>> it's an internet hoax and the president repeated it over and over again. it's a conspiracy theory of sorts. and for him now as the president of the united states, not just a candidate in a republican primary, to be basically are repeating that or alluding to it at the very least on the heals of a tragedy in barcelona and on the heals of another tragedy in charlottesville is mark rabl. >> yeah. this has been debunked by all of the groups that take these statements and did he bunk them. i think about eight different times. >> so what does it say here that you need to dip bullets in pig's blood to kill these people. >> a moment he sent out was a thoughtful tweet the kind a president sends out when a troers happens at home. this tweet is a little strange and we're going to explore that a little bit more. however, we want to pay respect to people who have died in a terrorist attack. what a woman.

and her daughter was a fantastic woman as well. we are going to miss, but her spirit is going to live on in the fight against racism in america. i'm ali velshi. we're still following breaking news out of barcelona spain. 123 people confirmed dead, 50 are injured after a van lamd into a crowd of pedestrians in a popular tourist area. i do need to warn you the following video is graphic. it shows the immediate aftermath of the horrible incident that authorities are calling a terror attack. police in barcelona say they have arrested one suspect in connection to the deadly attack. spanish authorities and the u.s. consulate in boors loana are asking people to avoid the popular tourist area known as las ramblas. here are just a few of the firsthand accounts that we've heard this afternoon. >> and all of a sudden all we could hear was screaming and a tidal wave of people coming around the corner from down the street. fear etched in their faces, screaming, yelling in spanish,

crying, extremely distesd children. i felt so terrible for them. and immediately my first thought was there's been a terrorist attack. >> people running through the market area, a lot of screaming, a lot of shouting. one of the ladies said she heard gunshots. so there was a lot of confusion on what people knew was going on. and then there was a second wave of people that ran through and then that was followed by police. >> i was just walking down on the street and suddenly everyone just started scream and running all over each other. people were falling over each other. i saw a man fall on top of his girlfriend and cover her. so naturally i started running as well. and then once that had died down i went back and there were hundreds of cops, like streaming up la ram blah. >> all right. a white house official told nbc news that the president is being briefed on developments as information comes in and just a

short time ago president trump tweeted about the attack saying, okay, the united states kems the terror attack in barcelona spain and will do whatever is necessary to help. be tough and strong. we love you. the president subsequently tweeted about the general pershing matter. i want to bring in aroux see. he's in london for us and he's been following this from the beginning. tell us what's happened. >> reporter: well, we've got the latest reports from the cat lan interior minister who confirms that 13 people have been killed and more than 50 people have been injured. he tweeted out my most serious condemnation to the terrorist attack in barcelona. we can confirm 13 deaths and more than 50 wounded. we're also hearing that amongst those 50 wounded there's some very, very serious injuries. so there's a very dire chance that those wounded are going to add to the number of fatalities in the come hours and days.

as you said you showed some terrible video earlier, and i've been watching some individual yes on social media that is just far too graphic to show to our viewers of people sprauld out on that iconic street in barcelona r las ramblas, many of them not moving, covered in blood, pools of blood in the streets. some of them were being tended to by the emergency services. others had obviously died and they were trying to deal with the most serious cases. now, the police force in spain's cat leana region said it's arrested one man in the barcelona van attack and they are treating him as a terrorist. are the police force announced this on twitter. they also denied of earlier reports that officers had a suspect surrounded in a bar that many taken hostages. they tweeted out that there's nobody hold up in a bar in the center of barcelona and that we havest raed one man and we're treating him as a terrorist.

this bears all the hallmarks of these recent low-tech terror attacks we've seen where a vehicle has been used to ram into crowds in a series of attacks over the last year in europe we've seen over a hundred people killed in london, nice, berlin and stockholm. this van that slammed into pedestrians in the iconic las ramblas district, which is normally packed, especially this heightened summer tourist season, is exactly what the terroristsment. they want to make the maximum impact in a crowded, recognizable iconic location. and you simply can't stop this from happening. i mean, we've seen these terrorist attacks in london on london bridge and if you walk around london now, you'll see bar kads on all of these bridges where these vehicle attacks have taken place, but they're just not going to stop it. if you can't get on to a bridge, they'll go somewhere else. i mean, imagine you couldn't barricade the entire fifth avenue.

it's just not going to work. you can put trucks outside trump tower, but you can't close off the whole place. so these are very difficult attacks to try and stop. now, the authorities will be trying to figure out who this man was, what motivated him to do this. they'll be trying to figure out if he was a lone wolf attacker or if he was director enabled by one of these terrorist organizations. but the trend we've seen so far among all of these attacks, these recent attacks is they've been inspired by these people and conceived and executed without the terrorist group participating, ion though isis has claimed responsibility for many of these things. they've just merely inspired somebody that's gone ahead and done this on their own. but i'm sure in the course of the coming hours and days we'll get a lot more information about who this person was, whether he acted alone or whether he had a wider connection to isis or another terrorist group. ali. >> thank you for your great reporting on this.

and you'll continue to do so. stay close, if you can, to that camera. we're going to come back to you. who is like all of our reporters getting information in the time that they're not on tv. tom winter from nbc news investigative unit is doing the same thing. tom, he brings up a point that has to be brought up every time we do this. who is this? is this a lone wolf? were they inspired by isis oral al qaeda or are they actually connected? you're actually doing some of that work for at least the beginning stages to find out who we think this is and what happened. >> sure. so we do have a name. and we're holding that name back for one reason. we don't know if that's the person that rented this truck. we know that the truck is from a rental company. we don't know if it's the same person who then carried out the attack. we do know that somebody is in custody right now in what the pan spanish authorities say is an arrest tied to this terror attack. we're just trying to figure out all these players. are we talking the same person or several people. so we're trying to get that put together. we know that they're look the a

social media accounts because that's one of the first things that's looked at. his facebook page or one of the facebook pages has already been taken down. so they're analyzing that. we're analyzing that to try to see has this person posted radical messages recently or in the past. sometimes somebody leaves behind a message where they say, hey, i'm going to do this and they turn out to be the person that has done that. so these things are being examined right now. to your point of trying to figure out is this somebody who is directed to do this attack and has been directly affiliated with a terrorist group or is this somebody who became inspired by looking at various images online or is it somebody who doesn't really have any sort of specific inspiration. this was just their choice, and they had -- and they felt like they needed to do this for whatever crazy reasons that people do these things. >> and all of those are possibilities. >> exactly correct. >> and one of the things that blurs that line is that both isis and al qaeda have put out these general messages that sort of say use what you have about you. and that's when you see vehicle

attacks. that is something that everyone has access to. so that's why we don't -- that's where the difficulty comes in, right, in figuring out is there a direct line, has this person traveled to somewhere where they may have been influenced by a group or are they online which doesn't invalidate the idea that this may be a radically inspired act, but we're trying to figure out those connections. >> that's precisely correct. if it's difficult to do it after the attack, imagine how difficult it is to do before an attack occurs. one thing with this attack being in spain is no stranger to terrorism. 192 people died in 2004 in a transit attack. spain's proximity to northern africa. in several meetings i've had with u.s. officials point to the northern africa region as, hey, this is an area that is a problem and is going to become a big problem when it comes to isis, al qaeda, people leaving iraq and syria and going to northern africa. geographically it's not a long

distance between barcelona and northern africa. so that is one area that i know they're going to be looking at and there's been an awful lot of charter coming out of late spring early summer about possible attacks on these islamic jihadist forums. there's been a lot of talk about that and i know that's something that's been of concern and something they're looking at right now. >> all right. i know -- when i walked in i heard you on the phone trying to figure things out on the vehicle and who this person might be, stay close to us and as you get new information please come back and let us know. that's tom winter from nbc's veflt active unit on the case of who the perpetrator of this heinous attack might be. kelly o'donnell is in new jersey for us just a few miles from the president's home in bedminster. kelly, tell us what we know from the president's side. i heard you reporting that he's been briefed and then we've got these two tweets from the president. >> reporter: that's right, ali. two tweets, each with a very different nature and character to them.

the president did tweet in a more traditional some ber mode where he said the united states kems the terror attack in barcelona spain and will do whatever is necessary to help, be tough and strong. we love you. that's the kind of message that is probably appreciated by partners around the world and is the tone of reassurance. then the president went on sometime later within the last half-hour to tweet something that's a little more puzzling where he offers this. study what general pershing of the united states did to terrorists when caught. there was no more radical islamic terror for 35 years. this is a refrps to a story told by the president while a candidate and plit i fact which is one of those entities that looks at what politicians and office holders say and does an evaluation went back to about eight historians to try to determine what is the reference here, and it was their

determination that this was not accurate and that if they could find any thread in history to support it, it was something written many years after the time. and so this assertion that a technique, a tactic used by a general pershing would somehow blunt terrorism, that they just found no basis nor that. so two very different times of tweets twr the president today. one that seems to rise to the moment. the other which is a reflection of a story he told as a candidate but now as president at a time when there is a crisis, it's a curious tweet. >> curiously, yeah. >> yes. the president is scheduled to be at camp david friday, foam, where he will be with his national security team, including his defense secretary, former general now secretary jim mattis, h.r. mcmaster and so forth, the vice president cutting short his trip from south america. the vice president right now is in panama. he too had been briefed through

his national security team that travels with him. and we're told that it is likely elreference what has gone on in barcelona today when he makes planned remarks in panama. the vice president will then come back to the united states and they will be at camp david. this will be the second time the president has visited camp david. the first time was with his wife and son for a relaxing weekend. this is about camp david as a military installation with high degree of security and the ability to have both a size of meeting and security of a meeting to discuss matters like afghanistan as it's planned to be. but now in the wake of this, it's possible that it will extend to some of these other issues. but we have not heard a written statement from the letterhead of the white house, just the president's tweets so far 6789 and another from the first lady offering thoughts and prayers. >> all right. we're watching a press conference on the left side of your screen from the cat alan government on the right side of your screen are pictures from barcelona. kelly, thanks very much.

obviously if there are any new developments let's continue this conversation. i want to just bring you secretary tillerson was speaking a little earlier about the attack in barcelona. let's listen to what he had to say. >> i'd like to start by acknowledging the incident in barcelona which has the hallmarks, it appears, of yet another terrorist attack. we offer our condolences to the loss of life and the injuries that have occurred to so many innocent people yet again. we will continue to monitor the situation. we stand ready to assist law enforcement, national security authorities in spain. our consulates in barcelona and our entire mission spain team are currently assisting americans in spain. >> all right. i want to bring in malcolm nans. he's an msnbc terrorism analyst and executive director of the terror asemiet riks project. we were talking a few hours ago when news of this first broke, and you were describing the

difficulty in these vehicle attacks, the difficulty in determining ahead of time how they're going to happen. our reporter was talking about the difficulty in stopping them because we live in a world that drives. whose vehicle it is and who rented it and who was actually driving it. in has become a remarkable effective means of attack because of all those things. you used a term for it earlier. >> right. and the term for it in the intelligence community is vehicle as weapon attack. and it's now appearing to deinvolve as one of isis' and al qaeda's extreme igs most simple forms of terrorist attack. they don't have to have a sophisticated cell. they don't have to have a sophisticated infrastructure for logistics. they don't even need to have any communications back to a headquarters. all they have to do is find a vehicle, as we saw in nice, they stole a tractor-trailer. or just rent a vehicle at a

local store and for the cost of a few, you know, of the deposit of that vehicle, you now have a weapon system that can go out and kill with impugnty. >> what is the best way -- i meaner, is there any way that we think about to deal with these things? we know in some places we've started to use trucks filled with sand and matters like that, but ali said, this road, you know it, malcolm in barcelona, this is a famous avenue where there are always pedestrians. these are tourist sites. these are places that in warm weather people are going to be in. what is the best thinking on how we combat this if this is our future? >> well, the whole point of using these vehicles in pedestrian areas is because they are not pathways for trucks and cars, and that is why in nice the man went -- you know, the terrorist went off the road and on to a pedestrian walkway along the beach.

la ram blass is exactly that. it has two parallel roads but right down the middle is a pedestrian walkway. it literally means to ramble, the place where you ramble. and you cannot put in enough safeguards to stop of this type of act. in washington, d.c. after 9/11 there was a very sensitive infrastructure planning around the key sites along the wall. and they've put up what are known as ha-ha's, which are knee high bare yors and bull ladders which line most of the streets. new york city has done the exact same thing at times square, but there is still the crosswalk. and we saw that accident in new york city just a couple of months ago which occurred in the times square area where a car lost control and filmed on its side and hit a number of pedestrians. therefore, the terrorists will always have a target set. and what you have to do to neutralize this is neutralize the terrorist and the terrorist thinking beforehand. >> that is a tough thing to do. malcolm, stand by. we're going to continue to come

back to you on this and we will continue to follow this breaking news out of barcelona where a driver downed pedestrians on a crowded street. police say that there are at least 13 dead and about 50 injured. >> i was just walking down the street on la ram blah, which is a really busy street as it is and suddenly everyone just started screaming and running over each other. people were falling over each other. i saw a man fall on top of his girlfriend and cover her. so naturally i started running as well. and then once that had died down, i went back and there were hundreds of cops, like streaming up la ram blah. i tried to find what was happening, tried to see the van. people were talking about the van, but it was chaos. liberty mutual stood with me

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so, yeah, i was just walking foen the street on la rambla, which is a really busy street as it is and suddenly everyone just started screaming and running over each other. people were falling over each other. i saw a man fall on top of his girlfriend and cover her. so naturally i started running as well. and once that died down i went pack and there were hundreds of cops, like streaming up la rambla. i tried to find out what was, tried to see the van. people were talking about a van, but it was chaos. >> that was from an earlier conversation i had with rachel measure ski, a american student in barcelona. that was in the moments after we learned of that attack. unfortunately, attacks of this nature have become common place over the past year. in june there were two attacks in london, one in which a van

drove spew a crowd of muslim worshippers, injuring ten and one in which a vehicle struck pedestrians on the london bridge, killing seven and injuring nearly 50 more. on april 7th a beer truck drove into a stockholm crowd killing four and injuring 15. on march 22nd an suv drove over missed z near british parliament killing four and injuring nearly 40. in december of last year a truck was used in an attack near berlin's memorial church killing 12 and injuring 48. and in july of last year a truck drove into a crowd in nice france killing 86 and injuring over 300. joining me now is thomas sander son, he's a codirector at the center for strategic and international studies. what do you make of this? when you see these attacks are you looking at it and saying that the attackers have found a new way of doing things that sort of takes us into a world that is less sophisticated than our law enforcement has developed into being?

>> sure. it sure does. and less sophisticated does not mean less deadly. >> yeah. >> and the isis spokesman, now deceased, add nanny, called for such attacks in 2014. and it's been reinforced since then. and now you have all of these examples of how you conduct these types of attacks. people understand how easy it is to perpetrate them and casualty numbers can be very high, which we saw in nice. up to 86 dead. so this is the trend. it is very hard to spot individuals to know everyone's intentions behind the wheel. and given the number of cars in all of these cities, it's a very effective way to do this. now, this is also happening at a time when isis has its back to the wall. they have lost a huge amount of territory, but he they have long pivoted from that position, that downward spiral to dispatching fighters from around the world, dispatching resources. and again, reinforcing that call for individuals to attack when they can, wherever they can,

however they can. >> so we don't know yet who the driver is of the car. we're working very hard on that. investigators are and our investigative unit is in figuring out who rented the van, who drove the van. >> sure. >> but in the end, this is not to speculate, but in those examples that i just gave over the last year, the outcome has been remarkable similar. it is often somebody known to police and generally speaking inspired by but not necessarily connected to isis oral al qaeda. so as we talk about our wars on isis oral al qaeda and isis having their back to the wall, what is the significance of being connected to and directed by them versus being inspired by them? >> well, both present problems. those who are directed and connected to them generally have greater resources. isis oral al qaeda and others have provided them with guidance, perhaps with a bomb, with funding, with cover, with

assistance of all sorts of types. these may have been individuals who were on the battlefield, who know how to conduct bombings, who know how to conduct assaults and have been in that male strom of urban warfare. so for them this is an easy operation. so that's the threat from that side. from those that are not connected, the problem is different. they may not have the same level of training and support, but they often don't have any signatures or any fingerprints that would have shown them to be a threat in the past. you indicated that many of them are known to the police, but they may have been known for petty criminal activity, but for individuals who are simply inspired by that call to battle by isis, by add nanny and by others, it's very difficult to know. they just don't have a profile yet, so it's hard to know who is doing what. >> unless we're this approximate a world like we saw in the movie minority report, and there are lots of reasons why a lot of americans don't support that kind of world where artificial

intelligence can predict what someone is likely to do, stopping attacks of this nature, in my mind, involve two things. either you fortify everything so that cars can't get to tourists, but that's hard to do from an infrastructure perspective. or you figure out these attacks before they happen, which is yet harder to do. >> sure. both issues and both scenario are very problematic. we are fort fieg at an increasing rate some of these areas. if there are large pedestrians walk ways, that's pretty clear. you put up bull ladders, you restrict access. but trucks need to access businesses in those pedestrian areas and you don't know if someone has penetrated one of these supply groups that are supporting a restaurant or some building that's within the pedestrian area. we've all been through these areas across the world, and they're loaded with people. and if you get a vehicle in there, it's very difficult to stop them. now, when it comes to anticipating criminal activities

and terror attacks by others, that takes excellent police work, excellent intelligence and very importantly coordination between them and information sharing across juris diks, across countries, language barriers, cultural barriers. privacy difference. this has been an area where we've some improvement in europe but it is still one of the most difficult things to do. and only when you have emergencies do you see that become effective and efficient but during peace time between these attacks the cooperation and the level of sharing is not as good. >> thanks for joining us. i appreciate it. >> you're welcome. >> all right. joining me now is shawn henry, nbc news contributor and former executive assistant and chief security officer of crowd strike services. and msnbc analyst and retired atf special agent and hostage negotiator. jim cavanaugh. >> let me start with you, every time i see you, talk to you it's because we're talking about one of these things, but you taish

given your experience you often tend to be right about what you think when you see a crime. so as a former law enforcement guy, you see what we're all seeing today. what do you make of it? >> well, you know, tom winter had report earlier about the possibility that the attacker had posted something on social media, maybe something anti-semitic document. you know, that goes inside the head of the attacker. and of course, isis, al qaeda, all of these jihad groups are completely and totally anti-semitic, anti-jewish, anti-really. we all know that. so are the knee nazis. near completely anti-jewish. we saw in charlottesville. they're marching in their newer elm berg style rally jews will not replace us. so this is one thing terrorist groups, neo-nazi groups and jihadist groups share, hatred of the jewish people. that dent give us a big answer -- >> hold your thought there for just a second.

i want to go to update for us in london. kelly. >> right. a couple of things. we have now seen this report from cat loana police that a driver ran into two police officers possibly at a check point earlier today, and it's a fairly vague tweet from cat loana officials. we're not clear really right now on where this happened, when this happened, how this is related to what happened in central barcelona. and we are also getting some other reports -- please bear with me i'm reading this as we go. >> sure. >> but there are some reports in local media of possibly a second van being spotted. and also we're hearing from the cat loana regional president through the "associated press," they are reporting that there has been a second arrest. again, we haven't yet heard from police yet in the region, so we're not clear on whether or

not this is confirmed through police, but this is coming from an official in barcelona. so it's possible now that a second arrest has been made. this would be in addition to the arrest about an hour, hour and a half ago now of a gentleman who police describe as a terrorist attacker, someone they were treating as a terrorist attacker. they also said at that time that there was no suspect hoeld up anywhere in barcelona. but they did not say that the manhunt was over or didn't give us any specifics on how many people total they might be looking for. to just to clarify, this information being reported by the "associated press" citing the cat loana regional president that a second arrest has been made and there is also some reporting in local media about a second van. again, those things not confirmed by police at this point. nbc news hasn't been able to

confirm them through police or any other officials either. but that's where we stand right now. ali. one other thing -- >> sorry. i was going to say there's new death tolls. we now have 12 dead and 80 injured. that's interesting because we don't normally go backwards on the death tolls. they were reporting 13 dead and up to 50 injured. we're now pat 12 dead but a higher number of injured people. >> right. and if i could just explain that as well. that information also is coming from the cat loana regional president. he is saying 12 dead, 80 injured. earlier this evening, our time, we were hearing 13 dead, fieft -- more than 50 injured. and that information was coming from police. we've had no update in terms of casualty figures from police yet. all of these new numbers are now coming from the cat loana regional president. >> thank you for that clarification. so the change in numbers is not necessarily a change. it's two different sources of

information. jim, hold on to your -- i want to cleat your thought in a second, but given this new information i want to go to shawn henry, former assistant director of the fbi. shawn, this is how it goes when you have instances like this. there's different bodies getting information. there's people who may have walked away from the site or found themselves at a hospital who are now reported as injured. and then as kelly says, there's reports potentially of another van and of another incident. par for the course, i guess, after a confusing event like this. >> that's exactly right, ali. it's very typical in an event like this for there to be multiple streams of information and intelligence for understandable reasons, media sources are reaching taught to different people to try to get information out to the general public and they're touching different people who may or may not have full visibility into the event itself. so you're going to see kind of this ebb and flow of information.

i could tell you that it's very typical that there is a command post set up. the barcelona police are there with intelligence services. they've likely got coordination with other agencies around the world, reaching out to u.s. agencies and the like. i'm certain the fin has had contact if they're not actually physically there offering assistance, offering information of value to their spanish colleagues. and those agencies are going to focus on trying to identify who the attacker is, looking at the broader conspiracy, any other associates, et cetera. they want to keep that line of communication and those lines of intelligence as accurate as possible because they've got a very important mission now, tracking down those who are involved and the broader web of people who may have supported or be involved in potential sl some other attack scenario, ali. >> all right. shawn henry and jim cavanaugh, stand by. we're going to take a quick break. we'll have an update on the

other side of it. >> we were about a hundred meertsz frr in a street adjacent to las ramblas. another pedestrian there full of shops. and all of a sudden all we could hear was screaming and a tidal wave of people coming around the corner down the street. fear etched in their faces, screaming, yelling in spanish, crying, extremely distressed children. i felt so terrible for them. and immediately my first thought was there's been a terrorist attack. and quickly with my husband we managed to run into one of the shops. and we were in there with about a hundred other people, shut us down until we felt it was okay to leave and get to a hotel. for your heart...

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switching gears here for just a few minutes. more breaking news. republican tennessee senator bob corker is speaking out today, criticizing president trump. he told reporters earlier, quote, the president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability or some of the competent that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful. we need him ton successful. our nation needs him to be successful. we will get you more on that as

we get it, but donald trump being criticized by senator bob corker of tennessee. and now to other developing news around the country, the protests continue for cities to take down their confederate statues and monuments. has been in memphis where people are calling for the removal of the statue of jefferson davis. marryian that. >> all ali, it's not only jefferson davis it's also the statue and the remains of confederate general nathan bed ford forest. and in a city like memphis where 67% of the population is african-american, 27% are white, many of the anti-monument protestors we have spoken to have said we want to be able to come to a park like this one and feel welcome. but i did go out into the city and spoke to locals to get a feel of the different perspectives out there around in debate over confederate monuments. let's play some sound from that.

>> those people now did he say incarcerating the historical monuments. it just doesn't make sense. they need to get a life and go on. they need to go volunteer. we were talking about this today. go to a school, nursing home. go to something responsible instead of destructive. >> these monuments were not instructed, many of them until 50, 60, 70 years after the send of the civil war at a time at the height of jim crow. and so these monuments, to some extent, say more about the people who erected them than the people that are the subject of the monuments themselves. >> i say no. leave robert e. lee sitting on his horse somewhere. you can throw stuff at him if you want, but leave it there. >> i don't want her world to be different than my world and different from the world of my

firstborn children that are lily white. >> how does memphis and the country move forward from this? >> i think sometimes when you go through diversity like this, the best thing to do is to come together and in situations like adversity can bring people closer together. >> as the great elvis pressly would say. >> exactly. ific dream. his song was about that, about brothers walking hand in hand. you know, everybody living in harmony. >> the city of memphis, ali, it's stuck in legal limbo because the city council unanimously voted to have these statues removed back in 2015, but there is a state law, the tennessee heritage protection act, which impedes officials from doing it right away. and that's also what we're seeing in many cities across the country dealing with this issue. ali. >> marchian that, it's a tense issue, but it is one that -- a conversation that we have to have in this country, so i appreciate bringing a little lefty into it by having an elvis impersonator deliver his

comments about whether he thinks confederate statues should stay in memphis or not. all right. we're going to continue to monitor the breaking news out of barcelona. we are going to bring you the latest details as they come in. ♪ (shrieks in terror) (heavy breathing and snorting) no, no. the running of the bulldogs? surprising. what's not surprising? how much money aleia saved by switching to geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more.

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are you okay right now? >> yeah. we're okay. everyone is just a little, you know -- you don't think this will happen to you while you're on vacation, and i'm actually here constituted i didn't go abroad, learning spanish, but --

yeah, you don't think this will happen to you, so, yeah. >> and, again, for folks who may not be as familiar with this part of spain as you are, obviously, can you describe it for our viewers, describe it for our listeners what this part of barcelona is like? >> okay. yeah. think of if you're in new york, think of times square. if you're in la, think of venice beach or hollywood boulevard where there's a heavy, heavy tourist population. so you're if miami, think of ocean avenue or collins. so to get a perspective on how many people, it's high travel season for people all over europe. there are tons of kids here, students, families. yeah, it's busy. it's a busy time. >> all right. let's go to nbc's kelly kill by in london. she's tracking developments and she was telling us about a few

minutes ago you've got more information on this. this is new information on these attacks. >> right. so we were talking about those casualty numbers, ali, and we've now confirmed that in fact there are 12 dead, not 13. 12 dead. 80 in all were injured. but a lot of those are walking wounded. about 20, we understand, 20 people were hospitalized. 15 of them are in critical condition. so 12 have died. 15 critical out of 20 in the hospital. and we've also confirmed, ali, that there has been a second arrest. we don't have details surrounding that arrest yet. we haven't heard that from police as yet, but we do know in addition to this man who was arrested a couple of hours ago now that police there have taken a second man into custody. ali. >> all right. so we have a second man in custody, and we have adjusted numbers on the dead and injured in this, the count on the dead

has gone down to 12. the count on the injured has gone up from at least 50 now to 80. but kelly just give us a little clarity. i was talking to shawn henry, formerly of the -- hang on a second. kelly, stand by. i want to go to vice president pence who is now making comments on this. >> on this dark day inspired today's terror attack, the united states stands ready to assist the people of spain and find and punish those responsible. on this dark day, our prayers and the prayers of all the american people are with the victims, their families and the god people of spain. thank you. vice president sa mallow,

administer kay han notice, minister roadway, ambassador gonzalezry via, ambassador fee lee, members of the pan mainian government, distinguished business leaders -- >> vice president pence in panama making comments about the barcelona attack. kelly cobiella i believe she's still with me. kelly, i was talking to sean henry about -- all right. so i'm going to wait to be told who is available to me to talk to. okay. a ali aruzsy. kelly was talking about the change in the numbers of people who are dead. we get this information from different sources. in some cases it's political sources and other times it's police, hospitals. so that's why in the early stages of discussion like this, these numbers fluctuate. >> absolutely. we don't know if certain numbers of people are missing, they turn up again and they're counted as dead or badly injured.

it's a fluid situation. until the dust settles on this we don't know what the casualty count is. but i have to fill you in on some important breaking news. we just got about 20 minutes ago, isis claimed responsibility for this on their media outlet, where they always post these attacks and take responsibility for it. about 20 minutes ago, they posted a statement which reads the perpetrators of the barcelona attack are soldiers of the islamic state and conducted operation in response to appeals to target coalition countries which of course spain is a member of nato. so isis have claimed responsibility on the website that they always do this. the media outlet, a-mac media. and it was their soldiers that carried out this attack. usually this happens a little later but this happened within four hours of the attack, they had claimed responsibility for it. we have to stress we're not sure

if these people were directly involved with isis. if they had been in training camps in vary use places or they were a lone wolf that was just inspired. but nonetheless, isis have taken responsibility. >> all right. this is an important point as you and i have been discussing in the hours since this developed. isis and al qaeda and other extremist groups have put it out there that people should use the weapons at their disposal that are easy to get. we're not talking about guns and weapons that are difficult and making bombs and things like this. they have talked about knives and cars and things like -- you know, things like we're seeing today and we have seen over the course the last year. this becomes a real challenge to law enforcement. >> absolutely. this is a huge challenge. these are very crude weapons. you don't have to be an expert bomb maker or anything and that's why they encourage someone to steal or rent a van or a car and mow down people on a crowded shopping street or a

bridge in london or take a knife that you can find in any store of your kitchen and start attacking people. so we have moved away from the very sophisticated type of terrorism where you need a bomb maker, where you need to get all of the certain elements together, to do something like this. to just renting a big van and mowing people down. it's almost impossible to stop. then also that begs the next question. i mean, how many blocks and security checks do you put and turn your country into the police state? ali? >> all right, stand by. thanks for your reporting on this and your analysis. we'll come back to you. we have breaking news here. three senior u.s. law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation into the attack say that spanish authorities have identified one in connection with the rental of the van that was used in the attack. now it's not clear that this is the attacker. it's not clear that the man is the attacker, he is being

considered a suspect according to spanish authorities who briefed authorities in the united states. we'll have more on that on the other side of this break. stay with us. you're watching msnbc. ♪ ♪ hey, is this our turn? honey...our turn? yeah, we go left right here. (woman vo) great adventures are still out there. we'll find them in our subaru outback. (avo) love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru. get 0% apr financing for 63 months on all new 2017 subaru outback models. now through august 31.

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quick look at the markets. big drop-off on the dow. this was already down on news of the economic councils that were dissolved by the president and the possible departure of gary cohn his senior economic adviser. but after the attack in barcelona marks turned sharply lower. i want to bring in tom winter, investigative reporter who's working on the identity of the attacker. what we have now is the identity we believe of the person who rented the van. >> right. this is somebody connected to the renting of the van. this white van that we have shown several times this afternoon. three senior u.s. law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation into the attack say that spanish authorities have identified dris okober used in the attack today. his picture was circulated by spanish law enforcement authorities here in the u.s. and in europe. it's not yet clear if he is an

attacker. but he is considered a suspect according to spanish authorities who were talking to the counterparts here in the u.s. that's reporting from myself and nbc's jonathan dean. so both of us are reporting right now that this pen is tied to the -- this person is tied to rental van. we don't know if this is the person that drove through the crowd or involved in some of the other police activity and whether this is the person that's been arrested by spanish authorities. so it's very very fluid. but since this picture is being circulated by law enforcement both here in the u.s. and europe we wanted to bring it to you as soon as we have it. >> you'll continue to work on this story. thank you very much, tom. i'm going to wrap this up now. i'm going to be back here at 11:00 a.m. eastern and then at 3:00 p.m. but our coverage of this is going to continue for the next while until we get the information that we need. so thank you for watching. "deadline: white house" with nicolle wallace starts right now. hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. 10:00 p.m. in barcelona, spain,

where a terror investigation is under way after a van rammed into the crowd of pedestrians in las ramblas, a popular tourist district. at least 12 people are dead. as many as 80 are injured and spanish police have at least one in custody. let's get to kelly cobiella who has been tracking this story all day long. kelly, what's the latest? >> well, nicolle, first police have now confirmed that they have a second man in custody. they haven't given us any more details surrounding the circumstances of that arrest. where he was arrested. how he was detained but they do say that a second suspect is now in custody. the first suspect arrested probably a couple of hours ago now and there's been some video circulating on social media purporting to show that arrest. man in a t-shirt being taken into police vehicle in handcuffs and now this rep