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Today, Uvalde Begins Burying Victims of Elementary School Attack; DOJ to Pick Leader Soon For Review of Police Response to Shooting; Today, Biden Meets With Fed Chair to Discuss Rising Inflation. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired May 31, 2022 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A very good Tuesday morning. I'm Jim Sciutto.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone, I'm Poppy Harlow.

Just hours from now, ten-year-old shooting victims Amerie Jo Garza and Maite Rodriguez will be laid to rest as the Uvalde community remembers the young lives lost in last week's tragedy. Visitation and rosary services will be held for Teacher Irma Garcia, Nevaeh Alyssa Bravo and Jose Manuel Flores Jr.

In a statement obtained by CNN-affiliate KSAT, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin says, quote, our focus on Tuesday is on our families who lost loved ones. This as he canceled the special city council meeting that was supposed to be held today for Uvalde School District Police Chief Pedro Arredondo who was supposed to be sworn into a seat on the council.

Now, Arredondo was the incident commander who held off on breaching the classroom where all 21 victims were killed.

SCIUTTO: Plus this, CNN has obtained audio and video of a desperate police radio call. What's crucial here is it includes what appears to be the voice of a child telling an officer they had been shot. It's not first time we've heard of calls for help from inside the classroom while police waited outside.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you injured?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I got shot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where? Where?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A kid got shot?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A kid?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They shot a kid.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: And you see some of those police waiting outside there.

Let's begin this morning with CNN Correspondent Nick Valencia. He is near Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. So, Nick, tell us what more we know about the circumstances and, crucially, if we know the timing of this radio call.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, Jim. We don't know. It is unclear at this point at which point this video was recorded during this shooting, as it was unfolding. We know, though, that it gives us insight into the chaos surrounding the moments that this shooting was taking place.

The individual who we obtained the video from did not want to be identified but said that radio call was part of Customs and Border Patrol traffic, in which you could hear, as you mentioned, what appears to be a young child telling an adult that they had been shot. We don't know why that would be part of CBP traffic radio, but we do know that this individual says, as soon as CBP agents realized that this man could hear the audio, they turned it down.

Now, this gives us more insight and is just further evidence that we hear children were pleading for help inside that classroom, waiting for police to show up, and they just didn't arrive in time. It leads many to believe that there were victims inside that could have been saved, who potentially bled out while they were waiting for officers to enter the elementary school.

There is still so much grief here and so much pain as we mark officially one week since the shooting took place. And earlier, we spoke to the archbishop in San Antonio who heads the Diocese of San Antonio, which Uvalde is a part of, and he talked about how to address each family here who is grieves in their own way.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARCHBISHOP GUSTAVO GARCIA-SILLER, SAN ANTONIO: We need to deal with each one of them in a different way because each family is different, each child is unique. And so we will try to do the best we can, and then to assure them with gestures, again, that we will be for them in the long run. It's not just this moment.

This is a time in which people, they need get connected. And here, even if it hurts, even if you are a member of the family and it hurts, it is a reality in our country. We are in decadents because we have been fostering a culture of death, to make the arms sacred and then with the same arms to kill people. I mean, there is no logic to it, no logic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VALENCIA: The memorial here in Uvalde, in the town square, is growing by the hour. The devastating loss of 21 people has deeply wounded this South Texas community of about 15,000 people. And, Jim and Poppy, as you guys know and well aware from covering events like this, this is a tragedy and a pain that they will likely live with forever.

[10:05:02]

Jim, Poppy?

HARLOW: It certainly is. Nick Valencia, thank you for all of your reporting on the ground.

And as we told you earlier, one of the victims who will be laid to rest today is ten-year-old Maite Rodriguez. Her cousin told our Adrienne Broaddus that she loved animals and had a dream of becoming a marine biologist. Look at her there. She says, Maite was determined, smart, and, quote, going to be someone.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DESTINY ESQUIVEL, COUSIN OF SCHOOL SHOOTING VICTIM MAITE RODRIGUEZ: She was a hero. She in that classroom, her classmates said that she was brave, that she was grabbing all the other students and telling them where to hide before the gunman turned on her, but that she was so brave and courageous to tell the kids to hide. That's what I want you to know, that she was brave, courageous, charismatic. And she wasn't -- she isn't just another victim, but she's a hero.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: A hero. We will continue to bring you these stories as we learn more about the 21 lives lost last week in that senseless tragedy.

SCIUTTO: Another poor little girl.

In the next few days, the Department of Justice is expected to select a person who will lead its review of law enforcement's response to the Uvalde shooting, that according to two sources familiar with that process.

HARLOW: The Department of Justice has previously conducted reviews similar to this, after-action reviews is what they're called, on the mass shootings in San Bernardino, California, in 2015, also following the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando in 2016.

Joining us now is one of the people involved in conducting those reviews, Frank Straub, he is the director for the National Policing Institute for Targeted Violence Prevention. Frank, good morning and thank you.

FRANK STRAUB, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL POLICING INSTITUTE'S CENTER FOR TARGETED VIOLENCE PREVENTION: Good morning. Thank you very much for having me.

HARLOW: What can these reviews accomplish that can actually help going forward?

STRAUB: Well, I think it is important to recognize that DOJ has taken a very important step here. We need an independent, objective, fair and comprehensive review of what took place in Texas. And we need to bring subject matter experts to the table to look at prevention, the response, and the recovery from this event.

SCIUTTO: Let me ask you this, because there are a number of questions that are key here. The police say they did not go in because they made a judgment, one the leaders now say was a wrong judgment, but a judgment all the kids inside that classroom were dead. In other words, it'd become less an active shooter situation, more of a hostage situation.

We know that's not true because there were multiple 911 calls. Now, we have an audio that CNN has obtained that appears to be another child inside that classroom. Is that -- would that information have gotten to police on the scene? And if it didn't, is that a command issue? Is that an information sharing issue?

STRAUB: Well, whether those phone calls were getting out, and as you said in a previous report, that they may have been on the border patrol radio, really, the state of the art right now is when you have an active shooter incident, your job as a police officer, whether you're the first one on the scene or you're part of a larger group, is to stop the shooting, stop the bleeding, which means you have to go to where the gunfire is coming from. You have to neutralize the shooter or shooters and then immediately start to treat the victims.

HARLOW: There, at this point, Frank, are no national guidelines to standardize law enforcement's training and response to active shooter situations. You've got 18,000 different law enforcement agencies across country. I understand that that can be tricky, and some may say it is not needed. I wonder if you think it's needed.

STRAUB: I think there is a general agreement in law enforcement, there has been since Columbine, that we take immediate action, that we don't wait outside. In most states, and I had the privilege of serving in New York, in Indiana, in the state of Washington in law enforcement leadership roles. In all of those states, the protocols were very much similar and very much established.

And we trained our officers to respond to these situations over and over and over again to the point of, you know, really very intense simulations in terms of using actors and volunteers as victims, having to force entry, not waiting for a tactical team to get there but to go in.

[10:10:06]

But we also have to remember that if we're putting that kind of demand on officers, they need to be equipped properly. They need to have ballistic vests, they need to have ballistic helmets and they have to have the firepower that's going to match the assailant's. Too often, what we see is a patrol officer, an administrative officer or collection thereof, arriving at these scenes, and they're outgunned and they're unprotected.

SCIUTTO: Frank, forgive me. Forgive me, Frank. That was not the situation here. We saw dozens of officers. They had ballistic vests. They had big guns. So, we know that did not apply here. I wonder, at what point does this become not just an unfortunate police response but a criminally negligent one, or negligent at least administratively, right, that this is not -- that a DOJ probe, what is the standard for a DOJ probe to find that this is not just, oh, we got to better communicate response times and so on, but there was negligent decision making here, because that's a question that parents are asking right now.

STRAUB: Yes. And I don't think, Jim, we're going to know the answers to that until the review is done. And, again, it has to be independent. It has to be effective -- excuse me, objective. It has to be comprehensive. And nobody can go into it with preconceived ideas. We really have to go in with a blank slate and interview as many people as possible, review policies and procedures, review training, and do a very slow, methodical, accurate assessment of the situation.

SCIUTTO: Frank Straub, thanks so much for joining us.

STRAUB: Thank you.

HARLOW: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau proposing sweeping legislation that would freeze handgun ownership across Canada.

SCIUTTO: Yes, quick, comprehensive response here. The measure would also force people who own military assault-style weapons, like the ones used in the Uvalde shooting, in Buffalo, and so many others, to enter a buyback program.

CNN's Brynn Gingras joins us now. Brynn, this is something, a pattern from before, when where were mass shootings, whether it was a mass shooting in Australia, quick, national response. In New Zealand, quick, national response, same in the U.K., quite something to see across the border in Canada.

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And, Jim, there's a top leader there who said gun ownership in their country is a privilege, not a right. So, right there is a huge difference. So, this may be, to some, a stunning proposal, but like you guys are saying, it is in response to what happened in Uvalde and Buffalo.

Trudeau's proposal puts a complete freeze on handgun ownership in Canada, by not making it possible to buy, sell, transfer, or import handguns anywhere in the country. So, that includes fining gun smugglers and traffickers and helping law enforcement actually enforce and investigate those crimes, should they happen.

In addition, this proposal, if it passes, would be illegal for long guns to hold anything more than five rounds. Gun makers would actually have to be forced to make rifles that way. The proposal would also bar anyone involved in acts of domestic violence or criminal harassment from owning a gun.

And Trudeau says, listen, he understands, most gun owners use their guns safely, but there is really no need, like many people have been talking about, for the assault-style weapons in their country. This is an issue that he has campaigned on, and here's more of what he had to say about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUSTIN TRUDEAU, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: As a government, as a society, we have a responsibility to act, to prevent more tragedies.

Canadians certainly don't need assault-style weapons that were designed to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time.

Gun violence is a complex problem, but at the end of the day, the math is really quite simple. The fewer the guns in our communities, the safer everyone will be.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GINGRAS: And, Jim, as you noted, this government has taken action, swift action against guns before, after the country's deadliest massacre in Nova Scotia two years ago. It banned 1,500 styles of military-style assault weapons. So, quick action, and now this is going even further.

Handguns make up about 59 percent of violent crimes, that included a firearm over the last ten years in Canada. Again, this is just a proposal but it does have support and it could be easily passed by this fall. Guys?

SCIUTTO: Yes, quite a comparison to the measures still being debated on Capitol Hill. Brynn Gingras, thanks very much.

Still to come this hour, President Biden meets with the Federal Reserve chairman with soaring inflation, understandably, at the top of their agenda.

Plus, the White House says the rockets the U.S. is sending to Ukraine will not be able to reach Russia. They're limiting the range of them even as they send these powerful systems. We'll get into why.

[10:15:00]

HARLOW: Also, a suspected tornado tore through a small town in Minnesota. Look at that path of destruction. We'll tell you where the threat of severe weather is today.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Today, President Biden has a significant meeting with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, first meeting since he re-nominated him for that post. And today is really all about tackling the inflation crisis.

The president just published an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, saying the U.S. is better positioned to confront these economic challenges in most countries.

[10:20:05] He writes, in part, with the right policies, the U.S. can transition from recovery to stable, steady growth, and bring down inflation without giving up historic gains.

SCIUTTO: CNN's John Harwood joins us now from the White House. It is an interesting argument there, John, he was internationalizing this, which is true. Inflation is going up in a whole bunch of countries, buy, politically, that doesn't matter, right, here in the U.S., with midterms coming up. So, what is the administration's plan to tackle?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, your pointing to politics is the right thing. This is less a new plan than a reframing the argument that the administration has been making. It's got three points to it. The first, which is 90 percent of the plan, is letting the Fed do its job. The Fed controls monetary policy. They have the biggest effect on inflation.

The other two about lowering costs for people, prescription drugs, child care, that sort of thing, that's a pitch for the president's economic agenda that has been stalled, same with deficit reduction. Those stalled talks have now shifted toward the potential for a plan that would raise more money than it spends, and that could have an anti-inflationary effect.

The other thing the administration is doing is Wally Adeyemo, the deputy treasury secretary, told Poppy today is try to make the point that there are larger forces at work that the administration is not responsible for. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WALLY ADEYEMO, DEPUTY TREASURY SECRETARY: No one could have predicted the war that Russia launched on Ukraine and the impact that's having on prices today, from global energy to food prices. The supply chain shock that has been created by COVID isn't only something that's happened here in the United States but it's happened around the world.

And the president in his op-ed laid out three things that we're going to do to address it. One is give the Fed the room it needs to take the actions it needs to. Two is take actions like reducing energy from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down the cost of things like oil. And three is bring down our debts and deficits over time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARWOOD: Now, of course, the president and the Fed chairman do bear some responsibility for the current situation. They, early in the Biden administration, had to make a choice. Do we keep going big in terms of supporting the economy during the COVID pandemic? They decided to go big. Many economists agreed with them. But some, as Poppy pointed out, Larry Summers and others, disagreed.

It looks like Summers was correct, and that the going big generated too much demand in the economy, caused inflation. The best they can do now is let the interest rate increases the Fed is pursuing, see if they can cool down the economy without tipping the economy into recession, and that's what they're going to talk about at lunch today.

HARLOW: John, just a quick follow-up for you. I tried to get an answer from the deputy secretary on the consideration that Biden has publicly said they're making right now on the Trump-era tariffs on China. I mean, it wouldn't be a panacea, but it would make a difference. And I don't know if you have any reporting on if they are going to move forward with that or not.

HARWOOD: I think they are, and it could make a slight difference, and they're aware that, like in all the things they're pursuing, Strategic Petroleum Reserve made a slight difference. But, of course, that gets swamped by the effects of the war.

On tariffs, there is about $300 billion a year in China tariffs. I think they're look at some subset of half of that, those that are not related to national security, consumer goods, beach toys, things like that that some consumers would notice.

So, they will do some subset of that $300 billion in tariffs, and it will have a modest impact, but much smaller than everything the Fed is trying to do, Poppy.

HARLOW: So much in the Fed's hands and only so little the Fed can really do. John, thanks so much for that great reporter at the White House.

Just moments ago, there is a new survey out that shows consumers are more optimistic about the U.S. economy and job market than analysts were expecting.

SCIUTTO: CNN Business Reporter Matt Egan is covering. I mean, we watch a lot of these and, let's be frank, a lot of the data is mixed. There's some great data and there is some tough data. But what are we hearing on consumer confidence?

MATT EGAN, CNN BUSINESS REPORTER: Well, Jim and Poppy, consumer confidence did fall again in May. It didn't fall as much as expected. But the fact that people are feeling so negatively right now about the economy is really all about high inflation. The cost of living has just gone up so significantly, and that continues to overshadow the fact that the jobs market is on fire.

On the cost of living front, we've got new numbers there, as well, home prices going up. The latest numbers from Case-Shiller is showing that a 20.6 percent gain in March year-over-year, that is not only an acceleration from February, that is the fastest pace on records that go back 35 years.

So, yes, that means that home prices were rising in March at a faster pace than they ever have before, even during the housing bubble of the mid-2000s, just before the great recession. And it's really all about supply and demand. The supply of homes is simply not keeping up with blockbuster demand. Some of the housing markets that saw the biggest jumps, not surprisingly, were in the Sunbelt.

[10:25:02] We saw Tampa, Phoenix and Miami all seeing 30 percent year-over-year gains in March.

Now, the question is, how long could this can continue because mortgage rates, as we know, have gone up since March. So, that should cool things off. When you talk about home prices, it is a good thing for people who own homes because it means their net worth has gone up. But for people who are first-time buyers, this makes it that much harder to get a home.

SCIUTTO: Yes, historically low for some time. Matt Egan, thanks so much.

EGAN: Thanks.

HARLOW: Thanks, Matt.

Uvalde school district police officers were trained, they were just months before, again, to confront an active shooter. So, what went so wrong in last week's response at Robb Elementary School? We have an in-depth look, next.

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