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Airlines Prepare for Surge of Travelers to Return This Summer; Deadly Mass Shooting in Tulsa Lasted Just a Few Minutes; What to Do During an Active Shooting Situation; Peter Navarro Makes Court Appearance Filling Indictment; "Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal" Premiers Sunday. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired June 03, 2022 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: On the heels of thousands of canceled or delayed flights this past Memorial Day weekend, airlines are scrambling to regroup ahead of the busy summer travel season.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean looks at how one major carrier is trying to cope.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT (voice over): With summer travel heating up across the country, airlines that receive billions in pandemic aid are hoping they do not melt down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to be nimble.

MUNTEAN (voice over): On an exclusive tour of American Airlines operations center, hundreds worked behind the scenes to avoid canceling flights as an unexpected thunderstorm popped up over Dallas. Chief Operating Officer David Seymour showed me how dispatchers diverted arriving flights and reshuffled flight crews so departing flights were ready as soon as the weather cleared.

MUNTEAN: How confident are you that the summer will be a smooth one when it comes to travel.

DAVID SEYMOUR, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, AMERICAN AIRLINES: I'm confident. I think that my team is confident. But we're not over confident.

MUNTEAN (voice over): U.S. airlines canceled more than 2,700 flights over Memorial Day weekend and delayed another 21,000 nationwide. Delta Airlines led cancellations after saying it will scale back its summer schedule with coronavirus causing higher than planned worker absences.

ED BASTIAN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, DELTA AIRLINES: We added capacity coming into the spring. Memorial Day was the first full test of it, and we did see with some challenges.

[15:35:00] MUNTEAN (voice over): Crew shortages have hobbled the airline industry. A CNN analysis of the latest federal data shows the largest four airlines with 24,000 fewer workers than before the pandemic.

PETE BUTTIGIEG, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: The demand has come roaring back, and they are struggling to keep up.

BRIAN KELLY, THE POINTS GUY: There's staffing shortages and weather issues. It's a perfect storm.

MUNTEAN (voice over): American airlines says it has hired 12,000 new workers in the last year. Now the question is whether airlines have prepared enough for passengers packing planes at levels not seen since before the pandemic.

SEYMOUR: You can't let your guard down. We have the resources to run the airline, and that's the key thing for us.

MUNTEAN: American Airlines underscores that most of its flights were on time over the Memorial Day weekend but it offers this reality check. Some of its workers are still coming down with coronavirus. It all comes to a head when there is bad weather. Just yesterday, bad weather on the East Coast caused 1,600 flights to be canceled nationwide, according to Flight Aware. There's been almost 700 more cancellations today -- Victor and Alisyn.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: Pete Muntean at Reagan National. Thank you, Pete.

CAMEROTA: So, our school children now have to go through active shooter drills, but do you know what to do in that situation? An expert is going to tell us next.

[15:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Investigators say this week's mass shooting at the Tulsa Medical Building lasted just a few minutes, and in that short time, the gunman killed four people and took his own life.

BLACKWELL: Last month at a Buffalo supermarket in a matter of minutes, a gunman armed with an AR-15 style rifle killed ten people. Greg Shaffer is an active shooting response expert and former FBI agent. He's also the author of the book "Stay Safe: Security Secrets For Today's Dangerous World." Greg, thank you for being with us. Listen, there are schools, restaurants, churches where this happens, so no place is the same, right.

CAMEROTA: Doctors office.

BLACKWELL: Hospitals.

CAMEROTA: Grocery store.

BLACKWELL: But if I hear gunshots or what I think are gunshots, what's the first thing I need to do?

GREG SHAFFER, ACTIVE SHOOTING RESPONSE EXPERT: First thing you need to do is recognize if it's gunfire. You know, oftentimes we rationalize our fears away. We'll hear gunfire, and our first reaction is it must be fireworks. So, the first course of action is recognize it for what it is. If you hear something that sounds, think it's gunfire, and then your best course of action is to move. The average hit rate by a shooter with a handgun on a moving target is about 4 percent. That means you have a 96 percent chance of not being shot just by running.

And you look at another statistic out there, and that is the average distance that an active shooter shoots his victims is about 5 feet. Now of course, the Mandalay Bay shooting was an anomaly. But for most active shooter events, it's less than 5 feet where the shooter shoots his victims. He's looking for the easy target. The easy target are those that hide in the bathroom, hide in the closet, hide behind the cash register, or behind a church pew. Those are the easy targets that are not moving. Those that get up and run away, he's not going to waste his time on that. So, your first course of action is one, think it's gunfire, two, move.

CAMEROTA: Greg, I can't help but think of the poor kids trapped in the classroom in Uvalde and other school shootings. They can't run. I mean, they're in their classroom. What they're told is to hide, and so should we change that?

SHAFFER: Well, that's a good point, and you know, the worst case scenario imaginable. You know, in the last decade, we have spent 150 million -- I'm sorry, we spent over $50 million in training over 150,000 police officers in the alert response model. So, we have tried to go through prevention through response. We need to change that paradigm. We need to look at prevention through preventive actions.

Let's take, for example, the school fire problem that we had decades ago. There has not been a child killed in a school fire in America in the last 63 years. Why is that? Because we went through prevention model. We have sprinkler systems in schools, fire extinguishers, we train every kid in America with a fire drill once a month. We have fire retardant materials. We have fire retardant building woods and metals and stuff like that. And we have fire houses around every corner.

So, we need to take that same plan, that same concept, and use that in the active shooter model. We need to think about prevention, not just how to respond to them, but how to prevent them in the first place.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BLACKWELL: Greg if someone can't run, can't move, what do you do?

SHAFFER: Well, you really have one -- only one option left, that's to fight back. And you know, you look to those improvise weapons, electrical cord, a pair of scissors, a coffee pot, a screwdriver, a hammer, broken leg of a chair, the high heel shoe of a woman. There are all kinds of weapons you can use at your disposal if you look hard enough, and that creates -- that requires quite a mindset to be able to do that. And again, when kids are involved, it's a lot more difficult. But if you are trapped, and there is no place to go. Your only option is go out fighting.

CAMEROTA: Greg Shaffer, it's helpful to hear all of this. I mean, unfortunately, this is our new normal, this is our world. I can't tell you how many people, you know, commute home now, and this is top of mind on what they're going to do in their train car.

[15:45:00]

Greg, thank you very much for sharing your expertise with us.

BLACKWELL: Thank you, Greg.

Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro arrested by the FBI for not complying with the subpoena from the January 6th Committee. We'll speak to a former Nixon White House lawyer about that. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro is in court right now after being indicted by a federal grand jury for criminal contempt charges. And this stems from his refusal to comply with a subpoena from the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot.

CAMEROTA: That panel will hold its first public primetime hearings on this coming Thursday.

[15:50:00]

Joining us now is CNN contributor and former Nixon White House counsel John Dean. He's featured in the new CNN series, "WATERGATE: BLUEPRINT FOR SCANDAL." So, John, the Watergate hearings were held in primetime. And it obviously, attracted a huge audience, millions and millions of viewers. It's a different media world now. What do you think the impact of holding these Capitol riot hearings during primetime will be?

JOHN DEAN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I think they have the potential of being powerful. The Watergate hearings actually started very slow. They started in the morning, they had low level staffers. The networks threatened to pull the coverage that was so boring. But they built up slowly, and an audience develops and thought this is serious. What's happening with these hearings is they're going to go, this is serious. Here are some major figures to tell you why. And I think that's impressive and important.

BLACKWELL: To tell the story, build the narrative for the American people, put it all in one place. We had breaking news that Peter Navarro was arrested, indicted. What's are your thoughts?

DEAN: What took so long? He's really -- he's just not only refused to comply, he's defied. And courts don't like that, prosecutors don't like that, and it's not the way to play it. It's really been stupid on his part.

CAMEROTA: All right, well let's take a look at a portion of your CNN Watergate special.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN DEAN, FORMER NIXON WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: I was in a meeting in Ehrlichman's office and Colson wanted to alert everybody to the fact that Howard Hunt had an office in the executive office building. And that there was stuff in his safe that we should get our hands on.

Ehrlichman called another staffer and told him to get the contents of his safe and bring them down to my office. My deputy started to go through them and when I came in, he said listen, we don't want to leave fingerprints on all this. Why don't I go over to the doctor's office and get some rubber gloves to handle this information and see what's here? And that's the way it started.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hunt's safe was loaded. There were some disguises that came from the CIA that Hunt had used in '71. They were in the safe.

DEAN: There was a big briefcase, and in it were ChapSticks with wires hanging out of them. Electronic equipment, literally, these were from the scene of the crime.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: It looks so good, John. When somebody starts talking about using rubber gloves, that's usually a tip you might be getting into some trouble.

DEAN (on camera): It's not surgery.

CAMEROTA: Yes, you're not doing surgery. So now from where you sit, from this vantage point, what sticks with you? I mean, what do you think?

DEAN: Well, my reaction to that is two things. How well the re- enactments were done, I was a little worried about when they started doing that. But I think it's important we tell the core story that this documentary tells. It's long forgotten. It is told by people who have first-hand knowledge of it. And I think it will remind people and put in perspective what's happening today by looking at what happened yesterday.

BLACKWELL: Important timing. John Dean, good to see you. Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Thanks, John Dean.

DEAN: Both of you, thank you.

BLACKWELL: And be sure to tune in Sunday night at 9:00 for the premiere, "WATERGATE: BLUEPRINT FOR A SCANDAL." We'll l be right back.

[15:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: The baby formula shortage still has many parents scrambling to feed their children.

BLACKWELL: This week, CNN heroes salutes lifestyle content creator, Lucy Fink, a mother who is donating her express milk for babies in need.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LUCY FINK, CNN HERO: My son is now 12 weeks old and he eats four times a day. It was actually my TikTok and Instagram followers that alerted me that I had such a drastic oversupply of breast milk. Pumping from the start was a big mystery box for me. And I know that it is that way for a lot of other moms as well. Ever since having Milo, I would share a lot of content about my nursing journey. I would always express milk one or two times a day more than he was feeding. I Googled how to donate my breast milk in New York City. It was easy. It was fast, the whole process was so incredibly rewarding and especially now with the formula shortage it's needed more than ever.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: To learn more about her efforts and see more adorable pictures of her baby, go to CNNheroes.com.

All right, so this just in to CNN. Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman is speaking out about the stroke that he suffered last month. He says it did not come out of nowhere and that there were big warning signs about his health that he left unchecked.

BLACKWELL: He writes in a new statement, back in 2017, I had swollen feet and went to the hospital to get checked out. And that's when I learned I had a heart condition. Then I didn't follow up. I thought losing weight and exercising would be enough. Of course, it wasn't. It's not something I'm proud of but it is something I hope others can learn from. So please, listen to your body and be aware of the signs. Fetterman was diagnosed back in 2017 with both atrial fibrillation and cardio myopathy.

CAMEROTA: A good reminder to all of us.

BLACKWELL: All right, 14-year-old Harini Logan made history at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ornithorhynchus.

HARINI LOGAN: O-R-N-I-T-H-O-R-H-Y-N-C-H-U-S

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mandubay

M-A-N-D-U-B-A-Y

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Moorhen.

LOGAN: M-O-O-R-H-E-N.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[16:00:00]

CAMEROTA: Come on, those aren't real words.

BLACKWELL: She's spelling them so quickly.

CAMEROTA: How does she do that? I mean, how does it -- what are those? What are those words? How does he even know how to pronounce them? It's all so confusing?

BLACKWELL: Well, an eighth grader won the first spell-off, a test to see which of the finalists could spell the most words correctly in 90 seconds.

CAMEROTA: Harini got more than 20 words right. She took home a trophy and $50,000.

And "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now.

END