our national security. So, Colonel Alexander Vindman, why do you believe we can do better? Where are the places that the United States can expand its reach to refugees, specifically now as we look at the war in your home country and all of those people, four million of them who've gone to Poland, many million more displaced internally looking for new homes? What should and what can the United States do here? We first need to recognize the strength of refugees and immigrants for this country. This is a country of refugees.

Each one of us could trace back our lineage to an immigration story somewhere in the recent past or the distant past. We need to accept that it's a strength for the American population and recognize that there is an opportunity to add to our strength here by bringing in new blood, bringing in new populations. That certainly is the case with these temporary parolees, the 100,000 that are being welcomed in for a respite from war. We should revamp our immigration policy to make sure that there are basic services that allow families to come here and for children to prosper and to grow up and to commit to public service and to add to America's strength. And we should just remember that each one of us has a story. We almost none of us came from the U.S. that takes us back to a different far off land. And for decades, for generations, we've been able to come together all as one and as Americans with shared values, shared interests.

It might take a little while, a little bit of assimilation, acculturation. It might take a generation. But that's the way this country has been built. Right now, we don't welcome immigrants and refugees. That's something that I would hope to see change moving forward. Colonel, if you have any, obviously, lots of refugees being forced from their country, their home country of Ukraine because of the war. Just wanted to get your sense as to how things are going right now in terms of those refugees finding homes elsewhere, even if not the U.S. just yet, but also that state of the conflict with

both sides taking heavy losses, the Ukrainians resisting Russia's initial assault on Kyiv, of course, but Russia now making some slow grinding progress in the east. Yeah, so, I mean, just following up on what Alex said, the system accepts refugees in a parole status. But what happens is when refugees get here, they don't have the ability to work frequently. And the process to get work permits takes many months. So the families that arrive here need to have a method of supporting themselves so they're not on some other existence. The United States is accepting refugees, but really a small fraction of what countries like Poland and Romania and other Western European countries and Central European countries are accepting. And in all of these countries, there needs to be a mechanism for refugees in order to be able to support their families and not live on assistance in order to be able to build new lives.

And this refugee crisis is a little bit interesting and maybe odd, and we'll see how it plays out in the end. It depends on how long the war is. But many of the refugees state that their intent to go back to Ukraine. And so these are just temporary residences in many cases, but with a need to support their families. As far as the war... Go ahead. I'm sorry. I was just going to say, as far as the... As far as the way the war is going now, I mean, clearly it looks like it's gone into a new phase where it's going to be a grinding, more protracted conflict. And that will certainly affect refugees and their ability of refugees to return to Ukraine. But it's a conflict that must be won,

that Ukraine must win that conflict in order to preserve sort of an international rules-based order that Russia is destroying now. So they need our full support. They need timely support on the humanitarian side as well as the military side. And as you know, the United States has pledged another $820 million just last week toward that effort. Colonels Alexander and Evgeny Vindman, thank you both for your service to the country. And thank you for bringing us your story. The new opinion video is online. The New York Times dot com. Gentlemen, thank you. Still ahead this

morning, WNBA star Brittany Griner pleads for help in a handwritten letter to President Biden. The latest on her detainment and what the administration is saying and more importantly, doing about it. Morning Joe's coming right back.