And let the music play. Adele and the weekend dominated the Billboard Music awards. The fiery performances. Just like fire highly anticipated returns. And an emotional tribute to prince. Purple rain on a big night for music. Today, monday, may 23rd, 2016. Announcer from nbc news, this is today with matt lauer and savannah guthrie, live from studio 1a in rockefeller plaza. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to today on a monday morning. Weve got willie in for matt. Some of us watched the Billboard Music awards for the outfits. Others for celine dion. I had my lighter up for celine dion. You were going to wear Britney Spears outfit. I had to talk you out of it. Who wore it best . Well get to more on the outfits in a minute. First, the search is expanding for egyptair flight 804. Officials stepping up efforts to find the planes black boxes. Nbcs chief global correspondent bill neely has the overnight developments from cairo. Good morning to you. Good morning, savannah. Day five, and we are no closer to knowing why flight 804 fell from the sky. It seems no nearer to finding the critical black box flight recorders. But the search and the emotion here is intense. Reporter on board a u. S. Navy search plane, all eyes are on the sea. For six hours, 11 crew members scan the water for any sign of life or the missing plane. We have a lot of windows throughout the aircraft. Everybody is looking out windows. We have a camera on board, and were looking with our camera. Thatll be our best way to get any type of eyes on any survivor or debris we can find. Reporter on this mission, they see nothing that can help. The search for answers is intensifying. Egyptian teams flying over the sea, a robot submarine searching under. We have been recovering wreckage. We have been recovering human remains. Other parts of the plane. Reporter but theres no sign the life vests or clothing have helped investigators find the cause of the planes disappearance. So the agony deepens for waiting families. For the parents of a young flight attendant, for the father of the pilot. Who called his son a hero. I feel sad for my son. Reporter the pilots colleagues in the dark about the cause. You have no answers at the moment. We dont have any answers. The answers will be in the investigation. Reporter the pilot, mohamed shoukair, had been promoted four days before. He was calm as he talked to air Traffic Control before the trash. Egyptair 804, good day, uh, good night. Reporter the most likely cause is thought to be a bomb. 30 something is wrong in the aircraft. 70 , its terrorism . Yes. Reporter in its latest statement, isis said nothing about the missing plane. Investigators are focused now on the data showing computer failures and smoke around the cockpit minutes before the plane disappeared. Egypts president says the investigation could take a long time. The airline told families that finding the bodies could take weeks or longer. Meanwhile, those critical black box flight recorders will keep sending out signals, pings, for another three and a half weeks. Then the batteries will die. So this is a race against time. Savannah and willie . Bill neely in cairo, thank you. Lets bring in former ntsb investigator, greg feith. Good morning. Morning. They found just a little wreckage. Not to minimize how difficult this search is, but are you surprised they havent found more . I am, savannah. Given the fact that when we were talking about mh370, we knew the plane had flown out of radar coverage. We didnt have satellites looking in the indian ocean. Here, we have a heavily radared environment. Not only from the greeks, but from the egyptians. Of course, we got good information from the military that gave us a Little Information about how the airplane was descending and some of the motions of it. It surprises me that we didnt have any radar coverage or any coverage at all all the way to the water. You know, we dont have assets exactly where the airplane hit the water. Investigators will be looking for the black boxes as they always do when a plane goes down. Were getting reports this morning that the equipment needed to find the boxes hasnt even been sent to the area. Could that be possible . It is, willie, because its not something that is on station, you know, all over the world. Theyre acoustic beacons, or acoustic microphones. Theyre listening for these pings. But its, again, were in one of these points where theyre searching a large area without any real pinpoint information. So trying to scour that area, of course, you know, theres a lot of things that will affect, you know, those pingers. If the wreckage is sitting on top of those boxes, it may dilute the signal, and they may not find it. Theres a lot of ifs about it. The fact that the equipment isnt on station yet doesnt really surprise me. They dont really know where the wreckage is at this point. Greg, i have a few seconds but, of course, the reports about smoke alarms going off, the equipment on the airplane sending those about two, three minutes before the plane goes down, what do you make of it . The sequencing of that, savannah, will be critical. Putting it together in a timeline with the air Traffic Control communication. Its obvious the last communication with the crew, those alarms started to go off in two minutes or less, right after that. So something dramatic was happening at that point. Then the sequencing of when those alarms went off or the warnings went off, versus when they lost control of the airplane. The cockpit voice recorder can fill in some of the gaps. Its not going to be like where all we heard at the end of the cbr was the blast. Here, a crew will probably talk about issues. The messages were actually messages that were given to the flight crew on their cockpit instruments. Making that search for the black boxes all the more important. Greg, thank you very much. Thank you, greg. Now to the president ial race. Our new poll showing just how close the likely matchup between donald trump and Hillary Clinton has become, and just how unpopular those candidates are with voters. Well begin our decision 2016 coverage with nbc National Correspondent peter alexander. Good morning. Good morning, willie. In one month, Hillary Clinton, a double digit lead over donald trump has evaporated. Republicans are rallying around trump faster than democrats are around clinton. The democrats are still locked in the contentious primary fight. The bottom line, the winner this fall may be the candidate that americans dislike the least. Reporter their dual now a dead heat. Hillary clintons lead over donald trump, just three points within the margin of error. Down from 11 points last month. Theres no evidence he has any ideas about making america great, as he advertises. Hillary is weak. Shes a weak person. She has bad judgment. Reporter the 2016 contenders now unloading. The latest flash point, guns. With trump accepting the nras endorsement. Were getting rid of gunfree zones. Reporter clinton is speaking to the families of gun violence victims, including Trayvon Martins mother. If you want to imagine what trumps america will look like, picture more kids at risk of violence and bigotry. Picture more anger and fear. Reporter trump trying to clarify his position, but contradicting himself in the same breath. I dont want to have guns in classrooms, though in some cases, teachers should have guns in classrooms, frankly. Teachers are, you know things going on in our schools are unbelievable. Reporter trump and clinton are the two most unpopular likely president ial nominees in the history of our poll. 58 with a negative view of trump. 54 for clinton. Clinton now looking to capitalize after a recent report showed the last time trumps tax returns became public in the late 70s, he didnt pay the federal government a cent. You have someone running for president who is afraid to release his tax returns because it will expose the fact that he pays no federal income tax. I think its a big problem. Bernie reporter its not a oneonone race yet. Clintons immediate challenge, wooing Bernie Sanders supporters. 2 3 of democrats behind sanders say theyd vote for clinton this fall. 17 for trump. Sanders seemingly at war with the party. Now backing Debbie Wasserman schultzs opponent. Im not interested in that. Reporter bill clinton setting his sights on trump, name dropping the Presumptive Republican nominee four times. Using his own slogan against him. Its, hey, ill make it the way it used to be, and youll be better off. If youre not, at least youll have somebody else to look down on. It is a dumb idea, and it will not work. To emphasize how unpopular Hillary Clinton and donald trump are, half the voters we polled said they would consider a third party in the president ial election. 47 tell our pollsters they would be open to voting for that third party option this november. Savannah and willie . Peter alexander in washington, thanks. Lets go to steve kornacki. Hell dive into the new nbc news wall street journal poll. Take it away. We look at the bottom line numbers. A month ago, this is what the race looked like. Hillary clinton, a double digit lead. Then, we were hearing from democrats. Trump is hillarys dream opponent. You had the never trump republicans saying, dont bother having the election if trump is the nominee. He cant win. A month later, check this out, we basically have a dead heat here. What is the difference when you look inside the numbers over the last month . Right here, this is the biggest single difference. That is not it at all. I had to go back one. This is the biggest difference. This is Republican Voters. A month ago, donald trump was trying to lock up the republican nomination. 72 of Republican Voters said theyre with him against Hillary Clinton. Still a lot of republicans were saying, i dont know if i can get on board. He locks up the nomination. The race becomes clear to them. The number of republicans supporting trump has jumped by 14 points in the last month. He brought republicans home. Republicans are on board with him right now. If theres one Silver Lining in this for Hillary Clinton, its this. That could still happen on the democratic side. These are Bernie Sanders supporters right now. 66 of them say, look, if its not bernie, if its Hillary Clinton as the democratic nominee, i can support her. That number, a Healthy Party in the fall, should be higher. Thats the challenge for Hillary Clinton. Can she get the Bernie Sanders number up into the 80s, the 90s . That could move the overall number up. Thats her challenge right now. Take a look at this. We mentioned this. The overwhelming vote, over 50 negative scores. These are the two least popular nominees youll see pitted against each other. Strong support for Hillary Clinton with black voters, latinos, women, younger voters, double digit lead. On the flip side, donald trump 16 points up among whites, double digits for senior citizens. Men leading among independents. When you add the groups together, you know what this looks like . Mitt romney versus barack obama in 2012. Almost identical. All the talk that donald trump was uniquely the worst republican you could ever put up, hed lose in ways youd never seen, hes getting exactly what mitt romney got. Steve kornacki, come have a seat. Well bring in nicolle wallace. Lets talk about the numbers there. How much of the tightening of this race is donald trump bringing people around him . And how much is Hillary Clinton fighting a twofront war with Bernie Sanders in the race . Steve summed it up nicely. Her mission is to bring along the sanders voters, while trumps mission is to crush Hillary Clinton. Uncle bernie refuses to go home to vermont. Refuses to message to his supporters that it is over. He can no longer become the democratic nominee. Its news to them. They express dismay and disappointment and rage he should get out of the race. Its Hillary Clintons largest problem. You feel strongly if Hillary Clinton loses in november, this will be the moment people should look at as consequential. Should we convene in this exact group the morning after election day, and should Hillary Clinton have lost narrowly, it will have been because of the events of this month. It will be because long past the point when it was possible for Bernie Sanders to win, he stayed in, called her corrupt, called her unqualified. And independent voters, the people still up for grabs, were hearing the same message from donald trump as they were hearing from Bernie Sanders. Steve, how much of this is hand wringing in may, five and a half months ahead of the election . Wont democrats eventually, given the choice between donald trump and Hillary Clinton, go for Hillary Clinton . There is a chance keep in mind what happened eight years ago. The Hillary Clinton and barack obama fight. Hillary was saying in june, ill be the nominee. Im more electable. She talked about the kennedy assassination happening late in the 60s. It was ugly. As soon as the primary process ended, she didnt have the numbers, she dropped out and endorsed obama. We dont remember it being tumultuous because it worked out for democrats. You dont remember anything about that race, do you, nicolle . Blocked it out. Exactly. President obama is making history today, announcing the end of a decades of old arms embargo on vietnam. This is the first stop on a weeklong asia tour. Ron allen is in hanoi this morning. Good morning. President obama said lifting the ban on lethal military sales, in place 50 years, is one of the last steps toward completing normalization between the relationship with United States and vietnam. President obama, the third u. S. President to visit here, a relationship that has come a long way since the end of the war. Reporter president obama arrived in vietnam to a typical diplomatic welcome. Crowds lining the motorcade route. The president taking part in local traditions. A far cry from the emotional visit by president clinton in 2000. The first by a u. S. President after the end of the war. Now, america and vietnam are all about business. Today, signing multimillion dollar deals with boeing. Lifting the ban on military sales, the president says another sign of how far the two nations have come. Just a generation ago, we were adversaries, and now we are friends. Should give us hope. Should be a reminder of the ability for us to transform relationships. Reporter from here, mr. Obama traveled to japan. Another painful chapter of american history. Hiroshima. He will be the first sitting u. S. President to visit one of the only places on earth devastated by an atomic weapon. Not to offer an apology. My purpose is not to revisit the past, but affirm that we should do everything we can to try to promote peace and dialogue around the world. In japan, the president will also attend a summit of world leaders. On that agenda, the sluggish global economy, the global war against terrorism. President obama also confirmed the u. S. Did, in fact, kill the Afghan Taliban leader, mansour. He said the message was that america would protect and take care of its own. Back to you. Ron allen, thank you. Sports news. Playoff games last night. Well start in the nba with game three of the western conference finals. Oklahoma city hosting golden state. This one, all thunder. Russell westbrook leading the way with 30 points. Okc wins huge, 133105. They now lead the series two games to one. On the ice, tampa bay and pittsburgh, game five of the eastern conference finals. Tied, 33, end of regulation. The shot bounces off of johnsons lower back. Into the goal. Check it out. Hows that for a redirect . Tampa bay goes up, 32. Watch game five between the sharks and the blues tonight on the nbc sports network. Is it weird im focused on how he must have back pain today . Theres padding. Okay, good. And hes a hockey player. Good. Lets turn to dylan, in for al this morning. Good morning, guys. We are talking about some more severe storms. The same general area where we saw storms yesterday. Look at this tornado that was caught on camera near spearman, texas. Along the border with the oklahoma panhandle. You can see how huge that tornado was. Fortunately, it was in more of a rural area. It was caused by the storm chasers. 27 tornadoes yesterday across the Western Plains. Thats the area we could see more storms fire up late they are afternoon and into tonight. Sioux falls seeing pockets of rain. Rain moving through oklahoma city. Cloudtoground lightning north of dallas. Major cities should be spared today. Dodge city, storms, isolated hail and tornadoes will be the concern. Tomorrow, it moves slowly to the east. Thats a look at the weather across the country. Your local forecast is coming up in 30 seconds. Ook at the weathe across the good morning. Im meteorologist kari hall. Its cool as you head out the door. Temperatures in the 50s for most of the bay area. Upper 40s for the north bay and 57 in the east bay. A mix of sun and clouds. Well see that continuing as we go through the rest of the day. Highs in the 60s for San Francisco. 63 and 70 in the south bay. East bay 65. Thats your latest forecast. Dylan, thank you very much. Coming up, two lions shot at a zoo to save a man who intentionally jumped into their enclosure. This morning, the growing controversy over the zoos decision. Inside a brutal weekend on mt. Everest. Three climbers died. Others missing and dozens more fell ill. Is it getting more dangerous to climb the worlds highest peak . First, this is today on nbc. Just