potentially another covid search. as more states open up, as air travel numbers open up and hit records since the start of the pandemic, the cdc is warning new variants could wipe out all the progress we ve made recently if we let our guard down. but first, we begin with our colleague natasha chen. she joins us in georgia. good morning. there is new surveillance video from close to one of the scenes of those murders. what can you tell us this morning? yeah, poppy, it was actually those surveillance images that authorities released on tuesday evening that actually prompted the suspect s parents to call police. they were able to help identify him. and because of that, police then tracked his cell phone and stopped him as he was going south. investigators believe he was headed to florida to perhaps commit similar attacks. so the reason this was not worse, the reason he s in custody here in cherokee county is because his parents called in durks to those surveillance images. her
he told police he was motivated by a sex addiction. neither the county sheriff, police chief or mayor would rule out classify the killings as hate crime. this is a man who murdered eight people in cold blood so it s very difficult to believe what he said. it s difficult to ignore the fact many of the victims were asian. in georgia, you can be charged with a hate crime. it covers a variety of areas and i personally think it would be appropriate but i will defer to the prosecutors to make that determination. all of this comes against a backdrop of growing attacks and harassment against asians and asian americans, particularly in the wake of the covid pandemic. the house judiciary committee will dig deeper into that with a hearing starting less than one hour from now. we re going to get more on that in a minute. but i want to go first to kathy park live in atlanta and tom winter, also with us. kathy, let s start with this arraignment. it was supposed to be today. why is it s
will commit additional acts of violence, it s more a question of when. welcome to thursday. this is meet the press daily. i m chuck todd. six asian women are dead when gunman aaron long went on a two-county rampage targeting spas in the area. while a motive has not yet been determined, the reality is this happened to have happened during a massive rise in asian american violence in this nation. a year after the prior administration referred to the pandemic as the china virus or the kung flu. now our leaders are being forced to recon with a ugly reality. two senior administration officials tell nbc news president biden and vice president harris will meet with asian american leaders when they visit atlanta tomorrow. flags are being flown at half-staff in honor of the victims and members of congress did something they said they have not done in more than 30 years, held a hearing on violence against asians and other americans. sitting and testifying about their experiences, i
looking at everything to make sure that we discover and determine what the motive of our homicides were. again, it s just very important to let you know that we are not done. in most cases of homicides, we don t have a quick apprehension. there s usually a lengthy investigation, especially when there s involving multiple victims. and so again, we re still working very diligently to ascertain all the facts so we can have a successful prosecution because that s what s most important now. so i was hoping that we would be able to release the names of the victims, but we are not able to do that at this time. and the reason is we need to make sure that we have a true verification of their identities, and that we made the proper next of kin notification. so again, i thought we were going to be able to do that, and out of respect of the lives and of the family, we want to make sure that we do that privately before we release the names of our victims publicly. again, you know, we can
finances. so plenty to get to. we begin with explosive remarks today during a heated hearing on anti-asian hate crimes, two days after that deadly shooting in atlanta amidst a rising wave of anti-asian attacks that have been documented. it was the first hearing in roughly 30 years. that s the context for the republican s remarks. he said he wants justice for the victims in atlanta. he worries about policing free speech and invoked lynching, which broke a fiery rebuke from the democrat testifying. i think there is old sayings in texas about find the rope in texas and get a taller tree. my concern about this hearing is it seems to want to venture into the policing of rhetoric. your president and your party and your colleagues can talk about issues with any other country that you want. but you don t have to do it by putting a bulls eye on the back of asian-americans across the country, on our grandparents, on our kids. this hearing was to address the hurt and pain of our com